I’m listening to a book at the moment by David Hepworth, who, in his study of 1971 and why he reckons it was the greatest year in rock and roll, makes a pretty bold claim. The Who, he argues, were the best band of that year. “Baba O’Riley” was the best song. And, more than that, between 1968 and 1972, they were the best live band on earth.
He goes even further. No band, he suggests, has ever really got close to them since.
Part of his argument rests on the fact that the four of them — Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon — made a noise bigger than four people had any right to make. No one sounded louder, wilder, more dangerous. These days, of course, The Who cannot be that band. How could they be? They are augmented now, and here, deliberately so, by the Central England Orchestra, who accompany them through a career-spanning set that makes full use of the scale of the surroundings.
I have seen The Who do one of these orchestral shows before, at Wembley, just before the pandemic, and that night was a little patchy. This, though, is different. At the Eden Project they sound reinvigorated.
The opening run leans heavily into Tommy, and “Overture”, “1921”, “Amazing Journey”, “Sparks”, “The Acid Queen”, “Pinball Wizard” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It” gain a depth and sweep from the orchestra. These are songs already built for drama, but with strings swelling behind them, they become something grander, something closer to the widescreen rock opera they always threatened to be.
There are a couple of changes, too, that work better than you might expect. Pete Townshend claims “Eminence Front” as the best song of The Who’s middle period and sings it himself, joking that writing the songs became trickier because Roger Daltrey didn’t bother. There is still nobody better than Daltrey, though, at singing the songs that started it all.
When the orchestra leaves and it is just the band, the show becomes a journey through the decades. “The Kids Are Alright”, “You Better You Bet”, “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”, “Substitute” and “I Can’t Explain” all land with the force of reminders. This was a band that once played anywhere and everywhere, and the spirit of that is still here, even on the grand scale of the Eden Project.
“My Generation” and “Cry If You Want” are worked together into a jam that gives the set a looser, rougher edge, while “Won’t Get Fooled Again” still sounds like it should be the song of defiance for every age. It remains enormous. That scream, that synth pulse, that sheer refusal to bow down: some songs just do not date.
The orchestra returns for the final stretch, and “Behind Blue Eyes”, “The Real Me”, “I’m One” and “5:15” all underline the thing that sometimes gets overlooked. The Who have the songs. Brilliant, brilliant songs. Among the holy trinity of 60s British rock — The Beatles, The Stones and The Who — they are perhaps the ones most easily forgotten, or at least most often pushed slightly to the side. That really should not be the case.
“The Rock” gives way to “Love, Reign O’er Me”, and yes, Daltrey’s voice is not what it was in the 60s or 70s. Why would it be? But it holds up remarkably well, and more importantly, he still knows how to inhabit these songs. He still understands where the power is.
Then comes “Baba O’Riley”, the song Hepworth talks about, the song that seems to contain youth, escape, rage, beauty and possibility all at once. It closes the set in exactly the way it should: huge, communal, and still oddly moving after all these years.
The Who cannot be the four-headed monster they once were. Nobody should expect them to be. But what this show proves is that the songs remain monumental, and Townshend and Daltrey can still play them with more authority than anyone else possibly could.
At the Eden Project, The Who did not need to prove they were once the best live band in the world. They proved something more useful: they still matter.
Rating: 8/10
