The Who - Manchester Arena

Usual poor quality gig photos!

As soon as tickets became available for the latest Who tour I spent a couple of frustrated hours on Ticket Master, what a racket! I had no chance, so put it behind me. Luckily one of Andreas running friends had got spare tickets and was happy to let us have 3 at the cover price. The plan was to ask Jack with us, this would be his first gig, lucky lad. To be fair Jack has liked The Who as long as he's listened to music, Who's Next being his favourite Album.

The gig was a rendition of Quadraphenia followed by some favourite songs, we had all been listening to the album for a couple of weeks.

Finlay was shipped off to friends for a sleep over, we promised to get him toys to the value of the ticket, little gods. We made good time over to Manchester and parked at the shopping centre on Cheatham Hill, Jack wanted to GOTO Pizza Hut for tea, after we finished we jumped in the car and parked nearer the Arena in one the streets at the bottom of the hill. Within a couple of minutes we were in the arena, Jack was gob smacked by the size of everything, 20,000 seats still impresses me!

We sat through the warmup act, Vintage Trouble these guys were pretty good, if you're into Soul,  it was hard work for them, people had paid to see The Who, and no matter how they tried to get people engaged in their polished show it just wasn't happening for them.

After a short break the intro started, the sound of the sea. As soon as the band came on stage everyone stood up, this looked bad for Jack, to deal with this Jack stood on his chair, this made him slightly bigger than me, perfect!

The powerful base riff at the beginning of 'The Real Me' sent shivers down my spine. Time flew by and the stage show was pretty good. The circular screens projected lots of historic social and political video, starting back in WWII, not sure how much Jack understood of all this but it was okay, one or two references were a bit edgy, but in the main it worked well, there was not visuals from the film but this wasn't a problem.

My favourite song was '5.15' which featured John Entwistles wild base solo, projected onto the screens and perfectly synced with the live show.

Jack was getting pretty tired by the end of  Quadraphenia, when they came back on stage to play some of their other hits Jack was puffing and blowing, he did get his head around it when I explained that he'd probably never get this opportunity again.

Baba O'Riley was my favourite track from this part of the show. They didn't perform 'My Generation' which was okay, to be fair they are a bit old for this one! It was a petty they didn't do 'Behind Blue Eyes', but you can't have everything. The last song they played was 'Tea and Theatre' this rounded the evening off nicely.

Jack was happy to be heading home for a good nights sleep, he's got some great memories of his first gig. Lucky lad!