you can't beat it

Pete Townshend last night. Photo by Karen Kraft

Before last night, I had not only never seen the Who live, but had never seen any member of the Who in any configuration. It turns out that somehow the Who had never played here in Nashville before last night, which partially explains why I haven't seen them during the 24 years that I've lived in Music City.

Roger Daltrey played the Ryman a few years ago. During the bit of onstage banter and baiting between Daltrey and Pete Townshend that followed the Quadrophenia portion of the evening's entertainment, Daltrey referenced that show as the best of his career. Pete tartly replied that it couldn't have been that great "because I fucking wasn't there!"

Both of those gentlemen were very much in the hizzouse that is the cavernous, clangorous Bridgestone Arena last night, and they did their legacy proud. They served up their ambitious 1973 double-LP Quadrophenia in its entirety, followed it with The Only Five Who Songs You Hear on the Radio These Days, and then it concluded with the group's sole survivors, Pete and Roger, alone onstage for a little-known acoustic number.

For me, the drawing card besides getting to see the Who at all was that they were playing all of my favorite album. While I'm very sympathetic to the argument that the group's best period was their 1966-67 The Who Sell Out / A Quick One pinnacle of Who poppiness, for me, their crowning achievement was Quadrophenia. This concept album tried to combine the story of Mods vs. Rockers in the mid-'60s England of the group members' adolescence with a powerful subcurrent about Pete Townshend's own misgivings about his group's rise from the same mean streets as main character Jimmy (in "The Punk and the Godfather," the group even blows off Jimmy when he tries to greet them at the stage door!). And there's stuff about mortality and the ocean and drowning, because it's Pete Townshend, and that's just what he does, dammit.