The Who
London Royal Albert Hall
A week of charity shows gets a heavyweight opening night.
This year is the final year that Roger Daltrey will curate the annual Teenage Cancer Trust concerts at the Albert Hall, having helped raise £32 million for the charity over 24 years. And by the sound of the first of two opening nights of the week by The Who, he plans to take the building down with him.
As a full orchestra blazes into an opening segment consisting largely of the highlights from Tommy, already brazenly bombastic pieces like Overture, Amazing Journey and We’re Not Gonna Take It become monumental sonic edifices, while Pinball Wizard gets flippered through the back wall by power-chord horns.
Echoing their recent The Who Hits Back! tour, the show then gives way to a band-only hits segment, with The Kids Are Alright, My Generation and Substitute sounding impossibly lean and nimble 50 years on. On stage the surviving Who might bicker like snug-bar pensioners – Daltrey unable to see his set-list, Townshend having a problem with his “hearing aids”. But when Won’t Get Fooled Again hits a howling climax still worthy of ’72, they feel thoroughly undimmed and undiminished, even in their sixtieth year together. As the orchestra returns to light up a closing chunk of largely Quadrophenia songs – a rattling 5:15, a showstopping Love, Reign O’er Me – these are two phenomenal hours that prove age clearly has not withered The Who’s raw power.
Mark Beaumont
Rick Wakeman
London Theatre Royal
Capes! Keytars! Concept pieces! Rick plays a royal blinder.
With a sparkly-caped Wakeman flanked by his trusty decks of synths – and son Adam on supplementary keyboards and acoustic guitar – abouncy Roundabout is a cracking start to tonight’s show, with vocalist Mollie Marriott giving some R&B shimmy to the song. Her vocal edges into musical theatre, which is useful for the numbers in the second half of the set – a punchy rendition of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, and the slightly syrupy The Meeting, which is augmented by an impressive trio of semi-operatic backing vocalists.
It’s nice to sway along to and to fall into, and out of, dinosaur-concealing volcanoes, but what we really want istransportive prog grooves and towering encore Here’s where young drummer Adam Faulkner dishes out his best Alan White rock chops, and the whole band are having a terrific time; a joyful Lee Pomeroy delivering some Chris Squire-esque Rickenbacker pluck, Rock Ensemble mainstay Dave Colquhoun darting from chiming 12-string to sixstring guitar for some electric oomph, Marriott projecting with soulful welly.
