WHOoPLA: Chapters 40, 41, 42 & 43

Chapter Forty: The Arrival.

The Animal and Lee Arnold spent the day waiting for the call from Curbishley that The Who’s plane was en route. One final reminder from Mother Nature of just who’s in charge had the plane stuck in fog on the airport tarmac in St. Louis. It would be hours of waiting that had both fearing a cancellation as the short winter day began to darken.

Finally, the call came. Curbishley told them that the band’s plane was in the air and they would likely be putting on a lively performance that night. He said,

“They always play with more fire after they’ve been in a row.”

He said that Townsend and Daltrey had an argument on the plane during the long wait to take off with Daltrey punching Townsend square in the nose and getting “the better end of things.” Curbishley guaranteed that,

“When they fight like that they really put on a great show later.”

A fan described the show three days earlier at The Cotton Bowl in Dallas:

By the time the Who came on, I believe they were almost an hour late, the sun had set and the cold of the December night had taken over. Pete and Roger appeared to be quite agitated, and Pete’s guitars were not staying in tune. Pete had a continuous running argument with Alan Cogan? I think that’s the gentleman’s name and was tossing his guitars mid song back to him in exchange for another. Midway through the show, Pete and Roger engaged in a yelling match with barely an inch to spare between their noses. A lot of “Fuck You’s” going back and forth. At the end of the night Pete did indeed begin to slam his black Schecter Tele on the stage, out of apparent frustration, I don’t know if you would call it smashing his guitar, but from where I was standing, a few rows from the front, his anger was evident. Turbulent tempers and great music, ahhhh just another great Who show.

In the darkness of the Wisconsin December night, The Who finally arrived and found a media hoard backed with a marching band attacking them at the gate. The anticipation and hoopla had grown so big in the intervening two months after The Animal had come in off the ledge that it was a struggle for Arnold to keep QFM’s name attached to it. So when The Animal had hospitality gifts to present: T-shirts, bratwurst and cheese, he did so very quickly and was practically tossed aside to make way for the media locusts who clamored for their attention. Oh well, no time to lament that, the show started in less than an hour. It was a mad dash to follow the band’s limo back to the Arena.

Chapter Forty One: Backstage.

The closing of the deal, the writing of checks, the payout for shows happens the day of the show. Regis Boeff was still trying to find more money for the band as he and McElrath carried out the transaction.

“Can’t we get a better deal on this? What about here?… or this?”

Tim The Rock N Roll Animal has seen dozens of backstage scenes, most of which are hardly worth remembering. This one is an exception. When I talked with him, his tone became soft and he faded in and out of his description, pausing often to enjoy his recollection.

Lee Arnold had pointed out Jim Ladd at the airport as both were surprised to see the LA freeform radio mogul traveling with The Who’s entourage. The Animal introduced himself to Ladd with the misconception that he had made a very personal connection in their late night interviews. Ladd was cordial but distracted and somewhat aloof as he was pursuing interviews with the band for his nationally syndicated show “Innerview.”

Tim remembers Roger Daltrey going through a pre-concert ritual of stretching and aerobics…thinking about the show….absorbed. He gave Tim a quick glance and said,

“’ello mate.”

The Animal moved on to Glyn Johns, The Who’s legendary Recording Engineer for the tour. John’s had a big glass of red wine and asked The Animal,

“Who are you?”

“I’m Tim.”

“Oh, you and all these crazy people- that’s why we’re here tonight?”

“Something like that…”

It was meant to be complimentary…funny… in that typical mellow English Gentlemen sort of way.

“Is Pete around?”

“Pete’s got a separate dressing room over there.”

It was very separate from the other band members. A security guard was escorting two very excited young women to Townsend’s door and then knocked. Townsend poked his head out dressed in only a bath towel. They all laughed as Pete signed autographs for each of them and then promptly disappeared back into his hiding place. In that Pete had just come out of the shower, Tim noticed Townsend’s beet red nose, evidence left from the impact of Daltrey’s fist a few hours earlier. He would powder that over before the show.

No disc jockey had directly introduced the band on this tour and, despite Curbishley’s promise, that would also be the case here as Tim’s stage announcement came before the opening act- Grey Star.

Tim introduced himself, thanked everyone and then made a special effort to let everybody know that THEY made this happen. He kept it short.

Grey Star was the local combination of Ruby Star and Mike Grey. Ruby’s most notable moment had been in the early 70’s when she toured with and sang backing vocals on Black Oak Arkansas’s “Jim Dandy.” Ruby was the chick who screamed,

“Go Jim Dandy! GOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

This band was more guitar chord melodic 80’s hair band rock. When lead guitarist Mike Grey started mimicking Pete Townsend’s famous “windmills” the audience, anxious and pumped for The Who, started to boo. Their set was otherwise well received.

The Who’s tour, in general, was being panned as lackluster and lost. Divina Infusino was a Milwaukee Journal music critic and staff writer who had spent the last two years detailing her complaints with the changes in the radio and music world and hating both LPX and QFM. For that, she had been purposely left out of the loop by Lee Arnold and was pissed about the successful “end around” Arnold had done when he gave the story to columnist Dave Begel. A week before the show she wrote an article entitled: “Why Some Don’t Give A Hoot.” There she used just a few selectively chosen lines from an extensive magazine article quoting Townsend as saying The Who,

“…had peaked a long time ago…people are putting far too much importance on this tour. In terms of rock n roll history, aside from the fact that we sell large numbers of tickets, we are fairly insignificant now…I really don’t like the band- that’s what it’s all about.”

While true, it lacked context and was used to complain that the type of acts she liked were not getting proper radio attention. She concluded that with The Who gone, new acts might get more of a chance. The message was that it was a show that was not worth seeing. Her anger got in the way of her seeing the real story which was that this show was actually going to be an exception and a return, for one brief moment, to the very thing she was lamenting the loss of. A show that would, in her words, be a,

“…living reminder that rock n roll once brought people together, once meant more than a diversion.”

Chapter Forty Two: The Show.

Photos from other shows on the tour have them in sleeveless tee’s and looking generally scruffy. For this show they dressed in their Sunday best. Townsend wore a creamy vanilla zoot suit with matching tie and slightly baggy pants with Nike tennis shoes. Even Daltrey wore a light suit jacket but teamed it up with jeans and a horizontally stripped muscle shirt and the typical rocker high top Converse All Star sneakers.

Every last seat was sold all the way around the back of the stage at the Mecca Arena. Likely many Standing Room Only seats too. Fear of counterfeit tickets led to close scrutiny and eerily familiar long lines at the entry doors. This crowd, however, was anxious but nicely patient. The stage monitors and drum kit were set somewhat low and the lighting and speaker array way above so most all could see the wide open space on stage that Daltrey and Townsend had to maneuver. There were 2 sets of four mini search lights on the floor on each side of the stage. They sprayed long tubes of bright white light in every direction as they spun around. I remember getting a little too close to them and feeling the blast furnace like heat they emanated. Tim Gorman was on keyboards and tucked off to stage left out of sight. Entwhistle was stage right and kept out of the way as Daltrey would let out ten feet of his heavily duct taped mike and cord and spin it over his head on a big loop that reached far over the audience. Pete was leaping as high as he could almost playfully, then getting a running start to try again to top one over the other.

I remember seeing this near constant smile on both Daltrey and Townsend’s faces. They seemed to be actually somewhat awestruck by the overwhelming response to everything they did. They were playful with each other. The Milwaukee crowd gave them so many standing ovations that Daltrey joked,

“It’s getting to be exercise with all that sitting down and standing up.”

The show had almost none of the anarchy and discord of the tours previous shows and even Townsend’s ever so worn out cliché theatrics seemed sincere. Of course, it may be that that’s what I wanted to see or that my hindsight has adjusted the memory, but I recall the attitude and the feel of the show, and while it may not have been their best, it was good. It felt magical because, for everybody from 93QFM, it was actually happening. What if the snake oil you bought actually did all the things that the huckster said it would do? You’d be surprised because you’d buffered your expectations as protection. So up until the moment The Who stepped on stage, we’d kept our excitement in, just in case. It was gonna take their actual presence on a stage right in front of us- live- to allow the acceptance and belief that it was all true.

It turned out that it wasn’t only the QFM air staff who felt that way. Everybody in that arena did. It was that opening, cathartic, shock- that,

“They are actually HERE!”

realization- that threw the place into a frenzy. That’s why Roger and Pete smiled. Seasoned as they were, burnt out and fucked up as they were, they still could be thrown for a loop by a truly thankful audience. This show WAS different. It was fun for them. It was right for them to come here, they thought, and a little better than just “playing the songs for the money” as the critics had complained.

Tim started watching the show from stage side then decided to pull Patti from out of her 10th row seat and ferry her up there with him. They spent most of the show on stage behind bass player John Entwhistle’s amplifier stack. They both went silent when I asked them to describe how it felt. They stumbled and groped for the words so I’ll summarize it for them both.

It was like jumping from an airplane and free falling for two hours without any fear of hitting the ground.

The set was:

My Generation, I Can’t Explain, Dangerous, Sister Disco, The Quiet One, It’s Hard, Eminence Front, Behind Blue Eyes, Baba O’Riley, Doctor Jimmy, Boris The Spider, Drowned, Cry If You Want, Who Are You, Pinball Wizard, See Me Feel Me, 5.15, Love Reign O’er Me, Long Live Rock, Won’t Get Fooled Again.

Then the encore(s) were:

Naked Eye, Squeeze Box and The Beatles Twist and Shout.

Part of the agreement between The Who and QFM allowed for the filming of the first song to be later used for promotional advertising purposes. The folks from David Joseph, who were charged with that assignment, overstayed their welcome filming several songs well into the show. Busted by representatives from the band, the film was confiscated and trashed. Lee Arnold missed the entire performance as he spent nearly the whole show trying to iron that severe infraction with a very angry Bill Curbishley.

Randy Mc Elrath said their show in Madison in 1976 had been their “full tilt” best show he had ever seen and found this show, comparatively, to be more subdued but,

“… special in a very unusual and different way because of the circumstance that surrounded it.”

Chapter Forty Three: The After Party

The after show party at the arena was packed so tightly that you could barely walk. It was a lush buffet layout that included everything including pork chops and dozens of stacked cases of Schlitz beer. The Animal saw Daltrey peak in and skip out. Tim briefly thanked Townsend saying,

“Great show!”

Townsend’s response was unexpected,

“It was like playing again for the first time.”

Townsend was being very accessible and full tilt in commiseration when Patti suddenly found herself literally squished face to face, bosom to bosom into him. It shocked her speechless and he was gone before she could muster anything to say.

The crowd was all unfamiliar as the guest list had been prepared by Stroh’s public relations agenda and thus most were strangers to Arnold, Tim and Patti. For Patti Genko, it was a last QFM hurrah as she would part ways with both QFM and Tim The Rock N Roll Animal in the coming months. (She later went on to an 18 year on-air midday stint at the new classic rock station that was literally across the street).

Tim noticed Kenny Jones, The Who’s drummer, sitting off to the side at a table by himself. He thought it was odd that nobody knew or cared about who Jones was. He could identify with the feeling. He knew Jones was likely tired of hearing people ask him about the difficult job of filling Keith Moon’s shoes and, as he sat down next to Jones, he got a look from him that said,

“Ok. Here we go again…”

The Animal knew to let well enough alone on that subject and opened with,

“You know. I’m not interested in hearing about The Who…tell me about your days with The Faces.”

Jones eyes just lit up. He spent the next 45 minutes telling The Animal wild Rod Stewart tour stories as they ate. During the entire time, nobody in the packed crowd of self congratulatory Stroh’s/Schlitz corporate politicos recognized Tim or Jones. The Animal sensed the final seconds of his fourteenth minute ticking away,

“We were nobody’s. It was back to reality now.”

The next day the spread of articles covering the show in the Milwaukee Journal started on the front page and continued to cover a full inside page with pictures and articles. Not one mentioned 93QFM, Tim The Rock N Roll Animal or Lee Arnold.