Photo: Press
The Festival D’Ete in Quebec is fifty years old this year, and it’s been an event adored by North Americans since it first started. Growing bigger every year, it combines the cream of Canadian and American bands, and the top echelon of international touring artists. The Festival organisers are keen to attract more international audiences, so they use their drawing power to bring in bands the calibre of The Who, still a massive live draw in 2017, and nowhere more than in North America, their fiefdom during their seventies glory years.
For a band who were on their ‘farewell tour’ three years ago, The Who are in excellent health as they start yet another North American Tour on what is amazingly their first visit to the city of Quebec.
As one of the bigger names at the prestigious (and massive) Festival De-Ete in Quebec, the band play the vast Bell outdoor stage – the biggest mobile stage in North America, but Daltrey and Townend have been doing this long enough not to be overawed by the acreage of room they have to move in.
It’s a ‘greatest hits package’, as you’d expect from a band who first charted in the early 1960’s. Kicking off with I Can’t Explain, into The Seeker, Daltrey playing acoustic for Who Are You?, and the first ‘windmill’ guitar crash from Townsend.
The chat from the stage is minimal – a compliment on the city from Townsend, and into a crushing I Can See For Miles, and it dawns on everyone that the sound of The Who is anchored firmly in the sound of the late Keith Moon’s ceaseless pounding on the drums. These days, the drum stool is ably occupied by Moon’s godson Zak (son of Ringo) Starkey who completes a marathon of endless battering while barely breaking sweat.
Onwards with Join Together, You Better You Bet, and a shimmering 5.15 seeing the first microphone acrobatics from Daltrey. It’s when the band triumph with songs like Love Reign O’er Me that it hits home that Roger Daltrey is seventy-three years old – looks thirty years younger, and has the vocal range and power he had when he started in the band in the 1960’s. Those notes were hard then, there’s no reason to assume that time has made them easier, but Daltrey hits every one effortlessly.
The iconic Pinball Wizard is undimmed by age, 'See Me Feel' Me remains emotional, but it’s 'Baba O’Reilly', with Daltrey miming a junkie by wrapping his microphone chord round his arm and stabbing in an imaginary needle, that reminds the audience that Townsend’s work has always reflected the social conscience that has driven his creativity down the years.
The inevitable storming Won’t Get Fooled Again draws the set to a close, the curfew preventing an encore, if indeed there was one planned.
We are the first audience to have ageing pop stars – The Who’s contemporaries, young blades in the 1960’s are all of an age where most people are taking it seriously easy, not trawling around the world with accompanying musicians young enough to be their children, playing to audiences young enough to be their grandchildren. So they continue to break new ground – can sixties pop stars hack it in the new millennium? On the basis of a performance like this, the answer is clearly yes thank you.
There is no going through the motions here – both Daltrey and Townsend deliver their material with a level of commitment and stamina that is admirable by itself, but it’s the music that still matters.
The music that The Who have produced over their fifty-years-plus career is timeless – it’s impossible to date songs by sound or delivery, the hallmark of a classic band. So as they commence another journey through the cities of North America, don’t wonder why multi-millionaires decades past retirement age still do this – they are a band, it’s what they do. And if you received the level of adulation that the Festival D’Ete audience gave The Who at the end of their performance tonight, you’d probably still want to do it too – no-one could ever get enough of adoration like that.
With Metallica, Gorillaz, and Muse still to play on consecutive nights, the Festival D’Ete easily rivals Glastonbury in terms of pure value for money – music fans should seriously consider making Quebec their summer holiday destination, timed to take in the entire length of this iconic event – it’s time the rest of the world realised the delight of this musical experience, and the wonderful city of Quebec that is its home. If Foo Fighters, The Rolling Stones, Pink, Lionel Ritchie, The Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi (the who’s who of rock and pop stellar names goes on) make the trip out here, maybe you should too.
