The emotional show Pete Townshend never connected with: “Didn’t really hit me”
It’s hard to separate fact from fiction when examining the hedonistic destruction meted out in many a hotel room during classic rock’s 1970s heyday.
The fabled launching of television sets out of windows shrouds the legacies of Keth Richards, Ozzy Osbourne and Joe Walsh, but it’s The Who‘s manic drummer Keith Moon that’s credibly known to have actually lived out the slice of rock mythos, allegedly committing such an act of vandalism after a hotel employee had asked Moon and his rowdy entourage to turn the volume down.
Rather than paragons of disruptive rock bluster and sticking it to ‘The Man’, band carnage would often be triggered by a lack of respect or courtesy in the business, be it the journalists or promoters divorced from the realities of recording woes and touring pressures. “The world is more amenable to treating rock stars like human beings these days,” guitarist and principal songwriter Pete Townshend mused to Local Spins in 2006. “Some of our bad behaviour as young men was a response to the way we were treated, not the challenge to authority and order it was seen to be by the press”.
It’s hard to see how Moon’s TV catapult was the result of others’ bad manners, but in a different world, when artists were at times treated like cash-cow chattel to be milked dry and herded from junket to gig without a break, nerves can understandably snap. In the modern music world, The Who has grown older, wiser, and less prone to nailing furniture to the ceilings as Moon was reported to have keenly indulged in.
Rock excesses can often be tempered depending on the show. Whatever his age, it’s unlikely Townshend would have smashed his guitar to pieces during their set at 2001’s The Concert for New York City’s benefit gig for the Fire and Police Departments in the aftermath of America’s biggest terrorist attack.
“An example might be our performance at the New York 9/11 concert,” Townshend furthered. “The excitement didn’t really hit me until the show was over, and I reminded myself that most of the crowd had been in uniform of some kind and that many of them had wept during our show. It wasn’t something to jump up and down about, but it was deeply moving and fulfilling”.
Organised by Paul McCartney at Madison Square Garden, a star-studded bill was presented before the city’s wounded service people and their families, from David Bowie, Bon Jovi, Destiny’s Child and Backstreet Boys.
The main feature was The Who, however, rolling through a crowd-pleasing set including ‘Who Are You’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ against a side-by-side backdrop of The Stars and Stripes and Union Jack. Their set went down a storm, frontman Roger Daltrey’s statement “We could never follow what you did” chiming well with the patriotism in the air.
The show was notable as bassist John Entwistle’s last-ever performance in America with The Who, dying eight months later and adding an extra dimension of poignancy to Townshend’s recollections of that strange and unique night.
