212. The Who
The O2 Arena
12 July 2023
There are gigs you attend because you’re excited. There are gigs you attend because you’re curious, and then there are gigs you attend because a fellow prog-adjacent traveller and custodian of long-form rock history, says: “Fancy The Who at the O₂?” So that’s how we found ourselves among 20,000 ageing Mods, Classic Rock dads, and people who get genuinely emotional about Hi-Fi magazines.
Now, let me be clear: I have a complicated relationship with The Who, or more precisely, with the two Who who still Who. On the one hand, their catalogue is undeniable: “My Generation”, “Baba O’Riley,” ”Won’t Get Fooled Again”, songs that shaped entire decades. On the other hand… well.
Pete Townshend has that well-documented legal controversy from 2003, where he claimed he accessed illegal images as part of “research” for exposing child exploitation, was questioned, cautioned, and somehow avoided any kind of prosecution. It’s murky territory and, for me, a permanent stain I simply cannot unsee.
Roger Daltrey, meanwhile, seems to have slid down the same Sussex political hillside into the same vat of Angry Millionaire Conservatism as Eric Clapton. Where these musicians once sang about rebellion, they now complain about “them”, whoever ”they” are, proving the point that rock stars should just shut up about everything unless there is a tune attached.
But here’s the thing: when The Who play, with orchestra, no less, it works in that grand, swaggering, slightly ridiculous way that only bands of their era can pull off. They kicked off with a full symphonic suite from Tommy, all sweeping strings and heroic brass.
Daltrey, voice still surprisingly muscular, threw his mic like a man who has spent six decades daring physics to stop him. Townshend windmilled his arm as though his shoulder joints were held together by spite. For the first sixty minutes, I parked the politics, the history, the discomfort. I just listened. For a while, it was good. Really good.
Then came a moment that kind of ruined it all. The screens went black. An orchestral swell rose and projected on the screens was the fall of the Twin Towers. Set to music. As a dramatic montage.
Here is the part that matters: I was in New York in 2001 and I was not watching it on television. I was there, a few blocks away. I saw the second plane hit. I watched the towers fall. I ran through that ash cloud, I breathed it. I wore it. I still dream about it.
So, when I see some over-the-hill rock aristocrats using that moment as set dressing, as a cinematic flourish to underscore a reheated political message, I do not feel moved. I feel queasy and angry. So, without ceremony, I turned to my friend and said, “I’m done” and left the arena.
There is art and then there is taste, and respect, and the responsibility of memory. The Who, at their best, still crackle with mythic energy. But on this night, they crossed a line.
Fuck them for that.