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

This is the Who at their most powerful. Although before the masterwork Who's Next, which would provide anthems like Baba O'reily and Wont Get Fooled Again. This film shows the group in transition from mod rockers to one of the biggest live bands of the 70's.

Daltrey shows what being a front-man is all about, Entwistle steady as ever.

Moon is great, check out the ongoing conversation with the drum tech, and see him playing "side saddle" whilst having a bass drum head replaced!

Townsend even looks like he's enjoying himself occasionally!

Considering they took to the stage at 2am no one in the crowd was asleep!

There are not many bands these days could produce a set as tight as this and it is difficult to imagine any of the bands of today producing a concert that in 36 years time will be be enjoyed as much as this one.

See this movie NOW! The concert shows The Who as good as it gets. Dig Entwistle's infamous skeleton suit. Pete and Keith are non stop bundles of energy throughout. Daltrey shows the flair and charisma he cultivated in full form. What a great flick!

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.

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.

I saw The Who when the 1982 version of their "final tour" passed through Toronto. While enjoying them immensely, what most sticks in my mind the 20 years and more since is the visual of Roger Daltrey running on the spot a few times, suggesting more than a few ideas that must have been in mind at that time. Here, however, taken from 1970, is a singer and a band musically and visually connected to the music. I doubt that anything of that music and time would have inspired him to be running on the spot. As Huey Lewis would later note and i find it applicable here, judging by a performance like this it would be easy to say that "the heart of rock and roll is still beating." An inspiring performance worth seeing.