Make us the windmill! Pete Townshend, guitarist and songwriter from The Who, at the concert on the Berlin Waldbühne Photo: dpa/Carsten Koall
The British rock pioneers The Who gave their only German concert at the Berlin Waldbühne. Was the visit worth it? And which songs did Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and Co. play?
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The time has finally come for “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Pete Townshend does the windmill: Furiously, he circles his outstretched right arm, hitting the strings of his Stratocaster again and again and thus hitting the audience with rabid guitar chords. That was the trademark of The Who’s guitarist in the wild days of rock music. He often beat his fingers until they bled. At the concert on Tuesday on the Berlin Waldbühne, these windmill chords are more of a tongue-in-cheek self-quote. And nobody gets hurt.
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are no longer rock rebels
Much about the evening makes it clear that The Who no longer see fit to play the role of rebellious juvenile rock rebels. Guitarist Pete Townshend (78) and singer Roger Daltrey (79), who are the only ones left from The Who from back then, are accompanied by the Babelsberg Film Orchestra for two of the three parts of the concert, Not really Rock’n ‘Roll is also starting a gig so early (7:30pm) that it’s over before it even gets dark. And of course it’s a sign that The Who aren’t playing their first and probably still biggest hit: the 1965 song “My Generation,” which was the stubbornly stuttering Sturm und Drang anthem of all those who now play as Boomers tend to have a reputation for only caring about consistency.
But while The Who skip “My Generation,” they still venture on a few other early songs in the middle part of the concert, where the band does without an orchestra. “We’re playing some older pieces now, and we’re going to try to play them the way we played them when we were young,” says Townshend with his trademark laconicism. “We won’t get it right, but we’ll get there still make an effort.”
From “Substitutes” to “Baba O’Riley”
In fact, they actually pull it off pretty well. The way the band performed excerpts from the rock operas “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia” with the Babelsberg Film Orchestra before and after does have something, and the concert finale with “Baba O’Riley”, which already demonstrated in 1971, that rock’n’ Roll and synthesizer are no contradiction, comes to an end is terrific. But the middle part is the most exciting part of the evening.
For the first time ever on the tour, they play “The Kids Are Alright”, which, like “My Generation”, was a mod anthem and which in 2023 can still inspire with its sixties harmonies. In this part of the concert, the audience celebrates the live versions of the beat number “Substitute” and the ballad “Behind Blue Eyes”. And while Townshend plays the windmill guitar on “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, Daltrey twirls his microphone through the air on the cable – and you’re not quite sure whether he looks more like Dieter-Thomas Heck or Atze Schröder.
The Who: Setlist from the concert at the Berlin Waldbühne
With orchestra
Overture / 1921 / Amazing Journey / Sparks / The Acid Queen / Pinball Wizard / We’re Not Gonna Take It / Who Are You / Eminence Front
Without an orchestra
The Kids Are Alright / You Better You Bet / The Seeker / Substitute / Tattoo / Won’t Get Fooled Again / Behind Blue Eyes
With orchestra
The Real Me / I’m One / 5:15 / The Rock / Love, Reign O’er Me / Baba O’Riley