Re: London Times review of RAH first night

[John Hughes <john@pureneasy.fsnet.co.uk>]

                       First night
                       The Who rediscover their old edgy
                       spirit
                       BY RICHARD MORRISON
BACK for one last hurrah, The Who are the band that simply wont lie
down and die. Naturally it helps to have a good excuse to come out of
retirement  again  and this weeks series of fundraising shows at the
Albert Hall, organised by the singer Roger Daltrey and the promoter
Harvey Goldsmith on behalf of the Teenage Cancer Trust, was better than
most. 

The key to the groups on/off rejuvenation, however, has been a gradual
softening in the attitude of the guitarist Pete Townshend, who has
always been the member of the band with the least enthusiasm for staging
these reunion shows. 

But boy, was Townshend in a strange zone on Thursday night. When not
performing his windmill-action guitar parts with real physical venom
during numbers such as Amazing Journey and Pinball Wizard, he played the
role of the bolshie old rocker to the hilt, cheerfully insulting members
of the audience, and complaining about his flimsy American guitar as he
bashed it sharply against his hip. 

At one point someone yelled a warning to the bass player, Jon Entwistle,
that his amp was on fire (it was that sort of gig). Who gives a f?
Townshend growled acidly. We used to set the things on fire ourselves
once upon a time. The craggy, grey-haired Entwistle, looking more than
ever like a character from Mervyn Peakes Gormenghast, stood by
impassively while the situation was investigated. 

The perennial problem with rock reunion shows, and especially charity
rock reunion shows, is that the original edgy spirit and
adrenaline-fuelled aggression of a band such as The Who tends to get
buried in an all-pervading aura of nice. But that wasnt the case here. 

True, there was a hint of a touchy-feely moment towards the end when
Townshend broke cover and started gabbling on about how truly grateful
he was to be alive at his advanced age, despite all his best efforts in
the past to make sure that he would not be. 

But by then we had already seen Daltrey and Entwistle have a little spat
during an unbelievably ropy version of My Wife and, more to the point,
we had heard the band wallop through a sequence of favourites  I Can't
Explain, Substitute and Anyway Anyhow Anywhere  with such genuinely
pugnacious glee that it was difficult not to believe that this time they
really did mean business. 

It was as if they had finally got past the idea of being embarrassed or
apologetic about playing these anthems of youthful protest now that they
are all  with the exception of the drummer Zak Starkey  in their late
fifties, and have reached a point where they once again feel comfortable
inhabiting them instead. 

And while it was too nostalgic, and occasionally too scrappy, to rank as
a great performance, it was certainly something special. My Generation,
indeed. 

Docked a star, even so, for Entwistles terrible vocals in My Wife, and
for the excruciating bass solo in 5.15.

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