The Who Dispels Bad Memories of Tragic Cincinnati Concert

By Darrel Rowland

RICHFIELD – It was a time for extinguished memories last night at the Richfield Coliseum.

The air was filled with bad vibes well before the British rock supergroup, The Who, took the stage. Obviously heavy on everyone’s mind was the tragedy only three nights earlier before a Who concert in Cincinnati.

The image of 11 trampled corpses outside Riverfront Coliseum was still fresh inside concert-goers’ heads.

Thursday night’s performance was The Who’s second since the Cincinnati incident and first in Ohio. It also was the first time in almost exactly four years that The Who had appeared at the Coliseum.

The automatic comparison with the 1975 show finally brought home last summer’s death of drummer Keith Moon. It was eerie to see a relatively calm Kenney Jones up there in “Keith’s” chair pounding away at the drum kit instead of the maniac Moon, who massacred unsuspecting snares by the score.

The Who also had a man on keyboards – John “Rabbit” Bundrick – a first in their live shows.

But to The Who’s credit, by the time the last notes of a rare double encore had faded away, Cincinnati was all but forgotten, and Moon’s death was a distant, sour memory.

It took a while, though.

Review

Both the late-arriving sellout crowd and members of the band seemed a bit somber as things got under way. But the pace and excitement gradually accelerated as The Who reasserted themselves atop the pinnacle as probably the greatest rock band on the face of the Earth.

Most of the tunes were highly familiar. The Who opened with the oldies, “Substitute” and “I Can’t Explain,” before swinging into newer material from their year-old “Who Are You” album. Seldom-heard “Boris the Spider” was another oldie.

Musical highlights of the evening were the tracks from the album “Quadrophenia” – also The Who’s latest film venture. Although that LP was only two years old, The Who did not perform any of its songs in 1975.

But this time around “5:15” and “Drowned” were simply exceptional, especially with the added touches of the live act.

The real crowd-pleasers, though, were The Who’s old standbys from the rock opera “Tommy”: “Sparks,” “Pinball Wizzard” and most of all “See Me Feel Me.”

But the biggest ovation was reserved for the traditional show-stopper, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Tumultuous applause and cheers greeted the flash explosion that kicked off the number, and by the end of the song the audience – bathed in swirling spotlights – was a sea of moving hands and swaying bodies.

An added treat was the double encore of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and “The Real Me” from “Quadrophenia.”

The Who, as usual, relied little on the special effects that dominate so many other rock shows.

The band’s performance was outstanding without all the gimmicks. John Entwistle’s pulsating bass, Roger Daltry’s varied vocals and, best of all, Pete Townshend’s phenomonal screaming guitar, could have carried the show alone – together it was an aural orgy.

The stange antics of the three original Who members haven’t changed much: Entwistle is till the immobile (except for his flying fingers) “Ox;” Daltry swings the microphone by the cord as if he’s testing it out for United Labratories, and Townshend’s famous jacknife leaps and arm windmills still torture the strings of several guitars.

Members of The Who don’t destroy their instruments at the end of the show anymore, but as last night’s performance concluded Daltry threw his mike onto the stage, jumped high in the air and stomped on it several times.

It ended up smashed, just like the bad memories of a tragedy a great rock band didn’t deserve.

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