The pre-sale for the U.S. dates have ended, however there are still some great VIP packages available. To purchase your VIP packages or tickets, just click on the link below.
DATE LOCATION TICKETS / PACKAGES Oct. 21 Palace of Auburn Hills Detroit, MI Buy Now Oct. 22 Copps Coliseum Hamilton, Ontario Buy Now Oct. 24 TD Banknorth Garden Boston, MA Buy Now Oct. 26 Wachovia Center Philadelphia, PA Buy Now Oct. 28 Mohegan Sun Arena Uncasville, CT Buy Now Oct. 29 Izod Center East Rutherford, NJ Buy Now Oct. 31 The Borgata Atlantic City, NJ Buy Now Nov. 03 Verizon Center Washington, DC Buy Now Nov. 8 Nokia Theatre Los Angeles, CA Buy Now Nov. 9 Nokia Theatre Los Angeles, CA Buy Now Nov. 13 Osaka Castle Hall Osaka, Japan Buy Now Nov. 14 Yokohama Arena Yokohama, Japan Buy Now Nov. 16 Saitama Super Arena Saitama, Japan Buy Now Nov. 17 Budokan Tokyo, Japan Buy Now
The Who thank members of thewho.com with two intimate Christmas shows. Get your tickets today!
Harvey Goldsmith today announced that legendary rockers The Who are playing two intimate shows at indigO2 on Sunday/Monday, 14th/15th December as a thank you to the members of thewho.com.
Tickets for these very special shows are only available to Official Wholigans (fanclub members) via the band's website, http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vYy5pbGlrZS5jb20vZnN0YXRfY2xpY2sucGhwP2E9MCZhbXA7YyZhbXA7aD1mMTkzMzExY2E2NzY4MWUzZjM2NWZmNjg0NjJmNTJmOCZhbXA7aT0xMTk4MCw2LDIzMTcyMjMyMiZhbXA7dT1odHRwJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LnRoZXdoby5jb20=
They will go on sale 11AM Friday 24th October and are priced Kings Row £75 (very limited number), Balcony seated £45, Floor standing £45.
PLEASE NOTE: There are a limited number of tickets, which will be sold to fanclub members on a ‘first come first served' basis.
IN ORDER TO PREVENT THESE TICKETS FROM SELLING ON THE SECONDARY MARKET, TICKETS WILL BE PROTECTED BY PASSCODES.
ONLY THE NAMED FAN TO WHOM THE PASSCODE HAS BEEN ISSUED IS ELIGIBLE TO PURCHASE TICKETS USING THIS PASSCODE AND THEIR CREDIT/DEBIT CARD IN THEIR NAME.
THE TICKETS PURCHASED USING THE PASSCODE ARE NON TRANSFERABLE. THERE IS A STRICT LIMIT OF 2 TICKETS PER PERSON PER CREDIT CARD IN TOTAL ACROSS BOTH DATES.
ON THE DAY OF THE CONCERT, TO GAIN ENTRY TO THE VENUE, EACH ORIGINAL PURCHASER MUST PROVIDE THE ACTUAL CREDIT/DEBIT CARD USED FOR THE PURCHASE ALONG WITH VALID PHOTOGRAPHIC ID.
Join thewho.com and get VIEW FROM A BACK STAGE PASS. This live double CD comes with a 24 page colour booklet. The tracks are taken from the 1969 to 1976 era. You also get the ‘Official Wholigan' t-shirt. Both gifts are exclusive only to members of thewho.com and cannot be purchased anywhere else.
Celebrating the release of Maximum R&B Live double DVD as well as the Deluxe Edition of the classic album The Who Sell Out, we are challenging you to THE WHO WINDMILL CONTEST. This will give you the chance to create and upload videos showing your best imitation of Pete Townshend's famous windmill guitar motion to a special YouTube page.
The grand prize winner, selected by a panel of judges, will receive a Fender Stratocaster, personally signed by Pete Townshend! 25 runners-up will win a copy of Maximum R&B Live, and other prizes.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER
(NOTE: you must be a UK or US resident to participate.)
One (1) grand prize winner will win a red Fender® American Standard Stratocaster® guitar, signed by Pete Townshend!
Five (5) second prize winners will win a special merch pack including, a Rock Band 2 game, the new Maximum R&B Live DVD and a classic Who target t-shirt.
Twenty (20) runners up will win the new Maximum R&B Live 2-DVD deluxe set.
You can use any type or make of guitar, broom, tennis racket, or even a Rock Band guitar. You can even play air guitar. But please make sure you make it a “Quick One”! Your submission must be 30 seconds or less.
All entries must be submitted by midnight, June 21st. Winners will be chosen and notifed by July 8th.
Exclusive access to tickets and VIP packages for the Detroit and Boston shows begin this Wednesday, Aug. 6 at 10AM local venue time. The pre-sale will end this Sunday at 5PM local venue time.
CLICK HERE FOR DETROIT TICKETS & PACKAGES
CLICK HERE FOR BOSTON TICKETS & PACKAGES
The presale and packages are for members of thewho.com only, so make sure you SIGN-UP TODAY.
ANNOUNCING THE WHO TOUR - USA FALL 2008
The Who will be touring the USA this fall. The full tour is below.
Oct. 21 Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit, MI
Oct. 22 Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario
Oct. 24 TD Banknorth Garden, Boston, MA
Oct. 26 Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, PA
Oct. 28 Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT
Oct. 29 Izod Center, East Rutherford, NJ
Oct. 31 The Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ
Nov. 3 Verizon Center, Washington, DC
Nov. 8 Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
Nov. 9 Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
Thewho.com will be offering an exclusive fanclub presale as well as special VIP packages.
Pre-sale and packages for the Los Angeles shows will be available starting today, July 14, and will run until July 20th at 5:00PM PDT.
Pre-sales for Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT and The Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ will begin this Wed., July 16 at 10:00AM EDT.
TThe presale and VIP packages are for members of thewho.com only, so make sure you SIGN-UP TODAY.
GET MORE DETAILS & FAQs
The Who on iLike - Add iLike to your MySpace
There's a great new deal for all Who fans at thewho.com, the band's official website. If you don't wish to spend money on a subscription, there's total access to all areas of the site. This means free access to videos, exclusive interviews, communications with and from Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, the band and various members of the extended Who 'family', access to the forums. There's never a dull moment among the Wholigan community!
All you have to do is register, free of charge. REGISTER NOW
Just fill out the form and press 'Join Now'... That's it! FOR NEW MEMBERS
There's also a great new offer if you wish to subscribe to 'The Who Live Club'. You pay $50 for your first year of membership and receive the double CD 'View From a Backstage Pass,' access to ticket pre-sales if/when the band go on tour, as well as a personalized email account, 'yourname@thewho.com'. JOIN TODAY
Once you fill out the form, complete the transaction in the shopping cart.
FOR RENEWING SUBSCRIBERS
If you're coming to the end of your current annual subscription to thewho.com, you can RENEW for just $40 and receive membership of The Who Live Club plus an exclusive full colour Fillmore-style poster.
Please note that if you're renewing, you will not receive the double CD 'View From A Backstage Pass'. You've already got it! SIGN IN AND RENEW NOW
Once logged in, your renewal link will be located on the homepage.
The Who on iLike - Add iLike to your MySpace View the original article here
John Entwistle died just eight years ago this past June, but I didn’t think about it until the other day. That is what it is like when you begin to grow older; this death thing means a little less to you every year, probably because so many of your friends have already gone.
John Entwistle (in a photo on right which I took) was a very peculiar man for a rock artist, especially as a member of a major rock group, one of the most successful rock bands of all time. You wouldn’t have known it to talk to him because, quite frankly, he would say anything. To put it bluntly, he was not the band’s publicist. He was, however, extremely proud to be a member of the group. It was the kind of pride you normally see in members of sports teams. He was a character.
Once in Nuremberg we were sitting outside this restaurant and apparently, some idiot from a “New Wave” band had called The Who “dinosaurs” in some obscure British pop magazine and somehow it had gotten back to John. Maybe it was because he was in a bad mood or it might have been because The Who were closing for a number of “New Wave” bands in a performance that night. But he just blew up.
“People don’t go out to see those fu***** bands,” he said loudly. (I’m quoting from the article I wrote at the time.) “Why do you think these so-called fans are even bothering to show up for their pathetic gig? They’re not coming out tonight to see them. They’re coming to see the bloody Who.”
Most people remember John for that “tire-over-a-bumpy-road” bass line in “Talking ’Bout My Generation,” written by his band mate Peter Townshend. But he was more than that. And though sometimes his frenzied bass would irritate Peter, even he had to admit that John was really not playing the bass like one would normally play the bass. John was playing the bass as one would play a lead guitar. And that was hard to do. In fact, it gave The Who a unique sound. If you had never heard the song before and it suddenly came over the radio, you almost immediately knew it was The Who. John’s sound was a big part of that.
But they were all equally over the top with talent. Roger Daltrey had this made-for-rock n’ roll voice, this prototype of a rock voice, that singers still try to copy today, but can’t. Peter could play the hell out of a guitar creating sounds that it might take two guitarists playing simultaneously to make. He was also a moving performer, who seemed to conduct the band, sometimes almost as an afterthought. Then there was Keith Moon, the most bombastic rock drummer in history. All arms, elbows and sticks. While playing the drums, he looked as though he might fly apart at any minute - into maybe a million pieces.
But all that was back in the good old days, before Keith Moon died, before Peter disappeared into his own solo work. Before the band got depressed.
Their road manager was Bill Curbishley back then. He was different than most road managers. He was actually a gentleman - he was even funny. As a rock critic you are always following bands around. It is easy to do in Europe. In fact, they follow you around over there, because they want publicity in English. But it’s another thing in America, where the competition to cover a band can be quite exhausting. I always knew the hotels Bill stayed at, though, so I could usually get him on the line. And he was always polite to a fault.
Once I got him staying in New York City. He was glad I had called and I couldn’t figure out why. “Remember that incident in Cincinnati at the Coliseum, “ he asked. I told him I did. It was pretty well known that back in 1979 The Who had played the Coliseum, which apparently wasn’t ready to handle the crowds The Who could draw. Fans crushed other fans in their anxiousness to get inside. Eleven people died, two dozen were injured. And Peter Townshend was extremely upset. In fact he gave serious thought to never playing in large venues like that ever again. The incident happened because of a method they used in filling those venues - it was basically first come, first seated, so the pressure was on the fan to get into the building and into a good seat. The results were often tragic. They don’t do that anymore.
So, back to Curbishley, “Now Peter’s paranoid about every place we play, especially these old places like the Boston Garden,” he told me. This conversation took place back when the Garden really was old. I said, “Then play the Centrum, you’ll make less money but it’s a brand new venue (It was at the time), probably has better safety features.”
And that was that. I was sure the band would look at the number of fans they could get into the Garden vs. the number that would fit in the Centrum, and they’d choose the Garden. But no. Peter was adamant and they were booked into the much smaller Worchester Centrum. Townshend wasn’t just kidding when he said he didn’t want to see anything like that (The Coliseum tragedy) ever happen again.
One of Bill’s Curbishley’s greatest assets was his relationship with Peter, who oftentimes wouldn’t even come out of his hotel room unless the building was burning to the ground. Townshend would sit in his room and write songs. That is what he did best, and that is all he wanted to do on most occasions. Bill could talk to Peter, he could reason with him. And this was important because in many ways Peter was The Who. He held it all together. It was, in many respects, his artistic vision played out on stage with three other guys with whom he liked to argue.
Kenny Jones was a drummer with the group Faces and the group Small Faces, and then one night Peter Townshend called him, told him The Who would tour Europe soon and would he like to be the drummer. At the time Kenny thought it was a joke. How the hell was he going to play like the slightly deranged, late Keith Moon? But Kenny was good. Really Good. Ringo Starr’s son plays drums for them now.
One night after the band’s sound check, I was sitting with John up on some scaffolding on which a tremendously large Who insignia was printed. He was talking a lot. This was back in the days when the band didn’t even show up for a show at the same time. They didn’t hang out together either.
“I think Peter has to write us some good songs,” John said without even looking at me. “It seems like he’s been saving all the good ones for his solo albums and we get the rejects.” I didn’t say anything. Entwistle would tell you what was on his mind, especially if he was in a bad mood. He might even be wrong, which I think he was in this case, but he’d tell you how he felt.
Down below us The Who laser show was being played to check for glitches before the actual performance, when out of nowhere, John said, “I hate those fuc**** lasers."
John Entwistle - just telling you how he really felt
| PETE TOWNSHEND | ROCK BAND | ROGER DALTREY | THE WHO Videos
Harmonix threw the hottest and most exclusive party of the E3 conference on Wednesday night at L.A.’s Orpheum Theater. The “Rock Band Bash” concert celebrated Harmonix’s upcoming “Rock Band 2″ game and featured a private concert by one of the band’s included in the game’s updated tracklist — The Who.
When we went to pick up our tickets at the MTV Games E3 showroom late Wednesday afternoon, a line of hopeful concertgoers snaked around the entrance. But their dreams were dashed moments later as their names weren’t on on the exclusive “invite-only” guest list that included “24″ star Kiefer Sutherland and AC/DC drummer Chris Slade.
It was clear we had one of the most coveted tickets in town.
Concertgoers had a chance to try out the new “Rock Band 2″ game before showtime. About twenty minutes before the concert started, there was a mad sprint to grab the perfect seat. But the Orpheum wasn’t packed by any means, which made it almost like a private concert with the Who.
Bragging rights aside, the experience was priceless. Red party cups (yes, the same ones that can be found at any college kegger party) in hand, the audience filled with both young and old Who fans got to enjoy a two hour set. Band members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend rocked out to some of their biggest hits, including “My Generation” and “Pinball Wizard,” which the audience granted a standing ovation.
Townshend, like always, shredded it on the guitar, but also showed off his humorous side. He admitted to disliking the colors of the buttons on the guitar controller (green, red, yellow, blue and orange) and called out the Harmonix employee who designed it. Apparently pink, green and orange would work better, he said. Townshend even poked fun at Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and the recent launch of Aerosmith’s “Guitar Hero” edition, referring to it as “that other game.”
Of all the complaints hurled since Super Bowl Sunday at Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry for calling themselves The Who, doing a scary-uncle karaoke act to the music of their youth, and walking away with a hefty contribution to their overdue retirements, the one that baffles me most is the charge that they didn't belong there, that they are too old and irrelevant to deserve the most coveted slot on the most popular entertainment show in America. My son Jake, who, as a teenager a few years ago, so revered the anarchic hedonism of The Who (and its greatest exemplar, the band's late drummer Keith Moon) that he used Mooniac for his screen name, called me after the halftime show and said, "They shouldn't have done it--they're embarrassing now. They could have played at Super Bowl I!" He has the dates right: By 1967 (to Super Bowl fans, XLIII years ago), the Who had been performing for three years and were established rock hit-makers. They had already released three albums--most recently, The Who Sells Out--and they had already begun to turn their notorious, theatrically destructive stage act into a kind of semi-ironic self-parody. Indeed, The Who sold out three decades before the 2010 Super Bowl, on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” As we see in the YouTube clips, the band takes part in some scripted TV schtick with Tommy Smothers, lip-synchs and stage-plays "My Generation,"
and ends with the once-shocking smashing of instruments. Rock and roll legend has it that the explosion at the end was the result of a prank by Keith Moon, who supposedly bribed a stage hand to amp up the planned smoke effects with more combustibles, and Townshend later said that his progressive hearing loss began with that boom. Forty-three years later, "My Generation" is the title of a PBS "lifestyle" program for people over fifty, which happened to air in many markets on the same Sunday night that the Who showed why they are an absolutely ideal act for the Super Bowl: slick as a bank commercial, synthetically bombastic, and essentially unchanged since 1967.
THE WHO'S GREATEST HITS and GREATEST HITS LIVE are now available Worldwide.
THE WHO'S GREATEST HITS and GREATEST HITS LIVE are now available Worldwide.
Also, a new Double CD set, GREATEST HITS AND MORE, has just been released and is available in all territories except for the U.S..
THE WHO'S GREATEST HITS AND MORE Track listing:
CD1
1. Baba O'Riley / Original Version
2. Behind Blue Eyes / Original Album Version
3. Eminence Front
4. Happy Jack / Single Version
5. I Can See For Miles
6. I Can't Explain / Original Mono Version
7. It's Not Enough
8. Love Reign O'er Me / Single Version
9. Magic Bus / Original Stereo Version
10. My Generation / Original Mono Version
11. Pictures Of Lily
12. Pinball Wizard / Original Album Version
13. Real Good Looking Boy
14. Squeeze Box
15. Substitute / Single Version
16. The Kids Are Alright / Edit Mono Version
17. Who Are You / Single Edit
18. Won't Get Fooled Again / Original Album Version
19. You Better You Bet / Album Version
CD2
1. I Can’t Explain (Live at San Francisco Civic Auditorium 1971)
2. Substitute (Live At San Francisco Civic Auditorium 1971)
3. Happy Jack (Live at City Hall, Hull 1970)
4. I’m A Boy (Live At City Hall, Hull 1970)
5. Behind Blue Eyes (Live At San Francisco Civic Auditorium 1971)
6. Pinball Wizard (Live In Swansea 1976)
7. I’m Free (Live In Swansea 1976)
8. Squeeze Box (Live In Swansea 1976)
9. Naked Eye / Let’s See Action / My Generation (Medley) (Live At Charlton Athletic FC 1974)
10. 5.15 (Live At The Capital Centre, Largo 1973)
11. Won’t Get Fooled Again (Live At The Capital Centre, Largo 1973)
12. Magic Bus (Live At Leeds University 1970)
13. My Generation (Live At The BBC 1965)
14. A Man In A Purple Dress (Live At Nassau Coliseum 2007)
15. Who Are You (Live At Universal Amphitheatre 1989)
16. The Kids Are Alright (Live At Royal Albert Hall 2002)
The Who on iLike - Add iLike to your MySpace View the original article here
