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After commenting on the review of the latest Who concerts in Italy, I’m adding this one to share my impression.
18 years later. The first reviewer probably won’t even read this, but I won’t hold back and want to add my experience.
I was at Elba for a pre-summer break; I’d already bought the tickets months before, and my girlfriend and I set off for Verona. Ferry and then highway, with heavy traffic near the Mantova outlet. We arrive with plenty of time to spare, park in the Arena’s underground lot. Tired but happy.
Wearing summer clothes and with no idea of the storm coming, we take our seats. Looking at the stage, we’re to the right, diagonal view of the stage—perfect. We’re on Townshend’s side, and also near us is Oskar from Statuto.
The opening band starts up, just as recalled, the Rose Hill Drive. Good, pretty good, heavy...like the incoming clouds. The mood is underestimated by everyone, and in hindsight, they should’ve/could’ve cut the opening band’s setlist. Because meanwhile, the clouds seem like the infernal horde, loaded with water and electricity, arriving from the southeast—they don’t want to miss the Who in Italy for anything. They hadn’t been here since the ‘60s.
As perfectly detailed in the previous review, they kick off with a bang—but just as fast, so does the rain. They stop, start again. The situation is unsustainable, and the rain reaches the stage. Towshend looks up several times, then at the crowd: This was supposed to be for you! ...he jokes... but maybe not entirely.
They go on and Daltrey’s voice cracks. At this point it looks like the concert’s over. Many people leave. We’re soaked, but decide to go back to the car, get our suitcases, change, and put on whatever we can to protect ourselves from the never-ending rain. We dress up in shopping bags and head back towards the arena. A guy sees us on the avenue, snaps our picture because we look like two refugees on the run.
We make it back in, pushing past those who say: they won’t restart anyway.
And yet, at over sixty years old, Towhshend reminds us why he’s up there on that stage, and why all those people have rushed from across Italy to see him. Verdone remembers it too in one of his stories—he was in the audience, right at the front.
For over an hour he shoulders the concert himself—playing, singing, giving it his all. At the end, with his last windmill move, even the shirt buttons fly off. A dinosaur who refuses to go extinct. Daltrey acts as his squire.
At the end of the show, we were exhausted, soaked, cold, but happy we’d been witnesses to this unlucky but incredible evening.
We headed back towards Parma. Zigzagging on the highways, at 2am, completely worn out, we pulled off near Brescia to sleep at a roadside rest stop. Got home around 4am. I slept at the office. Some older colleagues found out I’d been at the concert.
You went to the Who’s concert, how was it?
Incredible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSKwJNt2qU
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By silian87
The concert I attended last night was something real, like the air I was breathing, the images I was seeing, and the music I was hearing.
This was a real concert, made by musicians who don’t feel like betraying everyone and keep going, made up of a wonderful audience standing outside, taking the rain, made up of real people, made from the heart... the heart of The Who.
