The Who has their place in history now; if Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, the last two founding members, never performed or recorded again it wouldn’t make a difference. Their legend is written and secure in the minds of those with an ounce of familiarity concerning the history of rock music.
Three DVDs is an enormous amount of footage, but there is never a dull moment on this set. They cover a series of live performances from 1989-1997. Disc 1 covers the classic rock opera Tommy with a bevy of guest stars pitching in to make it extra special, similar to the film. Steve Winwood, Billy Idol, and other luminaries join the legendary British rockers on stage to give their audience a spirited performance. Pete Townshend is in particularly good form and interestingly enough performs every song on his acoustic, which wasn’t disappointing in the least. He is still as powerful and magnetic without all the amplification, windmill gyrations (which he still does anyway) and smashing of guitars against the amps.
Disc 2 is Quadrophenia. While not as good as Tommy, it’s very entertaining and stimulating visually as they combined the screen film especially made for this live presentation with the performance. The director made the point of how difficult it was to do that without taking anything away from the band’s performance. As it turns out, everything works out fine. Townshend said he originally wrote both pieces for an opera only and that Quadrophenia was a flop on stage, which Roger Daltrey concurred, it was much too difficult to perform satisfactorily on stage. It took many years before they finally came to terms with it and finally found some middle ground to make this a filming to remember.
There are plenty of bonuses available as well. Interviews are ready at the touch of the enter button on your remote if you want to hear Pete or Roger talking about the projects. I decided to take in the entire musical presentation first then listen to what they had to say separate from the performances. It is all a bit time consuming but one hell of a grand time.
Now if those two classic rock operas are not enough you can put the icing on the cake with a full DVD of their greatest hits live on Disc 3, including some of Pete
