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When Katie Jacoby was 15, she emailed The Who asking to perform the violin solo in “Baba O’Riley” at their upcoming show at the Wachovia Center in 2007. While Jacoby never received a response, 15 years later she plays the solo with the band every night. The B-Side had the pleasure of speaking with Jacoby before The Who’s show at the San Jose SAP Center on October 24th.
I was classically trained when I was young, really on this path of playing strictly classical music: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky…but when I was in junior high, I got bit by the rock and roll bug and knew this is what I wanted to do on the violin.It started out with trying to learn Black Sabbath riffs on my violin. And around that same time, I got an electric violin as well and plugged it into the guitar amp and just made it as loud as possible to destroy the peace in the household. But it was a time of discovery with a lot of classic bands like Black Sabbath, Metallica, The Who, those three were huge for me.
"The past year was certainly a difficult and truly tragic period for many people, recalls Katie, I have done my best to stay positive and productive here in my home in Brooklyn, New York City. I found it a bit difficult to write music during such a devastating year, but I enjoyed building my own home recording studio and tinkering with equipment and software."
"Being around musicians like Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend is truly an invaluable opportunity to see what it means to be a professional musician. I have to pinch myself regularly. It's all very surreal. I enter any musical situation with an open mind ready to learn."
"To play with The Who is absolutely spectacular! To be honest, the experience is something that I will continue to develop for the rest of my life. These guys invented rock as we know it today. Their performances are fierce and being at the center of all the energy on stage is something that cannot be expressed in words."
"I grew up as a Who fan! I initially became a fan of the band after hearing the song "Baba O'Riley" for the first time and immediately fell in love with the rest of the band's catalog."
"The fact that a classic rock anthem like "Baba O'Riley" included a violin solo absolutely astounded me. I learned this solo when I was a teenager, so it's something I've been playing for most of my life, which makes it even more special and meaningful to have been able to work with the Who."
"My parents are also fans of the Who. They were initially shocked when I started playing rock music on the violin after years of studying classical music as a child."
