Live Review - The Who performing "Quadrophenia", London O2 Arena (16th June 2013)

It's hard to put your finger on exactly what was wrong with tonight's show. As with a lot of bands of a certain age, the appeal in going to see them is more in the fact that you CAN go and see them, a tick off of a mental bucket list as it were, rather than an expectation of a band at the top of their game. There are of course exceptions, actually quite a few of them; Springsteen, Neil Young, McCartney all spring to mind, but The Who were sadly not one of them. I guess an instant problem is how diluted the line-up seems, and when you look at the previous three names I mentioned, you immediately see an issue. Although of course, the E Street Band are vital to Springsteen's live reputation, they're a much larger unit, and the rejuvenation of the line-up that has taken place in recent years has been incredibly successful, enhancing the power of the band, rather than bringing the sanitising effect that "session" musicians often bring when added to a legendary band, and this certainly is a problem tonight.

Performing Quadrophenia live over the years has evidently been a problem for the band, who seem keen to go on the record with the fact that they haven't been happy with previous performances of the record. It's with that in mind that they appear to have put this show together to be flawless. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. There's no denying it's a tight well thought-out show; the footage of a post-war Britain in the early part of the show particularly, is quite affecting. The rather large band are tight, and with all the brass and synths on-stage, the album is recreated in great detail. I'm sure the original tour for the album was messy, but you had Keith Moon behind the drum kit, and John Entwistle on bass; they would have been loud, energetic, and slightly chaotic, and isn't that what you really want from a Who show?

It makes me think back to seeing Roger Waters with 'The Wall' a couple of years ago, at the same venue in fact. That show, in theory, faced a lot of the same issues; missing vital members from the original record (Waters being the man-behind-the-concept a la Townsend, in this analogy I guess), loads of session musicians, performing a sprawling double-album with only a few key songs. 'The Wall' however, had spectacle; spectacle to burn, and it really served the show well. I've never seen anything quite like it, and I found the whole thing really moving. Maybe I just don't have the same emotional attachment to the source material (indeed, I find Doctor Jimmy in particular, horribly distasteful), but I came away underwhelmed from this. Sure, it was great to see Pete Townsend windmill; a tick for the bucket-list in my mind then, but I could have left my heart at home.