[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Cincinnati



Laura Plummer writes:

>  I first got into the who back home in Cincinnati, OH. I had heard their
> stuff before the concert and liked it, but it wasn't until after the
> concert and all that happened that I became a major who fan. That probably
> sounds sick, but you really had to be there to understand. I went to the
> concert. No one knew what had happened (including the Who) until
> afterwards. The concert was amazing ( I've since found a bootleg of it).

I too was at that concert.  I took my girlfriend (now my wife) who was not
really a Who fan.  After we settled down following the traumatic entry into
the concert, she really enjoyed it.  But finding out later what had happened
soured her memory of the event, and she hasn't cared for The Who since.

We didn't know any of what happened until the next day.  It was awful
getting in, but I had been to festival seating concerts before and it was
not that unusual.  It was just as bad at other concerts, so I was pretty
shocked that this event was so tragic. 

> The Who got a lot of bad
> rap from that concert (though none from the parents of the kids who were
> killed).

Not at first.  The band wrote to the families, and all sides seem to mourn
together without finger pointing or lawsuits.  But Townshend had an
interview a year or two later, where he talked about how the band convinced
themselves to go on by telling themselves how important they were, and that
11 lives shouldn't matter to them (obvious vague paraphrase).  As I recall,
that infuriated the parents, and they did eventually sue everyone in sight
(including The Who).  I never heard how it came out.

> It had nothing to do with them. It had to do with the lousy way
> Cinti handles concerts.

No doubt.  The Coliseum management totally botched the whole thing, and they
were the ones who killed the kids.  I remember the press characterizing the
crowd as "drug crazed", but that was hardly the truth.  They were hyped and
anxious, but who isn't when anticipating a big event like The Who?  The
bottom line was that the crowd was not at all managed by any security forces.

I have to admit that I cannot look back on the Cincinnati concert and
conjure up any good memories.  I saw the band in 76 with Moon at the Miami
Baseball Stadium, and that show is still etched in my memory.  Mud
everywhere, a seemingly angry Townshend not speaking to the crowd at all but
putting all of himself into his playing, and an energy level I have not seen
in any other show before or since.  That's how I'll remember The Who live.


Dave Elliott