“Darling, they’re playing our song . . .”
A week before the release of Live At Leeds, The Who played Eliot College Dining Room, University of Kent, on Saturday May 16, 1970. Capacity around 600. It would be the last University pick-up gig they would play before the big American money rolled in and made such intimate appearances redundant.
Published lists give the date of this gig as Friday May 8 but that show appears to have been cancelled and rescheduled for the 16th.
“THE two hour performance given by The Who on Saturday night must rate as one of the most memorable events ever to take place at U.K.C. The total effect of the volume of sound, musical violence and the sheer brilliance of The Who, seemed to leave the campus stunned and drained of energy for days afterwards.”
The reviewer was genuinely beside himself and the occasion deemed significant enough for the student paper, InCant, to devote a whole page to the review. The uncredited photographs are the best that the paper ran of any of the many live events at the University.
Two attendees of the show took a little pause and moved past immediate impressions to give voice to what would become The Who’s defining characteristic post-Tommy, nostalgia
InCant (June 17, 1970)
“the whole evening was pervaded with an air of unreality, an air which surely is present at a Judy Garland comeback or an Alamein reunion, where the audience sit on the edge of their seats waiting for ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow ‘or ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’.”
But if the sense that The Who were trapped by their own history and the demands of their audience, a bigger concern was with rock’s solipsistic turn:
“The mistake so many progressive groups make is to ‘intellectualise’ their music, to make it intricate for intricate’s sake”.
Ann Le Sauvage and David Rooney’s final point in their letter perfectly encapsulated the state of play:
"The Who seemed an image from the past simply because they played to and for their audience and not for themselves; the fact that this is a point at all, illustrates completely our disillusionment with today's popular music”.
Third generation rock and roll could not come soon enough. . . but meanwhile you could play pinball
“Playing pinball is a challenge to modern society. It is man versus machines. You try and beat the machine”.
“Playing the machine is a good analogy with life. You lose most of the time, but you do get occasional replays”.
“I think you find mainly scientists using the machines – they are more neurotic and that’s why they play”.
InCant (March 18, 1970)