The Who Still a Great Band

…It seems the more passionate they get, the more they damage themselves…

•• While Roger Daltrey, above, is the group’s motivator, Pete Townshend, bandaged hand and all, is the key to their power and conviction.

Staff photos by Marianne Hamilton

By Tom Harrison

Rock Critic

Despite concerns for Pete Townshend’s injured right hand, The Who Big Band primed and pumped its way through a friendly and occasionally defiant three-hour concert Friday at B.C. Place.

Playing with his swollen hand in a bandage as a result of impaling it on the whammy bar of his guitar a few nights before in Tacoma, Townshend seemed in good spirits and more interested in reaching the audience than he was when I saw The Who perform in Toronto six weeks ago.

“I know you’re worried,” he assured the 47,000 who filled the stadium Friday, first night of the group’s two performances here. “Don’t worry about my hand.”

It’s one of the great Who paradoxes that the more passionate the group gets about its music and performance, the more damage it does to itself, either physically or in the psychological tension which always has been part of the group’s volatile chemistry.

Self-preservation is one of the reasons the group had to stop in 1982. The prospect of witnessing a prudent or polite reconstituted Who was one of the reasons that some fans (me, for instance) were apprehensive about The Kids Are Alright reunion tour.

Nobody who really cares about the band wants to see a charade of The Who or wishes to put Townshend, John Entwistle or Roger Daltrey through this rock and roll violence all over again.

Yet Friday’s concert put those concerns to rest. It was a tighter show than the Toronto date, with the Tommy section cut back from 45 to 30 minutes and less of the two sets given to the members’ solo efforts.

The result focused more tightly on the band’s career — on its milestones (and a couple of millstones) and the songs which have become “rock anthems.”

The most exciting aspects of the concert were the numbers in which the 13 musicians who fill out the Who Review were integrated into arrangements of My Generation, Amazing Journey, 5:15, and Face The Face.

On another level, the moments where The Who really became The Who weren’t the obvious. In versions of I’m A Man and Hey Joe, Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle provided the thrill of discovery — of watching a band going back to garage-rock standards and ineffably building them through their own individualistic style into a singular statement that said more about the band than another round of My Generation.

While Daltrey is the motivator in these, Townshend is the key to their power and conviction. For both, Townshend put down his acoustic guitar and put on the electric and played more physically and with greater abandon than at any other time in the concert.

Perhaps, for the man who wrote My Generation, Baba O’Reilly, Won’t Get Fooled Again and Who Are You, there is a wariness about getting too close to his past — perhaps a weariness as well.

Hey Joe and I’m A Man require no more commitment to the Who’s legacy than to pick up that guitar and play, just like yesterday, and not get hurt again.

In that, Townshend is compulsive. Compulsion also is what makes The Who a great rock and roll band, yesterday, today and always.

REVIEW