About: Join Together
When you talk about the 1989 Who tour to fans, you
get mixed reactions...
Everything to "The Who on Ice" to "Wow!"
I will go with the "Wow!"...
I saw The Who for the very first time in
November, 1982.
Shortly thereafter, they broke up! Aside from a few solo John Entwistle
shows, Roger's mini tour in NJ and NY and Pete "on TV" (Deep
End Live 1986) - what did we get
live performances> from "The Who" other than a
technical meltdown during their broadcast at
Live Aid?
I for one was *extremely* happy to "get a wrist band", wait on line and
get tickets to 4 sold out shows at
Giants Stadium as
well as be fortunate enough to get 4 tix to see
Tommy
at the
Radio City Music Hall
(which my ex-boss paid for, thank you very much!)
Did I care that they had a few "extra" musicians on stage or that Pete
Townshend was "the man in the glass booth"?
No, I could care less. I was extremely happy to have the opportunity to
see The Who and if that's what Pete needed to help protect his hearing -
I think that's a fair tradeoff. (You know the scene in
My Cousin Vinny
where he weighs the choices between collecting the $200 or getting his
"ass kicked"? It's like... Pete on electric or Pete *not* going deaf...
- I will chose the latter each time. It's a CONCERT folks.)
The
Radio City Show was
fantastic. Who would have dreamed (back then), that The Who would play
Tommy ?
The
Giants Stadium
shows were also unbelievable. These shows ran about 4 hours or so. They
began with a medley from
Tommy
and went on to play Who songs, cover songs (i.e. "I'm A Man", "Hey Joe",
"Love Hurts", "Bare Footin' ", etc..) and Who solo songs (i.e. "Too Late
The Hero", "Face The Face", "A Little Is Enough", "A Friend Is A
Friend", etc.). The set lists varied somewhat each night - it was really
great!
When it came time to plan "the album of the tour", the record company
wanted to release a
Tommy with a "best
of" LP/CD set and was vacillating between "Radio
City" and the LA
Universal Amphitheatre
shows.
Radio City was easy
as The Who played
Tommy straight
through, but in LA, they had all the "guest artists" and it wasn't their
intention to release a "guest artist" CD, but rather a Who CD. The other
issue was that the
Radio City show was
broadcast live on FM radio and the LA show was broadcast on TV via
Pay-Per-View. So no matter what they did,
fans already had some type of copy of both shows.
Ultimately, they chose the LA show and used the
Radio City parts
where the guest artists sang in LA. At the time, I thought it was a
pretty good idea, but in retrospect, the
Radio City show was
stronger (The Who played
Tommy
right through) while the flow in LA was somewhat interrupted by the
guest artists coming on and off stage... (Radio
City also featured The Who singing,
"It's A Boy", while in LA and used on "Join Together" was
Chyna
singing "It A Boy"! - no typo!)
One of the problems for the record company was picking what tracks to
use. There were many and they were quite diverse. Unfortunately, the
record companies always seem to have a "best of" mentality as if only
"hit songs" sell records/CDs. What exactly was the "hit" song on
Live At Leeds when it came out in
1970??? The album *created* hit songs. Then of course there's always the
royalty issues - If you use a song like "Hey Joe" - you may need to pay
royalties to whomever owns the copyright. Here's where the fans don't
really "have a chance".
The non-Tommy
track listing is:
Eminence Front, Face the Face, Dig, I Can See For Miles, A Little Is
Enough, 5:15, Love Reign O'er Me, Trick of the Light, Rough Boys, Join
Together, You Better You Bet, Behind Blue Eyes, Won't Get Fooled Again
As you can see, a bit heavy with the Pete solo stuff and not really
representative of the large/diverse set lists that they played on this
tour.
The album sounds good, but could sound so much *better*. Essentially,
the composition of the band is more or less Pete's
Deep
End band, plus or minus a few players
swapped in for Roger and John. However, if you listen to the
Deep
End (from one of its original sources -
the abbreviated CD or the Japanese laser disc with digital sound, etc.)
it's actually mixed and mastered better. When they mastered this, they
used too much compression, which robs the individual instruments of
their definition and unique sound attributes and kind of "blurs" things
together. Again, it sounds "decent", but it isn't representative of what
the band sounded like on stage (other than on "Trick of the Light" for
the non-Tommy
tracks, you can't hear John "picking" at his bass - it just kinda blurs
together like
Paul McCartney bass
- and that's not what John sounded like.)
The
Westwood 1 "Tommy" Radio Show
(sent to radio stations for rebroadcast in both LP and CD format)
actually sound better than this
Tommy,
except the mix gets funky on "Cousin Kevin" when
Billy
Nicholls' backing vocals drown out John
at one point.
It's kind of doubtful that they will ever revisit this CD, which is kind
of a shame because the tour featured so much great stuff, it would be
nice to have a package featuring
Radio City (Tommy)
and all/most of the different songs they played on tour. It was one of
the best set lists the band ever played, but yet not represented in
their concert releases...
Maybe someday...
|