Live At Leeds / Isle of Wight

["Mark R. Leaman" <mleaman@sccoast.net>]

> My feeling is that,
> although I am delighted to have Isle of Wight, it is inferior in almost
> all respects to Leeds. The big difference seems to be Keith: at Leeds he
> was on the top of his game, propelling the music forward, whereas on the
> Isle of Wight recording he is sloppy

Martin:

Keith was definitely more powerful for the Leeds show; however the sound quality of the 
IOW recording is also somewhat to blame for him sounding weak there. Hell, he was always 
sloppy anyway. One of his charms, I'd say. If you watch the video, you can see that Moon 
was pretty damned "on" for that performance. It definitely changed my mind about his 
performance on the CD.

> One of the charms of Isle of Wight is
> that it contains all sorts of botched harmonies and minor guitar
> screw-ups which haven't been edited out.

I would also say that IOW is more Pete and Rog's album. Entwistle is as good as he is on 
LEEDS, and Keith (as you say) isn't quite as good...but Pete is unbelievable and Rog is 
even more powerful than on LAL. Botched and screwed up in places perhaps, it's still one 
of if not THE best performance available by those two. Who wants them to be perfect, 
anyway? They were rarely perfect even on the studio albums.

> Perhaps somebody out there with the bootleg version of the entire Leeds
> show can answer a question for me. "My Generation" on Live at Leeds
> contains chunks of Tommy. If the band played roughly the same set at Isle
> of Wight as Leeds

Actually, even though IOW comes only 4 months after LAL the set had changed quite a bit. 
No more FT/Tattoo, AQOWHA, IAB, HJ...instead we get Naked Eye, IDEKM, and Water (and, 
very significant, the US lyrics popping up in this version of Substitute). Somewhere in 
those four months Pete began making the transition from the TOMMY period set toward the 
upcoming WN set. At Fillmore East in `68 The Who played a set very close to what's on 
LAL, without any T of course and a few SO songs plus ones which were recorded during the 
SO period but never released (like My Way).

> This seems a bit unlikely, so there could be two other
> explanations: either the band didn't do Tommy in its entirety at Leeds,
> or "My Generation" is a composite with portions of Tommy edited in 

I've often wondered this myself, and have only the TOMMY portion of the LAL "import," 
however reports indicate that The Who reprised parts of Sparks in the MG jam. They do 
sound exactly alike to me. Exactly. So what you suggest definitely carries a strong 
possibility of being fact...even if it's on the "unedited" LAL "import," for after all 
the "import" was taken from a tape already mixed etc. Someone had taken the performance 
from raw tape to something ready to be edited. It's quite possible that Sparks had 
already been added to the MG jam (if it was in fact added at all) before the copy was 
made.
Such a composite would be justified in the original LAL release, which contained none of 
the TOMMY set. And in the remix, they may have felt it wrong to tamper with it. Such has 
often Astley's logic for the rereleases.
I CAN tell you that the band did the entire TOMMY (or as much as they ever did; as far 
as I know this is the only `69-70 version with Sally Simpson) at Leeds. And it is 
rumoured to be up for release on the upcoming double-live CD set. We'll see. In any 
case, it's the best live TOMMY I've heard (and I've heard a few).

>  Aug 10         Raleigh, NC  -  Walnut Creek Amphitheater

And I will be there. Anyone who'd like to set up a pre-show gathering, please let me 
know where and when.


               Cheers                      ML