“You’re going to remember this for the rest of your lives,” Roger Daltrey promises, but not necessarily for the right reasons. The Who, as guitarist Pete Townshend explains, shrugging his way onto a stage that generally demands the most rigorous preparation, have rehearsed their stripped-down acoustic show for Daltrey’s annual Teenage Cancer Trust charity shows for “about two hours”, with a “thrown together” band of fiddle players, squeezeboxers and tub-thumpers. “It’s absolutely s***,” he admits.
He’s not joking, either. An early mimic of Taj Mahal and Keb Mo’s country blues cover of “Squeeze Box” falls apart several times amid knockabout disagreements over which key it should be in. The advertised “new ending” for “Pinball Wizard” doesn’t happen at all and Daltrey is knocked out of musical whack by malfunctioning in-ear monitors several times, even insisting on playing 2019’s “Break the News” twice to get it right.
