2023-06-15 00:47:33
They have taken it easy The Who, just hurry, before deciding to debut in Barcelona. Yes, debut. It is said soon. Sixty years of his career, ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘My Generation’ burned from twisting them so much live and not even a miserable concert in the city. In 2006 they premiered in Madrid and Zaragoza and ten years later, in 2016, they returned to Spain to lead Mad Cool and Azkena Rock, but the Catalan capital was still a pending issue. Curse? Something like that. There was a feint, a first attempt, seventeen years ago, but in the end it could not be: only 3,000 tickets were sold for a venue with 18,000 seats, so the British aborted the event. Goodbye very good and keep waiting.
Nor is it that yesterday Palau Sant Jordi It looked great (chairs on the track, a lot of baldness in the stands and social distance like a postcovid concert; about 7,000 people in total), but a second sit-in would have been ugly. Especially since last night was also the first concert of a new European tour with which Londoners, fiery exmods, electrifying and amphetamine rhythm’n’blues cavers and intrepid makers of ambitious conceptual monuments, they return to the road to serve up some of their greatest hits backed by a symphony orchestra.
Pompa y rock and roll to reread themselves in a majestic key and run over nostalgia with tons of instrumental epic. As an example, the huge ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’, a major detonation of ‘Tommy’ and a more or less exact moment in which orchestra and band merged in full and volcanic harmony. The Who, masters and gentlemen of rock opera, expounding where they are most comfortable.
In the background of the stage, the musicians of the Valles Symphony Orchestra narrowed spaces, stretched crescendos and brightened the rough and rugged sound of ‘Amazing Journey’. While, in the front line, Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey, 78 and 79 years old, respectively, commanded the expedition and lashed out without hesitation against the master pillars of ‘Tommy’, ‘Quadrophenia’ and ‘Who’s Next’, the most visited albums on the evening. Chance? Not at all.
third parties in discord
Daltrey, by the way, still has a disheveled voice (also the occasional out of tune that ‘feia patir’, as in the start of ‘Behind Blue Eyes’) and he even allows himself to play with the microphone and make it fly through the air as in his years waiters. Townsend, the procession goes inside, gave away the odd grinder, attacked ‘Eminence Front’ with rage and squeezed the electricity out of ‘Pinball Wizard’ y ‘The Seeker’, historical hymns from a band that, like The Kinks, in their day settled many discussions about whether the Beatles this or the Stones that.
So after all, ‘The Kids Are Alright’? They could be better, yes, but they are not bad. It is true that the dwindling public cooled things down a bit, but they more than made up for it by pulling tables, pop stripes and seismic shocks like ‘I Can See For Miles’ y ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ , both served together with ‘Substitute’ and ‘You Better You Bet’ in that central stretch where they let the orchestra rest.
Before that, the symphonic arreones of ‘Overture’ y ‘1921’ they had uncorked a concert in which the British voluntarily dodge their early youth, that which was all cheekiness, insolent freshness and dazzling bangs, to focus on their golden age of the seventies and early eighties. Yes, it would be weird, to say the least, to see them play ‘My Generation’ or ‘It’s Not True’ at this point.
Instead, Daltrey and Townsend settled into the stinging disappointment of ‘Quadrophenia’ to, again with the orchestra, chain the electric lashes of ‘The Real Me’, ‘I’m One’, ‘5:15’ and ‘The Rock’. Next stop, Brighton Beach. The mods, the ‘scooters’ and Jimmy’s battered roof. Winds, strings and Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr, shaking the drums beautifully. Half a century later, it still sounds relentless and overwhelming. Suffocating intensity and a wall of ‘Wagnerian’ sound to leave Sant Jordi well ironed while Daltrey howled ‘Love Reign O’Er Me’ from on high.
Adult rock? Perhaps, but there will be few quasi-octogenarians who can defend themselves with such forcefulness. On the screens, memories of Keith Moon and John Entwistle, both killed in action, and flashes of all the imaginable disasters of recent years. The Who, indeed, have never been too comfortable with the world around them. In the end, the electricity coven of ‘Father O’Riley’ He put the finishing touch on a night of settled debts, symphonic earthquakes and legends that seem to age at a different speed than the rest of mortals.
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