Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The question remains, just how do you ever fully capture the live gig to the point where it matches in the mind the near mythical status that it has been placed in. An impossible task, almost perfected across time, but one that is rarely 100% conjoined with reality and your own perception of the event that took place.
It perhaps is easier to enjoy a release, no matter how old, when it out of the realms of most who weren’t even born when the album was released, or when the gig took place. To look back with nostalgia is one thing, to immerse yourself in the history of the moment is to seek out what made the band in question such a force of nature.
The recent release of The Who’s Filmore East gig from 1968 touches upon this, so few in Britain would have even had the opportunity to see the band perform in America at this time that the music performed on the C.D. is viewed with conscious enjoyment, far from nit-picking or obsessing over the intricate nature of the night or the absolute bombastic events, the listener is left with the beautiful false reminisce of an event they could not attend, they savour the bravery and madness of it all.
In albums such as the supposed legendary status of Live at Leeds, and the far superior Live at Hull releases, the attention is more immediate, cynical, scornful in some avenues, and yet still able to pull the attention of the listener in the right direction.
When it comes to the near mythical, the events you wish you could have attended for their sheer exuberance and fabled set-list, the mixture of feelings is often caught between the two states of appreciation, to hear the band perform at the home of Charlton Athletic is arguably a wish to far for many, the sheer confusion that surrounded Woodstock would be a garbled mess in comparison, and yet to the set that encompassed the appearance of the band at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, that is possibly the point where you would introduce the new fans to the destructive and beautiful force in which The Who’s four members collected.
The dog days of August 1970, one of the biggest bands that Britain has ever produced stepped out on stage and gave the world a lasting memory of some of their earlier hits and fan favourites, and a bountiful run through of Pete Townshend’s Rock Opera, Tommy.
It is in myths that we take comfort in, like the sword in the stone, or the once and future king, we revel in the marvel, and sometimes myths don’t disappoint, sometimes they capture a piece of your soul that you didn’t know required healing.
Across songs such as 1921, Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker), The Acid Queen, Pinball Wizard, Fiddle About and I’m Free, The Who dispel the thought that you must choose between Tommy and Quadrophenia as what is the absolute pinnacle of the band’s career, it is a live experience that really gets under the skin in a way that the studio album perhaps doesn’t capture and which the subsequent film barely hinted at.
The Who: Live At The Isle of Wight Festival 1970 is more than a live album, it goes beyond the Live at Leeds and Hull recordings, it is a statement that was followed through completely and with absolute conviction, and whilst the absence of a meaningful recording at Charlton Athletic will perhaps forever elude the fan, and that Woodstock was a creative step never to be repeated or fully framed, this stamp of authority, a muscle flexed and not released until the untimely passing of Keith Moon, is to be savoured and held as an account of great rock gigs available for all time.
Ian D. Hall