It’s been twenty-three years since we lost John Entwistle, the legendary bassist and founding member of The Who. It’s been nearly a half-century – forty-eight years – since the untimely passing of The Who’s founding drummer, Keith Moon, who died at the age of thirty-two at the peak of his percussive powers.
That The Who of today might not be the Who of yesterday – the band that recorded hits like “My Generation”, “I Can See for Miles”, “Pinball Wizard” – is no knock against what Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have made of this rock act, for which the overused word “legendary” is probably an understatement. Following Moon’s passing in 1978, The Who would go on to release four more studio albums, including the superlative It’s Hard (1982), featuring “Eminence Front”, and, most recently, 2019’s Who, likely to be the band’s final studio album.
The announcement earlier this year of a farewell tour, titled The Song is Over – a reference to the track of the same name on Who’s Next (1971) – cemented what many fans have long feared: the twilight hours have finally arrived for this, greatest, of all rock acts.
The Who’s two concerts this week in Toronto mark the halfway point of a North American tour which began in early August in Florida. While the band, still fronted by the combo of lead singer Daltrey / lead guitarist Townshend, may no longer be the guitar-smashing, hotel-trashing rebels they once were – or even the band of a month ago, given the recent high-profile firing of long-time drummer Zak Starkey – they still know how to really put on a show.
Like, really.
Daltrey, 81 years old, and Townshend, 80, have aged impeccably. Daltrey still has his voice, only dropping into a lower register for some particularly high falsetto leaps which he, understandably, can no longer make. Not to say he can’t scream, though: Daltrey blew minds, and earned rapturous applause, on at least two different occasions when he deployed the fabled Daltrey scream, as in “Love Reign O’er Me”.
Highlights of Tuesday’s concert included the singalong-friendly “Who Are You”, the youth anthem “My Generation” (introduced by a deadpanning Townshend, who explained they’d aged out of it about a half-century ago), the electrifying “Eminence Front”, which contains arguably the best opening in rock ‘n roll history, and a rip-roaring rendition of “Baba O’Riley (Teenage Wasteland)”, with guest fiddler Katie Jacoby in a surprise cameo on the song’s famous Irish jig outro, earning ecstatic applause.
The Who’s extensive discography sadly meant some songs inevitably must go missing from this ostensibly final tour. For the Toronto show, that meant no “Bargain”, “Squeeze Box”, “I Can See For Miles” (incidentally, The Who’s only #1 hit in the U.S.), or “Magic Bus”. On a personal note, we were most disappointed by the omission of “The Kids Are Alright”, a perennial favourite and strong contender for the title of “Who anthem”.
On a personal note, I was overly thrilled at the inclusion of my all-time favourite “Pinball Wizard”, which melded seamlessly into “See Me, Feel Me” for a joint showcase for rock opera Tommy, still the greatest rock opera, and the one The Who album I most listened to growing up, borrowing my older brother’s cassettes. It was, like much of the concert, an unforgettable trip down memory lane – some audience members possessing longer memories than others of course.
On that note, one way you for sure can tell things have changed since The Who’s heyday? Venue security admonishing a nearby audience member to extinguish their joint, strictly enforcing a “no smoking” policy. Another sign things have changed? This anti-establishment band, rebels of the 60s, relying on AI-generated imagery in their backdrop projections and at least some merchandise. That’s right, this is now the second time this summer a rock act has been caught relying on cheap generative AI in lieu of hiring human artists. At least in The Who’s case, we can cut them some slack on the (safe) assumption they didn’t oversee the visual production aspects of the tour.
AI qualms aside, the performance was a beautiful, invigorating, if ultimately wistful evening of music-making. Daltrey and Townshend have made no bones about the fact this really is their final tour (not explicitly ruling out one-off shows, mind you), ending the evening not with “The Song is Over” as you might expect, but with the more thoughtful “Tea and Theatre”, off 2006’s Endless Wire album.
With the backing band cleared from the stage, it was just as it should be: Daltrey and Townshend alone on stage, fully acoustic, taking us on one last trip down memory lane:
One of us – gone
One of us – mad
One of us – me
All of us sad
All of us sad
Lean on my shoulder now
This story is done
It’s getting colder now
A thousand songs
Still smoulder now
We play them as one
We’re older now
All of us sad
All of us free
Before we walk from this stage
Two of us
***
The Who’s The Song is Over tour continues later this week in Chicago.
