Fabulous Magazine, 2nd October 1965

THE WHO, it is said, MUST be seen to be believed. JUNE SOUTHWORTH reports on the rather strange but exciting goings-on when a few thousand fans confronted THE WHO at The Richmond Jass & Blues Festival.

LOOK WHO'S HERE

    RICHMOND, 1965. So this is it, Britain's Newport. The jazz and blues people, in the most outlandish gear their cupboards can turn out, drift in to sit around me on the green turf of the Athletic Grounds, under the fairy lights and the sunset sky.
    The smell of hotdogs is everywhere, and somewhere in a marquee to our right someone is singing the blues. The Union Jacks around droop idly on to their masts, matching the stillness of the waiting crowds.
    Waiting for who?
    Someone raises a slight cheer as a National Jazz Federation official ambles on-stage to make an introduction. His name is Hamish, and everyone on the London club scene knows it. Casually, he brings on The Who.
     A few flash-bulbs go off as The Who set up, taking their time, exchanging jokes with Hamish and the fans they recognise in the audience. Film and TV cameramen slide into position. A girl wearing a Union Jack dress to match John Entwistle's jacket gives out a loud sigh, and everyone smiles.
    The group from The Marquee move into their first number Daddy Rolling Stone, classic r'n'b. A few of the bearded long-hairs around get up to dance with their blue-jeans girls. The Who look for their usual mod following among the Dylovan caps and Sonny and Cher couples. Finding the mods outnumbered, they move into more r'n'b before risking a couple of Martha and The Vandellas' big ones.
    People are beginning to move around me. They rhythm from the stage is hitting them now, and they can no more kep still than The Who can. Those who aren't dancing on their feet are doing the next best thing from a sitting position. Banners are being unfurled now, and although the evening air has grown cool, The Who are passing a Heatwave through the crowds.
    They are ding the oddest things on stage to achieve weirdly exciting "feedback" noises. While Pete Townshend rams the head of his guitar into the nearest amplifier, Roger Daltrey swings the mike round his head like a lasso, pushes it back into the stand, then plunges the whole unit at Keith Moon's offside cymbal. There is a sparking and a grinding and a screeching. Keith shatters a drumstick, tosses it aside, and brings the other crashing down on his remaining cymbal.
    John bashes out bass sounds and looks as if he's wondering what it's all about.
     Everyone is on their feet now, and when Roger says clap all the arms go up over the heads and the hands clap. Roger says shout and everyone shouts, shouts, shouts. And if Roger were to tell his audience to join him on stage they would do it. For there is something about The Who that is strangely hypnotic. The sound, the look and the mood.
    The way they move onstage is completely natural. If they feel like waving their seats at the audience they do it, knowing that it's a joke between friends. They believe in their music, but they don't force an appreciation of it on to their audience. It's there if you want to enjoy it. And that's where they score.
    The festival authorities, worried about the effect of all this excitement, send security men with walkie-talkie sets scurrying across the area to report any unusual activity. But most of the unusual activity is centered on the stage where The Who are winding up Anyway Anyhow Anywhere.
    A final crash of cymbals and whine of "feedback" and The Who are gone. The dancing and the raving goes with them, and the thousands of newly-converted Who fans wind out of The Grounds and off down the road to Richmond Station, leaving only a litter of hotdog wrappers and a blue smoke haze losing itself in the black sky.
    The stars are coming out now, bout they don't shine as brightly as that super constellation they call The Who.

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