Tommy and I were standing on our chairs and had been screaming at the top of lungs at each other for the last ninety minutes. Finally, at one point, we reached out, grabbed the front of the others shirt and began pounding each other in the chest. We couldn’t be more ecstatic . . .
What I thought were aircraft landing lights (but I learned later that they were banks of lights commonly used on film sets to recreate sunlight) had just lit the darkness and had blinded us. The sound was so overwhelming that I couldn’t hear myself no matter how loud I yelled. It was the last song of the concert. We were on the fourth row directly in front of Pete Townsend. In addition to the deafening PA sound system, Pete had three sets of 200 watt amps on stage. Each set had two cabinets with four twelve inch speakers each. You could feel the music as much as hear it.
Won’t Get Fooled Again was at it’s crescendo. It’s that point in the song right after the synthesizer/organ bridge, Keith Moon starts beating the #$%* out of his drums, Roger Daltry screams yyeeeeaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!, John Entwistle hits a bass note that sounds like a jet engine at full throttle, Townsend strikes a massive chord on the guitar and the lighting guy fries the retinas of the crowd with those freakin’ bright lights.
It was November, 1975. Tommy and I had worn out numerous album copies of The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Live at Leeds, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia but this was the first time for us to see The Who live. They were all about 30 years old, so still young enough to hit it hard and old enough to really know what they doing. Tommy and I were 18 and freshmen in college. Without knowing it at the time, by pummeling each other, we had invented slam-dancing which later evolved into moshing. Who knew we were such innovators? At the time it was just the emotion, testosterone and energy of our youth manifesting it self the only way it could. I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for soccer hooligans every since.
Anyway, that all happened nearly 34 years ago and I can still recall every nuance of the moment. Every time I hear the song (yeah, I watch CSI Miami just for the open) I clench my fists just a little and wag my head to the beat.
A few years later in 1983, while watching MTV, a video comes on of a live concert in the rain at Red Rocks amphitheater in Colorado. The rain is coming down hard, the band is soaked, the crowd is soaked and the cameras are getting drenched. It was U2 doing Sunday Bloody Sunday. Towards the end of the song someone hands Bono a pole that has a white piece of cloth tied on. It’s not a white flag of surrender in the sense of being defeated. It’s a white flag of obedience. It’s a white flag representing the purity of an unblemished sacrifice. He waves it over the crowd as the steam rises off his back and sings “The real battle just begun/to claim the victory Jesus won/on Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The torches in the distance, the shafts of light cutting thru the night rain and the crimson tint of the rocks makes this an iconic image that causes it to be listed as one of the fifty moments that changed the history of rock and roll.
Nineteen years later on 2/2/2002 at the half time performance of the Super Bowl, at the end of Where The Streets Have No Name, after the names of the victims of the tragedy of 9/11 have scrolled across the scrim, Bono pulls his jacket open to reveal another flag sown into the lining. It’s an image etched into the ethos of our culture. Though it's associated with a tragedy that touched the lives of millions - it represents a determination and courage that mere words spoken or written on paper can never convey.
For me, music has a power and mystery that I Can’t Explain (if you know your Who songs you will get the pun). I’m not a musician. I can’t sing. In fact, in those places where people are expected to sing along (often times this is during Church) I make it a point to not sing with the crowd and it’s not just because I have a crappy voice. I’m enthralled with the swirling sound of music and people singing and it diminishes the depth of feeling when I add my voice. Yeah, I know, if every body felt the way I do . . . there would be nothing to listen to. But, every body doesn’t feel the way I do - so drop it.
I love to feel music when I listen to it. I love music that is on the ragged edge. However, I do have favorite artists that don’t sound like bombs going off. I enjoy the sensitive song writer genre and James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman are some of my favorites along with many others styles of music. Fatboy Slim, Modest Mouse and even trashy European techno/dance has a place in my heart.
But back to the music that peels paint and makes your ears ring the next day.
Lola by The Kinks was the first record I ever bought and yes, it was a 45 rpm single and I paid way less than a buck for it back in 1970. I would have been about 13 years old so a song about gender confusion was just what I needed at the time :)
Lola shares a characteristic with another Who song, Baba O’Riley in that when performed live in concert, the crowd sings along on certain sections. For Lola, the audience sings Lo Lo Lo Lo Lola on the chorus and on Baba O’Riley the crowd drowns out Pete on "Don't cry/don't raise your eye/it's only teenage wasteland". Those are the few times that I feel like singing along with the band.
I always come back to the snarling, chain saws on sheet metal, distorted, amped up, sweat slinging, spit flinging music that made Tommy and I want to beat the #$%&* out of each other . . . in a brotherly love sort of way. We tend to build walls, dig moats and bury land mines around our emotions. I think that’s the reason these “over the top/this one goes to eleven” situations cut deep into the hearts of so many of us.
Tommy is 52 now and I will be too in just a few months. We’ve been friends since August of 1970 when we both showed up in home room on the first day of 7th grade. I always sat near him since my last name is Buchanan and his last name is Byrd. He still calls me Billy and even though I call him Tom - he will always be Tommy to me.
In August of 2000 he came for a visit. I had tickets for us to see The Who at Reunion Arena. Moon had died of a drug overdose many years ago and Ringo Starr’s son, Zach Starkey had replaced him on drums. The band was in their mid 50’s and they didn’t jump and leap about as much as they did the first time we saw them . . . neither did Tommy or I.
But, we still stood on our chairs, sang along on Baba O’Riley and made fools of ourselves, but this time we just punched our fists in the air . . . we bruise a lot easier these days.
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