THE WHO AT AMSTERDAM, 1969

These are sleeve notes I wrote to accompany a bootleg I gave to a ‘Who’ friend about 20 years ago, Since this was before Live At Leeds was reissued in the mid-nineties as a double CD, including Tommy, the references to it are obviously outdated. The same bootleg is now widely available and well known among fans.

This is a 2-CD copy, probably third generation, of the soundboard tape from The Who’s concert at the Concertgebouw Opera House in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, on Monday September 29, 1969. It was the first of several opera house concerts the group performed that year, and the first ever performance of Tommy for a non-English speaking audience. It was professionally recorded for subsequent radio broadcast on a local station over two nights, September 30 and October 1, but hasn’t been re-mixed into stereo or edited in any way whatsoever. It sounds too good to simply have been taped from the radio. What you hear is exactly what the audience heard that night, and the overall sound obviously benefits from the venue’s state-of-the-art acoustics. The vocals are especially well recorded throughout, as are the guitar and bass, though the drums are on the muddy side and probably suffer through not being miked up sufficiently. There’s a rough-and-ready feel to the music that contrasts sharply with heavily produced ‘live’ albums by other acts; technically it is far from perfect but in an era when bands take several days to record a single drum track, and others painstakingly re-record their ‘live’ albums in the studio, this is its particular charm.

It’s a two-hour show featuring ‘Heaven And Hell’, ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘Fortune Teller’, ‘Tattoo’, ‘Young Man Blues’, ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ (six separate songs), ‘Substitute’, ‘Happy Jack’, ‘I’m A Boy’, a complete Tommy (21 separate songs), ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’ and ‘My Generation’ (which includes reprises of the ‘See Me Feel Me’ climax to ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’, ‘Sparks’ and other themes from Tommy, together with improvisations that in due course would become ‘Naked Eye’ and what Townshend subsequently referred to as ‘The Who Hymn’). [CD1 ends after ‘Fiddle About’ from Tommy; CD2 commences at ‘Tommy Can You Feel Me’.] The songs are punctuated by comments from the band, notably Pete Townshend, and Keith Moon can be heard making typically idiosyncratic remarks from time to time.

This was a very prestigious occasion for The Who, the show fulfilling many of manager Kit Lambert’s ambitions for serious cultural recognition of Tommy, and fittingly the group turned in a truly superb performance. Much of what preceded Tommy was flawless, especially ‘Young Man Blues’ and the medley of ‘Substitute’, ‘Happy Jack’ and ‘I’m A Boy’. When they came to Tommy itself, ‘Overture’ emerged as a fine instrumental and was an appropriate and dramatic prelude to the rock-opera. Pete explained from the stage that The Who had decided to give Tommy its opera house premiere in Amsterdam simply because the band thought it a great city and more representative of a European capital than London. ‘Amazing Journey’ was wonderfully charged and powerful, with Roger especially on fine form. This moved into the instrumental ‘Sparks’ at a furious pace, with John Entwistle playing some manic bass lines. When they reached the end of Tommy – a medley of 21 integrated songs no less, performed virtually back-to-back – it took them just over 20 seconds to catch their breath before launching into a scorching ‘Summertime Blues’. Such energy puts The Who’s dedication to the art of stagecraft into sharp focus.

The audience response, perhaps befitting the venue, consisted of polite applause rather than overt cheers and whistles. “We want to thank you very kindly and we’d like to play for you as our going away present a song from the past that we still really mean,” said Pete, before the final number. ‘My Generation’ was newly conceived as a 15-minute medley offering a short ‘history’ of the band in a seamless flow of music from the 1965 single to the reprised sections from Tommy, followed by several improvised passages, snatches of ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘The Ox’, the latter prompted by a furious drum roll from Keith Moon, climaxing with screeching guitar solos and crashing riffs. Also during this medley, Pete played several beautiful and delicate passages of guitar to link the various sections, although much of the playing was entirely spontaneous and at several points Entwistle and Moon seemed to lose track of where Pete was heading. The riff that was later incorporated into ‘Naked Eye’ was presented very distinctly as ‘So Very Long’ (an assumed title) which Roger sang as a farewell message.

This was the first time The Who performed an extended ‘My Generation’ in this way, some four months before it was performed in a similar, somewhat more fully realised fashion at the February 14, 1970, concert at Leeds University. This concert, of course, was recorded for the Live At Leeds LP, on which the extended ‘My Generation’ was heard on record for the first time. Incidentally, The Who performed and recorded (on 8-track) the whole of Tommy at Leeds that night but have thus far declined to sanction its official release, largely because Townshend feels the energy level is not maintained throughout. This show in Amsterdam differed only slightly from the more celebrated Leeds concert: the running order of the songs was changed somewhat, and at Leeds the band returned to perform ‘Magic Bus’ as a final encore. 

The two–hour show that The Who presented at this time took the band’s performance to new heights of excitement and excellence. They had played so often together by this time – probably more shows than any other rock band of their generation – that they performed with a casual panache that on their best nights could take your breath away. Vocals, guitars and drums meshed into a seamless whole that no other band, ever, has been able to emulate. Yet it wasn’t a show rehearsed to the point of sterility – it sounded raucous and fresh, despite the fact that during this era they were capable of turning in performances this good night after night.                                                         
        The Who performed Tommy in its entirety (or slightly edited) just over 160 times during 1969 and 1970. The last occasion I saw it was at London’s Roundhouse on December 20, 1970, when they dedicated the opera to their support act, an up and coming pianist/songwriter called Elton John. They performed an inferior rendering at the Isle Of Wight Festival in August 1970, a recording of which has appeared under the title The Who Live At Isle Of Wight. By this time they were getting tired of Tommy – and it shows. From 1971 onwards The Who performed occasional Tommy songs, usually ‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘Sparks’ and ‘See Me Feel Me’ in concert. It wasn’t until 1989, when they took the stage with several additional musicians on stage, that they would perform all of Tommy again. It wasn’t the same, of course – nothing like the full wonder of the young Who in Amsterdam in ‘69.