Hearing and the Who

["Gary M. Gillman" <garyg@inforamp.net>]

A number of listers have made good natured jibes about a "Pete's ears
mailing list", etc, etc. The reason I'm interested in this hearing issue
(and I'm surprised more people aren't) is that the Who had a unique, very
loud, exciting sound, which has been termed in effect a fifth member of the
band. The core of that sound was PT's guitar sound, at least for me and many
others. So it is most relevant to discussions of the Who, especially when
they pertain to reunions of one or more members of the band, to understand
exactly what the problems are for PT and possibly Rog and JAE. Surprisingly,
little hard info is available. Can PT not play loud because it hurts his
ears to do so? Because he can't hear well enough to play solos? Because more
volume simply will reduce his hearing further - although by all accounts he
seems to hear people fine in normal conversation? Why can he hear a Bolton
fine on stage, or at least well enough to play and sing in time with him,
but not play as loud himself with a remote kind of set up, eg., with his
Hiwatts on the opposite side of the stage and a monitor right in front of
him to control the volume further? As far as I know, no other major "heavy"
guitarist of the 60's has had to scale back like PT - not Richards, Clapton,
Page, Blackmore, Iommi, Gilmour, Davies, Santana,...one can go on and on,
which makes the puzzle more acute. In effect, I'm suggesting that when
members of the Who are questioned on this, they might be asked more pointed,
detailed queries than has been the case, so that dedicated fans may
understand the full story. Also, I'm interested in listers' theories based
on the info we have; in this regard I found Litgo's comments most
informative. Certainly, I had never heard that a plastic baffle was set up
on the stage for PT in '89, and wonder if this was a feature of all those
shows. What about the '93 PD?....Gary M.