Listening to You: The Who at the Isle of Wight 1970

Listening to You: The Who at the Isle of Wight Festival (1996)was actually filmed in 1970, 1 year after they had performed at Woodstock. The Who's Rock Opera Tommy was a big hit at this point and they had performed it for over a year. The Isle of Wight concert had 600,000 in attendance and was kind of regarded as the Woodstock of England. The Who supplied their PA system which was the most powerful at the time for all the performing bands to use. I watched this on DVD and was amazed at the video and audio quality. There are great close-ups of Keith Moon going nuts on the drums, John Entwistle's great thundering fingers on the bass, Pete Townshend's windmills, and Roger Daltrey spinning the microphone. Watching this makes you understand why they were regarded as the best live rock band.

This review is dedicated to the late Keith Moon and John Entwistle.

The Original Drum and Bass.

There seems to be very little early Who footage around these days, if there is more then lets be 'aving it, now-a-days it tends to be of a very different kind of Who altogether, a parody, a shadow of their (much) better years. To be fair, not one of them has to prove anything to anyone anymore, they've earned their respect and with overtime.

This concert footage for me is one of their best. To command an audience of around a 400,000 plus strong crowed takes skill, charisma, wit and a whole lot of bloody good music.

We all know of the other acts on the bill, The Doors (their last ever show weeks before Jim Morrison died), Moody Blues, Hendrix, Taste, Free and many more. The point being that whoever were there it was The Who that the majority had come to see. This show was one year after the Great Hippie Fest of the 1960's; Woodstock. The film and record had come out and so had The Who's greatest work to date, Tommy. The ever hungry crowd wanted a taste, to be able to experience their own unique event, to be able to "Grove and Love" in the knowledge that this gig was their own. To do this you needed the best of what Rock 'n Roll had to throw at the hungrily baited crowd.

At two 'o clock in the morning in late August 1970 the M.C. announces, "Ladies and Gentlemen, a small Rock 'n Roll band from Shepherds Bush London, the 'OO".

John Entwistle's body suit is of black leather, on the front is the out line of a human skeleton from neck to toe, Roger dressed in his traditional stage outfit of long tassel's and long flowing hair, Keith in a white t-shirt and jeans, as Pete had his white boiler suit and Doc Martins that he'd preferred to wear.

The Who never stopped their onslaught of High Energy Rock for over two hours, performing theirs and other artists' greatest tracks such as Young Man Blues, Shaking' all Over, and then as on queue, Keith baiting the crowed to "Shut up, it's a bleeding Opera" with Tommy, the Rock Opera. The crowed went wild. This is what they had come to hear, and the Who didn't disappoint, straight into Overture and never coming up for air until the final note of "Tommy can you Hear me?" Amazing.

To capture a show of this magnitude of a band of this stature at their peak at a Festival that was to be the last of its kind anywhere in the World was a fantastic piece of Cinematic History.

The English DVD only comes in a soundtrack of English/Linear PCM Stereo, were as in the States, I think, you can get it with 5.1 at least, "Check local press for details…" on that, okay.

The duration of the DVD is 85 minutes with no extras, which is a disappointment. Yes, for a slice of Rock and Festival History this DVD would send you in a nostalgia trip down memory lane the moment you press play, for some of the best Who concert footage as it was meant to be, Live, Raw and in your Face!

I would have given this DVD ten if it wasn't for the lack of 5.1, and some extras would have been nice.

Thanks Roger, Pete, John and Keith.

The Isle of Wight festival in 1970 is often regarded as one of The Who's finest performances: after almost two years of steady touring behind 'Tommy,' the group was in peak shape, so well-rehearsed and in tune with each other as performers that not even their reckless antics and often bitter interpersonal animosity could undermine their virtuosity as a live act. 'Tommy' made superstars of The Who, but their identity as the inventors of 'rock opera' often obscures the fact that they were also essentially the inventors of punk, and were, at heart, always the thinking man's hard rock band.

'Listening to You' catches The Who at their best, warts and all. The sound mix is typically bass-heavy: guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend and bassist John Entwistle were perennially at odds over the latter's tendency to play too loud, and though Entwistle was perhaps the group's most inventive and virtuosic instrumentalist, the guitar work is frequently inaudible beneath the bass, which tends to undermine the recording's overall quality. The editing is questionable, particularly for Who purists: director Murray Lerner falls into the typical tendency to place the 'Tommy' sequence at the end of the film, when in actuality it took up the mid-section of the performance. This editorial decision is particularly glaring and nonsensical on the DVD, as it includes an interview with Townshend in which he explains how the group intentionally placed 'Tommy' in the middle of the set so as to capitalize on the mesmerizing effect of its climax to unite the band with the audience for the final act. The camera work is limited to three angles--center-stage, stage-left, and stage-right--and thus lacks the scope of the Woodstock film and other premier rock films of the era such as Martin Scorsese's and The Band's 'The Last Waltz.' In some ways this limits the film, but it also allows for a more direct and authentic impression of what it might have been like to be there.

This is not a 'great concert film' in the same sense as 'Woodstock' or 'The Last Waltz,' but it catches the group at what most of its members considered to be their peak as artists and performers. Murray Lerner wisely includes a great deal of the group's on-stage banter, though a little knowledge of the chaotic nature of the festival--where over half a million fans crowded onto the island and perpetuated the pseudo-revolutionary nonsense of the era by gate-crashing and harassing the performers for the great sin of expecting people to pay for tickets and behave with civility--is necessary to understand the tone of the commentary. Townshend gets in a few good digs at the crowd--introducing live staple 'Young Man Blues,' he remarks 'blues, for the people who paid to get in!'--reminding the contemporary viewer that the Who's irreverence and cynicism extended to idiotic followers of the zeitgeist as well as to the uptight, bourgeois establishment.

There are some glaring omissions--'A Quick One' and 'Amazing Journey/Sparks' most notably--but the disc includes less frequently filmed gems such as 'Water' and 'I Don't Even Know Myself' to make up for the absences somewhat.

For Who neophytes, 'The Kids Are Alright' is probably a better introduction to the group as live performers, but, even given its deficiencies, 'Listening to You' will not likely disappoint anyone interested in the music of the era or the art of live rock performance.

I feel that this is the best Who concert film that I have seen yet. The original Who are all in check, doing various classics like Summertime Blues, I Can't Explain, The Magic Bus and My Generation, each a little different for the good. And, there is a majority of the original Rock opera Tommy, performed soley by the Who in a rare sight (unlike the one in 1989, where it was 3 out of 4 and with guests). Beautiful rock on the small screen by one of the best groups ever. By the way, there is even some unintentional comedy from Keith Moon! A+

What is contained on this disk is a first rate show by a first rate band. This disc is NOT for the faint of heart...the music is incredibly intense, and VERY cool. What you will learn when you watch this movie is just why the Who was so huge for so long. It is true that their records were great, but their shows were the top of the heap. In 1969 when this concert was shot, the screaming teenie boppers that threw jelly beans at the Beatles were gone and bands (and audiences) had settled down to long and often amazing displays of musical virtuosity--something that few audiences have the intellectual curiosity to pursue in the age of canned music by Britney and Christina. What you especially learn here are the amazing things that can happen when gifted musicians are encouraged to improvise. Try the concert out, it really is amazing.