Friday 19 April 2013

‘Live at Hull 1970’ (Polydor) – The Who - CD Review



A recent release by The Who on Polydor is their ‘Live at Hull’ double album recorded on 15th February 1970. Originally intended for release back in 1970, the master tapes revealed that the mobile studio unit hadn’t picked up the bass guitar on the first 6-songs, leading to their gig of their previous evening in Leeds being used for the now legendary ‘Live at Leeds’ LP.

With the original tapes of the Hull gig re-examined, baked to prevent oxidisation, and the music transferred to a digital format, the album went through a restoration process that included, effectively, the cut and paste of the bass guitar from the Leeds show to make the Hull recordings complete. And on playback, the Hull show was found to be very impressive indeed.

Back in 1970, after extensively touring ‘Tommy’ around the world, The Who were as tight as a drum and as good a ‘live’ attraction as you were likely to see back then. So what do we get with this new release? The Who in all of their pomp and glory of that time, ripping through their regular set opener, ‘Heaven and Hell’, before launching into debut single, ‘I Can’t Explain’. The usual set of the time was followed in ‘Fortune Teller’, ‘Tattoo’, ‘Young Man Blues’ (somewhat heavier than Mose Allison did it!), ‘Substitute’, ‘Happy Jack’, ‘I’m A Boy’, ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’, ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’ and an almost 16 minute version of ‘My Generation’.  

But that’s not all – CD 2 features a 20-song ‘Tommy’ set meaning that you really do get value for money with this release.

Although somewhat heavy in places for some of the purists on the scene (you have to remember, this was 1970 and a long way on (musically) from 1965), this is a fabulous bonus for fans of The Who who’d always wondered what the originally intended Hull release was like, and a great companion to the ‘Live at Leeds’ album that we’ve known for all these years.

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