The 1979 tragedy Pete Townshend never fully got over: “It had a massive impact on me”
As a rock band, there are some things you will never forget. The highs can be high, but the lows can dip to such devastating depths that it makes your stomach drop. The Who knows all about that.
In their case, it was the fateful events of the night of December 3rd, 1979, that never left their memories, as 11 innocent fans tragically lost their lives in the crowd crush disaster which took place ahead of the band’s concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was easy to apportion blame for the ultimately avoidable heartache, but Pete Townshend has always carried that heaviness.
Of course, no one is trying to pin the guilt directly on The Who themselves, but it nevertheless remains the case that as the faces of the terrible event, they bore the brunt of the anger and anguish in the aftermath, which has always stayed with Townshend in particular, even after almost half a century since the night has passed.
The sad truth of the matter is that the haunting image of the band playing on inside the Riverfront Coliseum, completely oblivious to the chaos and devastation that was ensuing just outside the doors, is something that has haunted him in everything he has ever done in the time since… In the end, the hurt never leaves.
It was easy to see how this plunged Townshend into a dark depth, coming off the back of the death of Keith Moon in 1978, followed by this, with the band unfathomably having been forced to continue the tour, performing in Buffalo, New York, only the night after it happened. As a result, the guilt ate away at him, and the guitarist found himself retreating from the spotlight for some time afterwards.
“I didn’t want to be seen to be lugging my body ’round the world in the aftermath of the Cincinnati disaster, which I really felt we hadn’t dealt with emotionally,” he later recalled, but then came the searing truth that brought the stark, remaining tragedy of the event straight into the present day.
“I’m not sure that we have to this day, so it had a massive impact on me.”
Pete Townshend
Some people might have seen Townshend’s eschewing of the limelight in the early ‘80s as the manifestation of a rather contrived notion, being attributed to a creative decline or the realisation that he was no longer the storming master of the band that he felt he once was. Yet while this may have been true on the surface, the memories of Cincinnati signalled something a lot more difficult to deal with.
But just as the 11 people who lost their lives have never been forgotten by the loved ones left behind, there is some small comfort in knowing that they have equally never been forgotten by the wider Who community, too. Times may have changed, and certain parts of life have moved on, but that aspect of the band’s legacy will never be allowed to crumble.
Ultimately, there is no shining hero to this story, swooping in to make it all seem better. What happened in Cincinnati in late 1979 was an unspeakable horror that should never be overlooked by anyone, not least those who were at the front and centre of the event on the night. Yet no matter what, people like Townshend will always remember and carry it with them every single day.
