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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