Not too much as I know some of you hate me going on about music. First up was Liverpool band The Lightning Seeds. This band is fronted by Ian Broudie. Ian Broudie is getting on in years. In fact he's 65. He looks like how John Lennon would have looked if he had lived to retirement age. Broudie really is The Lightning Seeds. They had numerous minor hits and are a jolly little band in a kind of fun Scouser kind of way. Their big hit was the football anthem Three Lions which they ended their set with.
Next up was Richard Ashcroft who strikes me as something of a weird dude but not as weird as a guy in the front row called Neal who has seen him over 210 times. That to me smacks of obsession. Ashcroft is 52 in a few days' time and on stage cuts a strange figure. Tall and thin as a bean pole, he has long straggly hair and hid under a bucket hat. Mr Ashcroft, who I have it on good authority is a good guy, is worried about the way of the world and vents his spleen on stage with a barrage of four letter words that he then apologises for. At least he's passionate about things.
Luckily I knew all the songs he played as eldest son is a big fan and has probably seen him six or seven times which pales into insignificance when compared with Neal. Couldn't help thinking that Ashcroft looks like John Lennon would have looked if Lennon had lived into his fifties. You might detect a theme running through this blog and there's more of that later. Ashcroft is worried about climate change whilst quite obviously the two lead members of The Who aren't. Roger Daltrey is 79 and Pete Townshend is 78. "We planted two trees earlier today. I planted a lime tree and Roger planted an Oak so there's no problem with climate control because we've sorted it," Townshend told us, scarcely enamouring him to environmentalists in the audience.
All my musical heroes seem either to be dead or over or approaching 80. Two members of the original Who are gone but Townshend's guitar playing is as aggressive as ever and there is absolutely no change or break in Daltreys voice - one of the great rock voices of all time. And on drums we had Zak Starkey. Starkey has played with The Who for many many years (27 in fact) and is the godson of the group's original drummer Keith Moon who was as mad as a box of frogs. In fact he was mad, bad and dangerous.
On one occasion he filled his drum kit with explosives and blew it up on stage. He regularly destroyed hotel rooms and particularly enjoyed smashing up toilets by exploding them. He also loved destroying television sets, often by hurling them out of windows. There is a decided irony that we were given a list of dangerous items we couldn't take in to watch a band that once took delight in smashing up equipment and hotels. Some view Moon's behaviour as acceptable and eccentric because he was in a rock band.
prefer to think of him as a moron who was mentally unstable and who had no moral compass. Nobody in The Who looked like John Lennon but of course his fellow Beatle Ringo Starr is the father of Zak Starkey (Starkey being Ringo's birth surname). As you know I'm very interested in family history and genealogy in a general way. Us humble folk spend hundreds of hours on the internet and in libraries putting together facts and stories about our ancestors Somebody like Zak Starkey will know virtually everything about his parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc from a myriad of written sources.
Zak Starkey cut a strange figure on stage thanks to his wearing of a hood out of which peeked a shock of blond hair and little else. It was difficult to see whether he was 57 ( his real age) or 17. Incidentally Starkey once drummed for the Lightning Seeds and also one of my favourite bands The Icycle Works who also come from Liverpool. Ironically Starkey was born in London. Starkey would of course have known John Lennon. Starkey was born in 1966 and would have been 14 when Lennon was murdered.
There's the Lennon connection again. The Who appeared with a symphony orchestra and I'm not absolutely sure of the benefit of having an orchestra. Let me explain. Rock bands by definition are loud. They overshadow any orchestra and it's difficult to remember that on louder tracks, violins and cellos may also be playing. The Who were loud but not in the unacceptable loudness of some bands. So I'm not all that sure what an orchestra brings to a rock party. Having said that in three weeks time I'm going to Huddersfield to see my favourite band Barclay James Harvest playing with an 80 piece orchestra. The difference is Pete Townshend wrote rock songs that have been turned into symphonic pieces whereas John Lees' of BJH wrote symphonic rock songs almost meant for an orchestra.
The Who were good... No the Who were great and I'm glad I have seen them at long last. Both Daltrey and Townshend admit that they have lost much of their hearing and Townshend uses an electronic gizmo on stage which obviously helps with his hearing. They played half an hour of excerpts from the Rock Opera Tommy which was largely responsible for fostering my love of rock music. I first heard it when I was at grammar school and I marvelled at not only the music but also the concept and story of a deaf, dumb and blind boy that was a wizard at pinball. It seemed a strange but wonderful story to me. The rest of the concert was a kind of greatest hits package illustrating just why The Who are one of the greatest rock bands the world has seen. One final thought about the day comes in a comment about the Lightning Seeds.
As you will know I tinker with the piano and keyboards. I wish I tinkered a bit better but I hate it when a rock keyboard player seems to have all the sound pre programmed electronically. The keyboard player on The Seeds seemed to just press various keys to achieve their music.
Now to the downside of the day-the journey home. It bordered on farce. Everyone was funnelled into one exit and then began a route march around the side of car parks before being allowed into the field where the cars were. We made a mental note when we went in that our car was nine rows from the front close to a large bush. But we entered a very large field from an entirely different direction leading to total disorientation.
There were many others wandering around looking lost which obviously they were. It must have taken us the best part of half an hour to just find the car. We quickly drove across the field because there was space at the end of a queue on a very small single track road and there we sat for an hour, occasionally shifting forward a few yards. Cars tried to force their way into this queue from the edge of the fields.
There were no barriers or marshals to control the flow and I got the distinct impression we were in the slowest moving queue that wasn't even having a turn at getting out. It was another of those cases of staff not being around to help with traffic when needed and the whole thing developing into a free for all. When we did get through we thought the worst was over until we joined the queue to get out onto the main road.
The site for these concerts is excellent with plenty of space but the roads leading to it are completely inadequate. I would certainly only go again for an artist that was a must see for me but I can't think of many that would apply to. Perhaps Neil Young or Billy Joel. If I do go again I would leave sandwiches and a flask of coffee in the car and sit there until the field is virtually empty. I would rather eat and drink and read a book for two hours than waste petrol edging forward a few inches at a time. Tomorrow I'm going to describe a much more relaxing day and I will have photos as well.