The Book is not in the stores, only purchase by Amazon or others. By Edoardo Genzolini and Foreword by Joel Selvin.
The majority of the 1968 photos are from the lens of Douglas Kent Hall, who shot the band both onstage and in more casual backstage/hotel settings. An especially informative essay on the band’s “years between” lead into the 1976 shows, by which time the band had ascended into the highest level of rock bands in terms of popularity and acclaim.
Generally considered as two marginal years in the Who’s career, they are only apparently so. These two years represent a screen grab of the band taken in its purest form: live, and harder than ever, right before and right after the huge success the Who struggled to live with in the years between.
Winterland was the perfect setting to see the band live in the city that welcomed them as a second home, San Francisco. At the Who’s first Winterland show in February 1968, just a few hundred hippies turn up.
In March 1976, the venue is crammed to capacity—5,000 tickets are sold. Still, as the Examiner noted, “The Who could have sold eight times as many,” since 43,000 requests for tickets were sent! This all-access look at those two shows is a glimpse of what it was like to see the Who at Bill Graham’s legendary concert venue, and features firsthand accounts and previously unpublished photos by fans at the shows, as well as details the band behind the scenes and onstage.
The RpmOnline review: This super glossy 250-plus-page hardback book documents The Who at Winterland in fabulous technicolour.
There are few words in what is pretty much a pictorial record of the late 60s and mid-70s Who and some of these pictures captured are incredible. On and off stage There is no denying the Who were a very visual band full of larger-than-life characters who knew from very early on the power of what you looked like as much as what you sounded like.
In the opening pages strewn with some cool backstage pics, there are transcripts of long-lost interviews with people like Buck Munger who was Sunn Amps director.
Also recollections from people who were there who commented on just how life-changing it was being at the front of a stage when The Who started to play and the volume they attacked the songs with. All Fascinating stuff from an era of music and performance that is being lost or forgotten.
Plenty of backstage pics of The Ox smiling and laughing in the company of Moon The Loon. Backstage black and white montages take you right back and indulge the reader in the visual mood but it’s the often blurry frantic live shots that are most interesting capturing a band in full flight as they smash through their set with power and as much bluster as they can summon.
Chapter six covers the intervening years between the main focus of the two dates. For a photographer to be given access to The photographer’s pit in front of Townsend must have been a fantastic experience regardless of Daltrey’s showmanship and Moon’s flamboyant performances it has to be Townsend who wins the prize for some of the best photos of the late 60s and 70s live shots and this book certainly captures dozens and dozens of them for you to revel in at your leisure. The latter date this book focuses on is that of a quite different Who but one that was no less visual and the pictures taken behind the band looking down from a lofty position are different and offer another perspective.
All in all a fascinating book with hundreds of pictures and just the right amount of background and accompanying words capturing a perfect snapshot of a time when music was fresh and exciting and one of the world’s biggest bands evolving before your very eyes and wonderfully captured by some very talented photographers in a club that would have been such a memory. Buy it, It is a book of real beauty and worth every penny.
