Re: Woodstock camera-men

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

At 16:38 10/06/96 -0400, you wrote:
>        Has anyone noticed that the camera men were hypnotised by Roger?  It
>really bugs me.  I'm dying to see Pete in the boiler suit and jumping (or
>hitting people on the head) or John doing... well, John stuff, or Keith
>crashing away, and instead all we get is Roger.
>        Now girls, I'm not *really* complaining.  I don't mind watching
>Roger at all, but I wouldn't mind a peek at the other guys ONCE in a while,
>just to see what they're doing.
>
>
>JenniferD
>A Guitar          _________
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>If you take all the Woodstock songs together - See Me, Feel Me, Summertime
Blues, I'm Free, Pinball Wizard, etc., I think the cameras caught a fair
amount of Pete and Keith for the time (when the tendency was to aim the
camera at the singer -  remember, even Hendrix sang lead in his bands). But
doesn't Woodstock open the Who's segment with the famous split-screen shot
of Pete jumping straight up into the air? And those shots of Pete
windmilling furiously and at the limit of his strength, in his gleaming
boilersuit, in See Me, Feel Me (taken from a particularly effective angle)
are probably the best filming ever done of rock's greatest show guitarist. I
would say however that Pete was not filmed effectively on stage when his
career is taken overall. Even Jeff Stein missed all or part of a number of
great Pete great stage moves in  the songs he specially filmed for TKAA
although he caught beautifully the cross-stage (or staged?!) leap in WGFA.
Because Pete put so many aerials into the farewell '82 show, they show up
well in The Who Rocks America (sic) but even then the cameras missed many
great leaps, especially at the end of some songs when the cameras pull back
to the back or very top of the stadium and you just know that Pete is going
nuts on stage but can't see him properly or at all! I put this down to
cameramen and/or editors who simply didn't know the Who's material well
enough to know the key changes in the songs when Pete was likely to do a
high split or other athletic manoeuver. Speaking of which, last night I
caught an exciting live performance of the Stones doing Around and Around
(by Chuck Berry) on one of those rock documentaries that recur endlessly on
Much Music. This was done either in '63 or '64 but certainly no later.
Jagger (an ex-high school gymnast) did a phenomenal, soaring scissor-kicking
leap mid-way through the song that was just stunning. I've never seen him do
the like either live or in any filmed performance subsequently, so it was
probably a one-off, but it got me wondering whether Pete pinched the idea
from Jagger. If so, this would mean he took two key elements of his stage
act from the Stones (the other being the Richards "warm-up" windmill)....Gary M.