The Who with Orchestra: Roger Daltrey couldn’t even read the setlist – but with music this magnificent, who cares?
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“I didn’t know we were going to be playing Tommy, it wasn’t on the list,” griped Pete Townshend, after a sustained 40-minute highlights rendition of his hugely ambitious and complex rock opera, which the 78-year-old guitarist had apparently negotiated with sheer muscle memory and virtuosity.
“I’ve got a list here,” shot back 80-year-old frontman Roger Daltrey, squinting through thick glasses. “But it means f--- all, cos I can’t read it.”
In the most venerable venue in London, two old men squabbled amiably onstage, joked about their fading hearing, eyesight and memories, and played the hits of their youth for charity. “I’m trying to remember when I wrote all this s---,” pondered Townshend, making the band wait while he ran through a chord sequence. “It’s gotta be 50 years ago.”
“They’re old ’uns, but good ’uns,” chuckled Daltrey.
Who are The Who? They were once the fiercest, wildest live band of their generation, who sang “I hope I die before I get old” and played like they might not even make it to the end of a concert alive, delivering their genius guitarist’s expansive songs with fast and furious flair, pulling material to bits and reassembling it by the seat of their pants, then ending in a blaze of autodestruction.
Utterly thrilling as that was, perhaps it really wasn’t a sustainable model for rock performance. Two members did indeed die before they got old, and the surviving twosome have matured into something else entirely, veteran road warriors, backed by a five-piece band capable of exactly replicating their most ambitious recordings, and here augmented by a full orchestra adding brass, string and timpani force to Townshend’s distorted guitar power chords amid a miasmic web of synthesizers, nimble bass and tom-tom-heavy drums from Zak Starkey (son of Ringo, taught to play by The Who’s late, great Keith Moon).
It was utterly magnificent. The sound was fantastic, filling the Royal Albert Hall with a glorious richness, doubling up the punchy drive of The Who’s earth-shaking rock with cinematic lushness. The songs were as bold, strange and potent as ever, from the searing blaze of Who Are You and Won’t Get Fooled Again to the skyscraping emotion of Love Reign O’er Me. Townshend’s apparently under-rehearsed playing was gutsy, crunchy and exciting. I think he is always at his most interesting when he is forced to engage intensely with his instrument. And what can we say about Daltrey, an octogenarian who still sings at the top of his range with lung-busting power as if he wants to punch his way out of the song and woe betide anyone who gets in front of him.
I have to say that sweat poured out of him all night, and when he briefly attempted his trademark microphone lasso swing he looked like he might do himself an injury. The Who have been doing farewell tours for over a decade now, but I have heard mutterings that this really might be at least the beginning of the end. Daltrey has not ceded to retirement but, after 24 years, he is stepping down from his role curating the Teenage Cancer Trust concerts that have raised more than £32 million. But on this evidence, there is not just life in the old dogs yet, there is energy, purpose, soul and vision. Like the man said, they’re old ’uns, but they’re good ’uns.
The Who return to the Royal Albert Hall tomorrow (Wednesday 20). Noel Gallagher, Young Fathers and The Chemical Brothers also play this week and Roger Daltrey headlines a special final show on Sunday March 24; teenagercancertrust.org
