The Eddie Cochrane video was not quite a set-up, but I had to include this YouTube clip of the band who made "Summertime Blues" their own, especially after they were shown performing it in Woodstock, complete with guitar acrobatics caught in freeze-frame. ("Blue Cheer?" "Quiet, or you'll be taking a trip to Michael Vick's home for retired bears.") Daltrey used to introduce this song as "The only one we do that was written by someone else, so you know it has to be good," forgetting about Mose Allison's "Young Man Blues."
The Woodstock version of that song was the one they did with Moon, which they usually performed right after whatever version of Tommy they were doing live. They would start the song off almost in mid-beat, the whole band together, like a wave of sound hitting a beach. This version begins more like Cochrane's, with the beat slowly filled in on guitar. The notes to the clip say that this performance was a 1989 rehearsal version of the song, with the larger band that the group toured with after getting rid of Kenny Jones. Townshend is in his David Carradine-as-Caine-with-a-beard phase, and although he's surrounded by walls of transparent plastic to shield his hearing, he still shows the lead guitar player who's in charge by signalling the key change during the lead guitar break.
In the Cochrane version, the bass player looks supremely bored, probably because he's not very good. I like this live version by the Who because of the relative clarity of the sound; Entwhistle's bass is shorn of the fuzz overtones that accompany the normal Who version. And nobody--well, maybe Bill Wyman on "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown"--looked so cool doing a bass run. John, why didn't you leave that cocaine alone?
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2 comments:
Woo! I agree, the bass is damn fine. And I love Townsend's no-nonsense "end of guitar solo" signal.
He really can play.
The dynamics of the original band were that Entwhistle, as he said, always seemed to anticipate what Townshend would play, while Townshend would signal Moon, and Moon always watched Townshend.
Just watched their performance at Monterey Pop after seeing part of a documentary on its 40th anniversary. At the end of "A Quick One" (the Who's first "mini"-opera), Moon plays so hard for so long and so perfectly you wonder why he doesn't spontaneously combust.
Too sad about all those there who've died. I never would have guessed that 40 years on, the Who would have more surviving members than the Mamas and Papas.
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