When you imagine rock gods like The Who performing, it’s in a stadium, a football ground or a huge outdoor venue like Hyde Park.Even if small venues are well within the realms of imagination, the idea of them appearing at a nightclub more accustomed to hosting ball pit parties and EDM DJs feels odd to say the least.At Kingston’s branch of Pryzm on February 14, the dancefloor was packed for what guitarist Pete Townshend described onstage as an “absolutely ridiculous f*cking concert”.
As a 20-something, I may have been born much later than the people The Who had in mind when they sang about their generation all those decades ago, but even I know this isn’t a normal concert for them.”It’s great to come back to a small place where you can smell your armpits,” chuckles Roger Daltrey, the iconic frontman ever so slightly closer to his audience than you’d imagine he was when he played Wembley Stadium last summer.But 50 years to the day since the concert that became their Live in Leeds album, they want to do something to celebrate.Also, when you’re a band that’s been going since 1964, who can blame them for wanting to shake things up?Many of tonight’s audience aren’t your standard Pryzm punters, and they don’t seem very impressed by the venue’s dripping doorway and sticky floors. But none of that seems to matter when the band steps onstage.
Daltrey and Townshend are both on acoustic guitar only tonight, and joke with each other like two old friends at an open mic night. The only difference is, the anecdotes they’re telling are about friends like David Bowie and Bob Dylan.The set list airs a number of big numbers (Pinball Wizard, Behind Blue Eyes) to go along with new tracks from last December’s album Who (Break the News, She Rocked My World). There’s even a lesser-aired Tattoo, performed for the first time in 12 years.
Taking the bizarre surroundings out of the equation, it sounds as good as you would hope. Daltrey goes into his lower vocal range more on newer material, but there’s no doubting his ability to still belt out the classics when he wants to.Meanwhile, Townshend’s approach to guitar playing is relaxed but never lazy, and he’s never more than a couple of minutes away from a few tongue-in-cheek swear words at the audience.Even being an acoustic guitar set, it’s still pretty loud. There are electric bass and drums that, aside from a closing stripped-back Townshend and Daltrey-only rendition of Won’t Get Fooled Again, never feels like they’re toning it down.
It’s not a long show by any stretch, plenty of big hits are missing and you don’t imagine their amps have anything like the power they did the last time they played Glastonbury.But that in itself is what makes it so special. The surreal sight of one of Britain’s biggest ever bands playing a branch of Pryzm is trumped by an intimacy that, sticky floors aside, gives the crowd something that stadiums and big screen visuals never could.
Special Thanks to Get Surrey for their Article- https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/who-live-kingston-review-rock-17785741