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When Generations Collide: The Who at the Super Bowl
By JOE LAPOINTE
Published: February 4, 2010
Minutes before, the two leaders of the Who held acoustic guitars for an expressive mini-concert that included “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Pinball Wizard” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
“Meet the new boss. ... ” Daltrey sang, ending the final song by purposely leaving off the final line, “same as the old boss.”
Rock music at halftime is a Super Bowl ritual, and it sometimes features founding fathers from the 1960s British Invasion. Daltrey, who at age 65 is old enough to be Brett Favre’s father, smiled when someone reminded him that the Rolling Stones played this gig four years ago.
“I’m glad,” he said. “I just wish they were still out on the road like us.”
The Who will play for 12 minutes. Townshend observed that they will provide more sustained action than the football players.
Daltrey, in an interview with the NFL Network, marveled at how workers will put up and take down a full stage during a 20-minute halftime. “You should have sent your roadies to war,” he said. “The whole mess would be cleared up by now.”
It is curious that the Who would perform for a controlled entity like the N.F.L., which stresses a tightly scripted environment. If rock music had penalty flags, the Who in its earlier years often would have been charged with excessive celebration and dangerous play.
One famous episode came in 1967 (also on CBS in prime time on a Sunday) when a planned explosion on stage was more powerful than expected. A video clip of their appearance on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” is an artifact of an era often remembered for risk and experimentation.
It occurred the same year as the first Super Bowl. The YouTube clip first shows a stilted Tom Smothers awkwardly introducing the members of the band. Before a performance of “My Generation,” Smothers tells viewers “you’re going to be surprised what happens.”
That proved to be an understatement. The performance ends with destruction of their equipment — Townshend smashes his guitar into an amplifier — and several explosions. According to rock legend, the last one accidentally injured the band’s drummer, Keith Moon, and left Townshend with damaged hearing. The video shows Moon lying on stage and Daltrey tending to him.
An apparently befuddled Townshend then takes an acoustic guitar from Smothers and smashes it, too.
Worse than that was the stampede outside Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum on Dec. 3, 1979, when rushing fans tried to push through too few open doors for general admission seating. Eleven people died from suffocation in the crush. Two months ago, survivors and their descendants held a 30th anniversary memorial.
Ellen Dearing Betsch, 47, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that she became claustrophobic from the trauma.
“I just hope, so much, that people don’t forget what happened,” Betsch told The Enquirer, “so that other people won’t lose loved ones like this.”
Neither episode was mentioned during Thursday’s session, although one questioner alluded to past legal accusations against Townshend for viewing child pornography. Townshend said his full explanation could not be contained in a brief answer and that more details could be found on the Internet.
The band is scheduled to perform at the Super Bowl because it has played some of the Woodstock g-g-generation’s most iconic music. Much of the conversation Thursday meandered down memory lane.
Daltrey, asked about the filming of a Rolling Stones concert movie in 1968, recalled the Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones reeling through the final months of his troubled life. Townshend recalled from those film sessions the presence of the young Yoko Ono shortly after she and John Lennon got together.
“I’m one of the select Yoko Ono fans,” Townshend said. “I think she’s amazing.”
Jim Henke, chief curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, said in a telephone interview that the Who will be best remembered for its powerful sound and stage presence. The band was defined, he said, by Townshend’s windmill arm motions while playing his guitar as Daltrey swung the microphone like a lariat.
“They laid the groundwork for heavy metal, punk and power pop,” Henke said.
Moon, Henke added, might have been rock’s best drummer. Henke also mentioned the famous lyric line from “My Generation” in which Daltrey — in the character of a defiant adolescent — sang Townshend’s words “Hope I die before I get old.”
Moon died in 1978, at age 32
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