Original Bad Boys of Rock Top Month’s Concert Fare

By THOMAS K. ARNOLD

More than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, The Who are both fondly remembered and still revered by even the hippest new wave rock audience.

They were the original bad boys of rock, the progenitors of the middle 1970s punk movement with such timeless teen anthems as “My Generation” and “The Kids Are Alright.”

The Who has been on top of the music scene since their early Mod days in the middle 1960s. They were neither angelic nor nasty, just rebellious, questioning and very trendy.

Their bellbottoms and love beads were the height of rock ’n’ roll fashion, and their music captured the teen passions of the day with urgency and sincerity rather than melodrama and pretentiousness. And their music continues to influence such top new wave acts as the Clash and the Jam.

They’ve managed to simultaneously set and follow trends and then transcend them, becoming not just one of the most commercially successful, but also one of the most important, rock bands ever.

The Who will be at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium on Oct. 27 for a concert in what the group is calling its farewell tour. The concert also features Foreigner soundalike Loverboy and topical singer/songwriter John Cougar, who is high on the charts with the hits “Hurts So Good” and “Jack and Diane.”

Other major concerts scheduled for San Diego during October are George Thorogood and the Destroyers Saturday at Golden Hall and Olivia Newton-John Oct. 16 at the Sports Arena.

Detroit born-and-bred rocker Thorogood should serve up his usual hybrid dose of hard-edged rockabilly and rhythm-and-blues, but the Newton-John concert is a lot more unpredictable.

The sweet-voiced Newton-John, originally from Australia, first gained fame on the American music scene as a wholesome little girl-type who rarely sang above a whisper—a style ideally suited to her light, inoffensive material like “I Honestly Love You,” “If Not for You,” “Have You Never Been Mellow?”

But last year, she surprised everyone by making an abrupt about-face with the release of the blatantly salacious (“Let’s Get) Physical” and an album that saw her clad not in the safe, flowery dresses of her earlier album covers, but in a wet, flowing, clinging gown.

And the change has worked. Her career had been on the wane for several years, but the new look/new sound transformation has made her a bigger star.

Concerts, however, rarely focus only on the new, so which Olivia Newton-John will be appearing at the Sports Arena—the prim and proper sunshine girl, the newly crowned sex queen or a combination of both—remains to be seen.

With the start of a new semester, San Diego State University’s Backdoor is continuing its aggressive booking policy that last year brought lots of new wave and progressive rock acts into the 400-seat campus club.

Top Los Angeles new wave band the Plimsouls, who recently played to turnaway crowds at the Whisky-A-Go-Go’s closing night in Hollywood, will play there Friday, along with local rockabilly revivalists the Paladins.

Hard-core punkers the Gun Club will follow Oct. 15, and a week later, two instrumental surf-music revival bands—Jon and the Nightriders from Los Angeles and the local Evasions—will bring back memories of early 1960s wave action.

The nearby—and considerably larger—Montezuma Hall will host Billy Cobham and David Sanclouis, both veterans of Jack Bruce’s latest band, on Oct. 12.

On the lawn at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island, what started out as a jazz series has expanded to encompass anything from new wave to country-rock. Former Jackson Browne guitarist David Lindley will play there Thursday, and jazz group Spyro Gyra on Saturday.

Local soul singer Sheree Brown will appear at Humphrey’s on Oct. 15, as will rocker Warren Zevon, Oct. 26, and pop vocalist Michael Franks (“Popsicle Toes”), on an as-yet undetermined date in October.

National acts scheduled to play the Spirit in Bay Park are German new wave queen Nina Hagen, Thursday, and San Francisco’s Romeo Void, Saturday.

At the Bacchanal, legendary 1960s hard rockers Steppenwolf, featuring founder John Kay, will play Thursday.

They’ll be followed at the Clairemont nightspot by Nick Lowe, who at one time produced virtually every new wave artist coming out of England and had a moderately successful solo career on the side (his biggest hit was “Cruel To Be Kind” a few years back), on Oct. 14.

In North County, the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach will host rhythm-and-blues group Room Full of Blues on Thursday.

And among the more prominent folk acts slated for the Old Time Cafe in Leucadia this month are the Battlefield Band from Scotland, Oct. 14; and country-folk singers Mary McCaslin and Jim Ringer, Oct. 30.

The Who Won’t Get Same Stadium Break as the Stones

By TED VOLLMER,

Times Staff Writer

The Who will not get the same break as the Rolling Stones and the why of Monday’s San Diego City Council decision came down to money.

What?

It seems when the Rolling Stones wanted to have its concert at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium last year, the group balked at the stadium rental fee for musical events—$10,000 a day or 10% of the gross ticket sales, whichever was greater.

When it came time to either change the rules or say so long to the Stones, the council decided it was not worth it to dicker and placed an $85,000 cap on the amount of ticket sales income collected by the city.

The Stones played before 68,000 at the stadium, the city got its $85,000 plus more than $100,000 from parking and concession sales and, some officials felt, a precedent had been set.

The San Diego Stadium Authority Board voted unanimously Sept. 2 to recommend that the council not only grant The Who the same terms as the Stones, but also suggested that the council set an $85,000 cap for concerts as a matter of policy. The proposed cap only would apply if the base ticket price did not exceed $15.

Sales Are Brisk

The City Council, however, heard a report that tickets already are selling rapidly for the Oct. 27 concert, that the promoters had never received any assurances that an $85,000 ceiling would be granted and that The Who is expected to draw a packed house of about 65,000.

City Councilman Ed Struiksma, who voiced several concerns about the noise, police protection and how seating would be arranged, at first reluctantly agreed to the $85,000 ceiling but then backed off when some of his colleagues, particularly Dick Murphy, said they saw no reason to perpetuate the ticket income ceiling.

So, The Who will have to pay the standard 10% of the gate going to the city.

Revenue to the city, if projections from the promoters prove accurate, could exceed $200,000. Just under half of that would come from the ticket sales percentage and the rest from a percentage of parking and concession sales.