The Who at Wembley Stadium

The Who
Eddie Vedder
Wembley Stadium, 6 July 2019

Let's face it Wembley Stadium is just one of the worst venues in London to see a gig but when I was offered a free ticket (yes! free!) to see The Who, I could grin and bare it to see old Roger and Pete play live again, even from the back of such a vast stadium. If there's anyone whose music could fill a place as big as this, well, it has to be The Who.

The other draw for me, of course, was Eddie Vedder playing support. He's a massive Who fan himself  and great mates with both Pete and Roger (as well as Pete's brother Simon) and it was obvious that he would make a guest appearance during their set, and I wasn't disappointed.

I was surprised though that there were so many empty seats. Don't get me wrong it was full enough for the band to have made a nice amount of dough for just one night's work, but certainly far from sold out. It did make me think it was a shame they didn't play the O2 instead, which would have definitely sold out, but I guess there's a certain prestige in playing Wembley Stadium.

I tend to avoid big gigs like this: they are usually way overpriced (as was this if I hadn't been lucky enough to get in free) and, unless you are hardcore enough to brave trying to get to and then staying at the front, you pretty much watch the whole thing on the big screens. That said I have been to a couple of shows at Wembley Stadium back in the ancient 90s: U2 and Guns N' Roses, but the experience was enough for me to avoid it ever since. 

I have to admire those who show up early in order to stand at the front. I certainly couldn't do it now and the thought of being stuck in a crowd for hours and having to endure a bunch of support acts I have no interest in sounds like a nightmare to me now (although I have done it in the past). So it was rather nice to turn up to my allotted seat, knowing I had missed the Kaiser Chiefs, who were on earlier in the day. Would it be worth sitting through the Kaiser Chiefs to see The Who? Maybe. But luckily I wasn't tested on that point. 

Ed Vedder on the big screens and possibly on stage too?

Instead we arrived just in time to see Eddie Vedder, so tiny on the stage, really there was no telling if it was really him, although the big screens did their best to convince otherwise. The screens, if they weren't lying, revealed that Eddie looked great: tanned, healthy and fluffy of hair. Good old Ed. He was definitely thrilled to be there playing with his heroes/mates, something he did tell us a few times even leading to a rather corny but heartfelt speech about believing in your dreams (probably way more effective to youngsters listening than someone like me who is well past dreaming of being friends with The Who or of ever having that happen). 

Eddie had the Red Limo String Quartet with him today, just as he did at his solo shows in London a couple of years back, and actually came on to an instrumental version of Alive played by them (although he didn't play the song himself). The rest of the set was essentially the acoustic Pearl Jam, with eight of the 12 songs showing off the best of Vedder's band, with songs like Better Man, Porch, Wishlist and Black, as well as Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, which is always a crowd pleaser in any solo Eddie set. 

Curiously the two solo tracks he chose to play were the only covers on his solo albums, Society and Hard Sun, the latter closing the show with all his mates (including, of course, Glen Hansard, who seems to be joined at the hip with Eddie these days) joining him on stage for a little closing song party. Earlier in his set he also paid tribute to the setting we were all in by playing a Queen song, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and brought out Simon Townshend to sing his song I'm The Answer. All in all it was pretty much a scaled down version of his solo show in London from 2017 but in a much bigger and more soulless venue. Still, his set was enjoyable enough and Eddie's enthusiasm was certainly contagious. 

One thing about these big gigs is that they generally start on time and end early, and The Who definitely lived up to this coming promptly on stage to the song Overture, from the album Tommy. This gig was different to past tours as, per Roger Daltrey's idea,  this time they were accompanied by a full orchestra. This certainly filled the sound and recreated the cinematic feeling of the record as they performed a number of songs from Tommy, including 1921, Amazing Journey and Pinball Wizard, to open the show. The sound though wasn't as good as I hoped and I couldn't help but feel the band playing with this orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall would have probably blown my mind but here the intricate sounds were somewhat lost in the vastness of the stadium.

After the Tommy songs, there was a bit of a lull in the performance too when they played lesser known numbers such as Eminence Front (from 1982's It's Hard), Imagine A Man (a song, from The Who By Numbers, that Roger said was one of his faves, it was a bit boring in a stadium setting though) and a new number called Hero Ground Zero (does this mean a new Who album is on the way? Who knows!).

Thankfully things got a lot better when the orchestra retreated from the stage to leave the band to perform a bunch of tunes the best way they know how: as a good old fashioned rock band. We got some real classics in the segment: Join Together, Substitute, The Seeker and an acoustic Won't Get Fooled Again (which I must admit I was disappointed they didn't rock out on but it was interesting to hear another take on the song). There were also some great mod-inspired visuals for these songs, which included lots of pics of late band members Keith Moon and John Entwistle, which was nice. Before bringing back the rest of the orchestra they first brought back the string section to play Behind Blue Eyes, which actually worked pretty well.

Could I have been any further away? No, the answer is no. That is The Who though, believe me.

After Pete Townshend played a recent solo track, Guantanamo, the band gave us a fantastic section showcasing the best of the album Quadrophenia, which actually worked brilliantly with the full orchestra, I guess because there is a lot of strings on the actual album. There was The Real Me, The One, The Punk & The Godfather (which, tah dah!, Eddie Vedder was brought on to sing with Roger and did a fine job, it must be said), 5:15, Drowned (which Pete played acoustically), The Rock and best of all, the magnificent Love Reign O'er Me, which incredibly seemed to fill whole of the stadium and we didn't even notice that it had started raining.

The perfect ending to it all came, of course, with the truly anthemic Baba O'Riley, which is a song that you can't help feeling the joy of life when hearing it, especially live with thousands of people singing along. There was no way to top it and thankfully they didn't try, ending the show with no encore. Sometimes it's fun to have an encore, sometimes it's incredibly fake, sometimes it's so much more punk rock not to have one and sometimes, like this, it's simply not necessary. Anything more would have been a comedown.

Throughout the show Pete Townshend kept thanking us for coming to the show, for saving up our hard earned cash (in my case not relevant) to buy a ticket, and how they appreciated it and knew that was a big thing. With tickets as expensive as they were, you do wonder how genuine it all was but, given their backgrounds, particularly Roger (who is a real working class lad), I would hope they did appreciate it. If nothing else though, they certainly did their best to give their money's worth and although in one of the worst venues in town, I did come away feeling good, in only the way that great music can make you feel. So thanks Roger and thanks Pete. And most of all, thank you The Who.