I cringed when I saw the 50% Who play the Superbowl halftime show. They should have packed it in over 30 years ago, rather than grinding on. If any band is forcefully diminished by the loss of its members, it's The Who. Few bands fused into a more powerful gestalt, where each member added something critical to their alchemy. I've written about it at length in a few places over the years, and the Superbowl performance only cements that perception. And I love The Who; the problem is that Daltrey and Townshend can't really pretend to be The Who by themselves. Not possible. And they know that, in truth. They know. I saw the 75% Who play in '89, and it was good enough, but it still wasn't The Who.
THIS was The Who...
One irony I did take from the Superbowl performance, however: no band was more English than The Who. They literally wore their Englishness on their shirtsleeves. There was even a nod to that in the setup last night, with the drummer with his RAF "target" cymbals and his cockeyed Union Jack shirt, and the LED stage lights playing at that a little. But it's an odd feature for such an American spectacle as the Superbowl, to have a band as quintessentially English as The Who play the halftime show. I don't know what, if anything, it means. Maybe they were willing to play for cheap or something. Not sure. But it was odd.
