No. 244 – Overture / 1921

Performer: The Who

Songwriter: Pete Townshend

Original Release: Tommy

Year: 1969

Definitive Version: Live at Woodstock, 1969. The thing I love about this version is it just starts up in the middle before the It’s a Boy segment. I suspect that the tape of the first five minutes either failed or got lost, but it sounds as though The Who just launched right into their performance of Tommy without any fanfare, when in reality, they ALWAYS began Tommy with as much fanfare as possible.

I like thinking this was the way they did it at Woodstock, because it sort of tells the audience: You’re about to hear something you never heard before. As I mentioned, The Who’s performance at Woodstock is in my estimable opinion the greatest performance by any rock and roll band ever. I certainly have heard nothing like it, and I suspect that anyone who was there never has either.

Given that, as you can imagine, I was beyond excited to finally see The Who 20 years later in 1989. I thought I’d missed my one opportunity in 1982 when fear of crossing the actives at Phi Gamma Delta at Wabash prevented me from attending the “farewell” tour. Luckily, seven years later, Pete changed his mind and decided to tour again with The Who after all.

I was at the Daily Herald, and I drove home to Columbus, so Jin, Scott and I could drive to Cleveland together. The concert was set for Municipal Stadium, and it was my first time not only there but in the city itself. It was a misty night, and we arrived a bit late, not long before the show was scheduled to begin.

Well, it didn’t take long to see how Muni Stadium earned the sobriquet The Mistake By The Lake. It might have been designed to seat 80,000 people, but it seemed like it wasn’t designed to hold 8,000 people, let alone 80,000.

I grew up around Ohio Stadium, which held 90,000 back then, and it was easy to get where you needed to inside the stadium with few exceptions. There’s plenty of walking space. At Muni Stadium, there was no room to go anywhere after you were inside the gates. It was a huge cattle call that barely moved, or mooved.

Time was tight, and I had to go to the bathroom, so Jin, Scott and I separated in the crowd. I was funneled to the men’s room, and it was full of drunk d bags who couldn’t bother with waiting their turn, so they went in the sink and the trash can. Dude, remind me to go in your wastebasket next time I’m at your trailer.

After waiting my turn, I was back in the catacombs, slowly making my way to the nearest tunnel that led to the inside of the stadium—roughly in the area of where our seats were—when the first chord that begins the Overture sounded. Suddenly a huge surge rushed from behind me with nowhere to go.

Bodies were crushed together as people in the back pushed frantically to get inside as the music began. If you went down, you might not get up. In an instant, I saw how Cincinnati happened.

I made the turn to go up the steps and noted an overhead pipe where, if I started to slip, I could myself up. It was more than a little unnerving.

All of a sudden, I was up the steps, through the tunnel and outside—and free. I had no idea where my seats or where Jin and Scott were. There were so many people, I quickly took a step to the right to get out of the aisle. On stage, the Overture segued into 1921.

I hadn’t been sure what to expect. Aside from reading that Pete played only acoustic guitar because of his bad hearing, I had no idea whether it even really would be The Who or what the energy would be like.

I decided I didn’t care. It was Pete, Roger and John playing Who songs. It wouldn’t be Woodstock, sure, but, really, how bad could it be?

The crush below a memory, I sang along, thrilled to be hearing any part of Tommy live. As 1921 wound down with the solemn inquiry, “What about the boy?,” I spotted Jin in the section across the aisle, who in turn spotted me. She was trembling, and a single tear ran down her cheek. It was the only possible reaction she could have after all these years of finally seeing The Who.

I moved over to where she and Scott stood, and we didn’t move again, even though we weren’t close to our assigned seats. We made it—we were seeing The Who—and that was all that mattered.