The Who’s Townshend Reveals the Story Behind Big Super Bowl Set

2/10/10, 3:37 pm EST




On Sunday, The Who became the latest in a growing list of classic rockers — along with the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and Prince — to play a Super Bowl halftime. Why did they do it, what was it like being onstage at Sun Life Stadium in Miami, and why a hits medley? For the answers, we went directly to The Who’s Pete Townshend the day after the performance.

What was your first reaction to being invited to play the Super Bowl?
I really wanted to do it. I felt it would be easy to do [chuckles]. I felt that doing this would be a great thing to do at this particular time because it would let people know that we’re alive and kicking and that Roger and I still do stuff together and intend to do whatever we can in the future together. You feel part of something that’s bigger than you and you feel part of a huge team. It’s a monster gig.

How did it feel being onstage, in the midst of that spectacle?
A couple of people said to me they could have done with more Who and less football. But I suppose it’s best if I tell the truth. I felt nothing. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a great big football stadium or a little club somewhere. As soon as I get close to a stage, I feel very at home and very safe and secure. It feels completely normal. When the NFL started to talk to us about this, one of the things they started to talk about was the numbers. I looked at Roger and looked at them and I said, “I’ve done a solo show in front of 80 million people on TV.” The abstract numbers make no difference.

I heard that Roger and Simon Townshend [Pete's brother and guitarist in The Who touring band] came up with the medley, not you.
That’s right. I thought we’d just do the CSI songs ["Won't Get Fooled Again," "Baba O'Riley," "Who Are You"]. My pitch was just to do three regular-length songs. We could fall back on what was very familiar. But Roger felt he needed something that gave him more narrative scope, as he described it. He and Simon and one of the lieutenants in the crew put together a track and surprisingly I thought it worked really well. Roger and I have a great relationship these days; it’s very warm and close. So I trusted him to do that job.

Were you wearing sunglasses up there?
No, I was wearing reading glasses. I like to be able to see the guitar.

What was it like finally experiencing an American football game?
English people still find the rules almost incomprehensible, like Americans finding cricket incomprehensible. It’s very difficult to understand how the game operates. But it’s a real sporting event and very exciting backstage and very dignified and serious. Some of my friends have been quite sniffy and said, “We watched it and it was like fucking Disneyland.” But when you’re on the inside of it, there’s a real sense of it being a job, a passion. I learned a lot about it yesterday, and it was all good.

What was the most surprising thing about it?
Not seeing a single cheerleader. Not anywhere. It was terrible. There are lot of girls who’ve said, “I used to be a cheerleader once.” But as hard as you try to persuade them, they won’t do it again.

rollingstone.com

uncleson wrote on Feb 10^th, 2010 at 4:43pm:



well duh...who doesn't

Joey, cut it out

" The lineup of artists and bands honoring The Who next month just got bigger as Raul Midon and Nicole Atkins join in on the fun.[/i]

The “Tribute To The Music Of The Who” takes place at New York City’s Carnegie Hall March 2.

Previously announced artists and bands appearing at the all-star concert include The Smithereens, Bettye LaVette, Jason Isbell, Bobby McFerrin, Bob Mould, Warren Haynes, Gaslight Anthem, Sondre Lerche, The Postelles, Living Colour, Robyn Hitchcock and Mose Allison.

While it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone but The Who performing the band’s incredible catalog of songs, some details as to who will be playing which tunes has been released. Expect Gaslight Anthem performing “Baba O’Riley,” Hitchcock playing “Substitute,” LaVette singing “Love Reign O’er Me” and McFerrin offering his own unique take on “My Generation.”

The “Tribute To the Music Of The Who” is being staged by Knitting Factory and City Winery founder Michael Dorf, who has organized some of the biggest artist tributes in the music biz, including events honoring Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Elton John and Joni Mitchell.

As always, all profits from the upcoming Who tribute will help provide needed funds for music education charities serving disadvantaged New York City schoolchildren. Tickets range from $45 to $130. For more information, click here for the event’s Web site.


This makes Joey EXCITED !!!!!!

" Two weeks ago, during Super Bowl XLIV’s halftime show, the Who rocked out in front of the largest audience of their 46-year career. With 150 million viewers tuning in to the band’s 12-minute medley, the performance was supposed to springboard Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend into a busy 2010. Instead, The Who’s future is uncertain because of Townshend’s returning tinnitus. As the guitarist tells Rolling Stone in our new issue, “If my hearing is going to be a problem, we’re not delaying shows. We’re finished. I can’t really see any way around the issue.”

The band tells RS a planned spring 2010 tour and appearances at the Coachella and New Orleans Jazz Festivals were ditched when Townshend’s tinnitus returned while he was working on his musical Floss. Neil Young put Townshend in touch with an audiologist who recommended an in-ear monitor that may prevent any further damage. Townshend will give the device a test drive when The Who perform at their only scheduled gig of 2010, a March 30th charity show in London where they’ll play Quadrophenia in its entirety. “It’s a good test of Pete’s hearing,” Daltrey tells Rolling Stone. “We won’t know until we try.”


THIS MAKES JOEY CRY LIKE BABY !!!!!!!!!!!!


WHY ?! .. !!!!! I thought Pete had surgery on his ears in order to correct his tinnitus ?

Heck  .....  ,    Zak , Pino , Rabbit , Simon and  even Rog. all need   ' feeding '  ... ( when Pete does not work THEY do not work )


" Band's Gotta Eat too , Ronnie ! "

WHY ?!

J. Fly !  

Best wishes to Pete....and yeah the backup band is certainly talented enough to find work with others.

" If The Who decide to call it day....

If Pete Townshend's tinnitus forces The Who into retirement, Roger Daltrey would love to record new music with Jimmy Page. The My Generation singer has proposed a blues album with the Led Zeppelin guitarist, saying he'd "love to do something".

If things with Page don't work out, perhaps he could work with Liam Gallagher. Daltrey revealed that he approached the former Oasis frontman to see if he would perform at the forthcoming Teenage Cancer Trust gig, which is The Who's last scheduled concert.  "


This makes young Joey very sad.

Daltrey with Page ......I'd rather hear David Coverversion.

Townshend's tinnitus has returned, and he says that The Who are done if it can't be resolved.

The article's a few posts up...

21st February, 2010
A BRIEF DIARY ENTRY... SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON

The Super Bowl show is now history, and next up is our concert version of Quadrophenia at the Royal Albert Hall, for the Teenage Cancer Trust, on March 30th. We start rehearsing ten days before the show. So there is almost a month to do some other stuff.

While Roger does some more solo shows, this time supporting Eric Clapton, I am writing some more songs, testing out some studio and stage in-ear monitor systems, and wearing a Phonak hearing aid almost all the rest of the time. I feel as though I've been reborn in some ways. Not everything I hear is worth hearing, but at least I don't have to turn the TV down in order to tell everyone in the room that what they are watching is rubbish. I don't have to turn it up in the first place. Instead of TV interspersed with conversation, we have TV with conversation that happens at the same time. That kind of family running commentary on what we watch on TV is something I didn't know I missed, but I did miss it. On a higher note, hearing birdsong again is pretty amazing.

I'm also working on Floss. I've gone back to the story and I'm fleshing out the characters, digging into their fictional past to learn more about them. Quite a bit of what I've been doing until now has been creating new studio set ups for the soundscapes that the hero of the story is so distracted by. I need a lot of triggers, buttons and switches, and powerful software playback systems that will allow me to 'perform' each soundscape in a variety of ways, allowing me lots of takes if necessary. I'm mixing dialogue, sound effects, music-concrete and music. So the set up I need is rather like a movie sound-mixing desk, with almost as many elements sometimes.

By a strange coincidence, while searching for music charts of Quadrophenia for our Music Supervisor on the RAH show, I found technical notes and drawings for studio systems I devised while cooking up the four channel version of the 1973 album - the Quad version that got away. Looking at the plans, designs and drawings I have before me today for Floss it's clear that I haven't lost my mojo when it comes to taking myself to the edge of technological nervous breakdown.

Thanks everyone who stood by me during the Super Bowl (especially Roger as always), and to everyone who has emailed to say how much they enjoyed the half-time stint. The hat I wore, that was popular with some-but not all-of our fans, contains some ancient technology that helps me hear myself better on stage. It's called, the BRIM.

thewho.com

" 26th February, 2010
DALTREY OPENS FOR CLAPTON IN PITTSBURGH

Opening the show for Eric Clapton at a sold-out Mellon Arena in pittsburgh, Roger Daltrey noted brightly that this was "one-up from a toilet break at a football match."

"And it was for us, too", writes Scott Mervis of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. "Rumors of Mr. Daltrey's vocal demise, based on the Super Bowl halftime, were greatly exaggerated. On the first night of the new tour with his solo band, The Who singer sounded 20 years younger than he did in Miami."


http://www.thewho.com/index.php?module=news&news_item_id=396


" Clapton plays to sold out crowd "


" His reputation as a guitar god was sealed 40 years ago. He has all the money and respect in the world. He has a full head of rock star hair for his photo op on the cover of Rolling Stone. On top of that, now he even has his own custom Fender T-Mobile cell.

So did he phone it in last night at the sold-out Mellon Arena?

It seemed like it at first when he hit the stage crawling through "Goin' Down Slow," a sluggish opener that offered nothing more exciting than what you'd get at the corner bar. It was followed by one of his most epic blues burners, "Key to the Highway," toned down to more of a flicker, with a brief, disinterested solo.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Set lists
Eric Clapton

Goin' Down Slow

Key to the Highway

Tell the Truth

Old Love

I Shot the Sheriff

Driftin' Blues

Nobody Knows You When You're Down Out

Running on Faith

Badge

Little Queen of Spades

Before You Accuse Me

Wonderful Tonight

Cocaine

Encore: Crossroads

Roger Daltrey

I Can See for Miles

The Real Me

Days of Light

Freedom Ride

Give Me a Stone

Mannish Boy/My Generation/Young Man's Blues

Baba O'Riley

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then came signs of life, with the female backup singers spiking the great melody on "Tell the Truth," the second straight "Layla" song. It wasn't until the grinding "Old Love" that we got the first burst of passion from Mr. Clapton, one of those trademark solos with the long stabbing note and then a fast flurry on the neck.

He carried that into a punched-up "I Shot the Sheriff," with its jarring scrapes and then a long closing jam, done so effortlessly, cleanly and precisely. The tone was gorgeous as usual and the only pedal he seemed to need was a little distortion.

There was no struggle on the vocals, either, as he hasn't exactly worn them out with over-use. They were a bold accompaniment to his acoustic playing on a middle section of "Driftin' Blues," "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Running on Faith."

What Mr. Clapton doesn't do there that some might is sit down and tell a story. He said almost nothing to the fans and projected zero personality. In the trade, I guess that's called "letting the music do the talking."

It talked on "Badge," with that stunning late riff, and on "Little Queen of Spades," a round-robin jam that showed off his keyboard players before coming back around to one of his meaner solos.

"Wonderful Tonight" was what it was -- a slow dance that either bored you or made you sentimental about your wedding. He quickly picked up the pace again with power-chord classic, "Cocaine," and signed off with a "Crossroads" a few shades lighter than Cream.

So while we got the "Assorted Love Songs," what we didn't get, oddly, was "Layla," his most beloved song. It may have added that little "blow-you-away" factor that was missing, may have made this Clapton concert one to phone home about.

Opening the show, Roger Daltrey noted brightly that this was "one-up from a toilet break at a football match."

And it was for us, too.

Rumors of Mr. Daltrey's vocal demise, based on the Super Bowl halftime, were greatly exaggerated. On the first night of the new tour with his solo band, The Who singer sounded 20 years younger than he did in Miami.

He kicked it off with "I Can See for Miles" and "The Real Me," which turned out to be kind of a tease. This wasn't a Who tribute set with Pete Townshend's little brother Simon subbing in.

The meat of his set was drawn from other parts of his career -- with the rough and tumble "Days of Light" and bluesy "Freedom Ride," building up to a hard blues medley of "Mannish Boy," a slow-chugging "My Generation" and then a walloping "Young Man's Blues," during which lead guitarist Frank Simes got his licks in.

Mr. Daltrey didn't have the benefit of flashy lighting, a rowdy crowd or even room to swing his mike. He also complained about new in-ear monitors. But he made the best of all that, with lots of muscle left in his pipes. It's a lucky concert crowd that gets "Baba O'Riley" from the opening act -- with the original guy who sang it. "

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10057/1038819-388.stm

Anyway, anyhow, anywhere: Roger Daltrey keeping voice vital with solo shows

By Mary Colurso -- The Birmingham News
February 26, 2010, 7:00AM





Roger Daltrey has distilled his mature vocal philosophy to a single phrase: Use it or lose it.

That was the name of Daltrey’s solo tour last fall, and it’s why The Who’s lead singer, 65, agreed to open 11 tour dates for Eric Clapton in late February and early March.

"I’ve never done a supporting role, not in 40 years, so this is going to be interesting," Daltrey said during a phone interview.

The legendary frontman, who’s enjoyed the spotlight for more than 45 years, said it takes discipline and practice to keep his voice in shape for songs such as "My Generation," "Won’t Get Fooled Again," "See Me, Feel Me" and other classics by the British rock band.

"The voice is like an incredibly complex muscle," Daltrey said. "It’s an incredibly sensitive part of our bodies. The thing has to be exercised well and highly treasured."

Although he’ll delve into The Who’s powerful archive for his dates with Clapton — including a Sunday concert at Birmingham’s BJCC Arena — Daltrey isn’t aiming for a note-by-note recreation of the group’s greatest hits. He has a solo catalog at his disposal, about a dozen albums strong, and a backing band that’s suited to improvisation and new arrangements.

"I like to take things that come out of the air," Daltrey has said. "That what I love about The Who. That’s what we always used to do, right from the very early days: make it up on the spot."

When asked if it might be freeing to open for another rock icon, bearing less than the customary weight for each show’s success, Daltrey let out a laugh.

"I haven’t got a clue, to be honest," he said. "I’ll tell you on Friday."

Daltrey, who spoke during a rehearsal break earlier this week, said his first date on the Clapton tour — Thursday at the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh — would give him the necessary insight on the pluses and minuses of an opening set.

One thing is certain, however: He’ll opt for less talk than usual, fitting everything into a shorter space of time.

"I think we’ll have just the music and not the chat that comes with it," Daltrey said.

Don’t expect intimate anecdotes about The Who’s founding in the early 1960s, the band’s appearance at Woodstock or the making of "Tommy," a seminal rock opera.

Reminiscences like these tend to get swallowed up in large arenas, Daltrey said. And, of course, any attempt to trace The Who’s heyday, from "I Can’t Explain" to "You Better You Bet," would take more than his allotted time.

Fans may be interested to hear that Daltrey’s backing band will include guitarist Simon Townshend, 49, brother of The Who’s Pete Townshend. Instrumental windmills might not be his personal style, but the younger Townshend has been part of The Who’s touring ensemble since the late 1990s.

With no prospects for a Who tour on the horizon in 2010, Daltrey said, he was determined to remain on stage and keep his solo band intact.

"I’ve just got to keep singing; it’s as simple as that," he said.

Tickets already have sold out for The Who’s charity show on March 30 in England, when the band will cover "Quadrophenia" at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s a benefit for Teenage Cancer Trust, which Daltrey has supported for at least a decade.

Back in the U.S., The Who made its latest appearance at the halftime show of Super Bowl XLIV, offering a 12-minute medley of classics to a backdrop of lasers and fireworks. Performing amid the sports hoopla offered the band a high-profile showcase on television, but was not exactly a rewarding artistic experience, Daltrey said.

"It was an honor to do it," he said. "It was an incredibly spectacular event. But really, it was the toilet break of a football game. For me, it was a non-show show. Twelve minutes is not really us; we can do one song that lasts that long."

The Birmingham News