Live And In The Flesh
The Who - November 21, 2012
2012 was turning out to be a pretty good year for me with concerts. I was already lucky enough to check Roger Waters off of my list of must see live acts, and what better way to finish off the year with another big name in classic rock, The Who! They announced a tour run that was making its way through Ottawa and we decided that we couldn't miss it. Who knows how much longer Daltry and Townshend were going to be able to continue rocking on for. This, after all, was the 40th anniversary of their classic Quadrophenia album. They planned on taking this second rock opera of theirs back out on the road once more to celebrate the milestone, and were we ever thankful that they did.
The Who enlisted Vintage Trouble as their opener for the tour. A relatively new band from Hollywood, California, with a classic rhythm and blues sound. Forming in 2010, with just one album under their belts, they seemed eager to win over the Ottawa crowd. We heard quite a bit of material from their debut album, The Bomb Shelter Sessions. They had a bit of a James Brown vibe going on. They had us warmed up and ready for more!
We had some pretty decent seats in the 200 level, just a couple of sections back from the side of the stage. This gave us the perfect viewpoint for the entire rock opera that was about to take the stage. It wasn't long before Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry made their way out to blow us out of our seats with one of the loudest concerts ever. Regardless of how old these guys were, they still knew how to bring the rock! They played their entire Quadrophenia album from front to back, accompanied by some pretty spectacular visuals to help tell the story along the way. They paid tribute to their beloved drummer who had passed away in '78 with archived footage from 1974 of Keith Moon singing Bell Boy. Even including a tip of their hats to their late bassist John Entwistle with some past live footage of his bass solo in 5:15 from 2000. My very first experience with The Who couldn't have been coming along any better. Getting to hear their classic Love, Reign o'er Me off of that album was certainly one of the highlights of the night for me.
Seventeen songs deep into their set and these legends of rock still had an encore left in them after that entire mind-blowing flashback to '73. They came out and treated us to a six song encore that spread throughout a few of their other classic albums, Who's Next, Endless Wire, Tommy and Who Are You's title track which started it all up. The classics Behind Blue Eyes, Pinball Wizard, Baba O'Riley, Won't Get Fooled Again, and Tea & Theatre wrapped up the night out with The Who. It was a perfect ending to a big night out with some of rock 'n' roll's founding fathers. Their twenty-three song set proved to everyone at Scotiabank Place that night that The Who still had it after all of those years. They were naturals, and they weren't going to be losing it anytime soon.