Product Description

In 1970, 600,000 people came to the Isle of Wight to attend a music festival. At 2 A.M., August 30th, The Who appeared and gave one of the most memorable performances of their career.

LISTENING TO YOU: THE WHO AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT captures the only complete live performance of The Who's legendary rock opera "Tommy" ever recorded. It is also one of the last times the band played this classic album in its entirety on stage.

Track Listing:
1. Heaven And Hell
2. I Can't Explain
3. Young Man Blues
4. I Don't Even Know Myself
5. Water
6. Shakin' All Over
7. Spoonful/Twist And Shout
8. Summertime Blues
9. My Generation
10. Magic Bus
11. Overture
12. It's A Boy
13. Eyesight To The Blind (The Hawker)
14. Christmas
15. The Acid Queen
16. Pinball Wizard
17. Do You Think It's Alright
18. Fiddle About
19. Go To The Mirror
20. Miracle Cure
21. I'm Free
22. Tommy's Holiday Camp
23. We're Not Gonna Take It

BONUS FEATURE: An exclusive 30 minute interview with Pete Townshend!

RESTORED! REMIXED!! REMASTERED!!!
Under the expert supervision of Who guitarist Pete Townshend and director Murray Lerner, this historic film has been completely restored, remixed, and remastered to an astonishing level that needs to be seen and heard to be believed!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54912 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-08-10
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Full Screen, Live, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.com
Culled from a historic three-hour performance at the Isle of Wight Festival, the English response to Woodstock, this 85-minute Who performance captures the quartet's vivid, dramatic stage presence while gamely wrestling with technical problems and musical lapses dictated by the relatively combat conditions of the show. The 1970 show reflects a band in transition, starting with a raw and lively set of early Pete Townshend classics ("I Can't Explain," "My Generation," "Magic Bus"), familiar concert covers ("Summertime Blues," "Young Man Blues," and "Shakin' All Over/Spoonful"), and a then new, post-Tommy original, "Water," that surprisingly evokes Neil Young's contemporaneous midtempo epics with Crazy Horse.

The bulk of the set is inevitably devoted to a 13-song suite that captures the high points of Tommy itself. For the band's fans and students of live rock, the emerging portrait is engaging, capturing the dynamism of the core instrumental trio: boiler-suited Townshend paces the stage, jumps midchord, and teases the crowd with his signature "windmill" strumming (yawning playfully, in fact, during "My Generation"); the late Keith Moon whirls across the top of his drum kit, crouches tensely as he reins in his formidable power for quiet accents, and mugs shamelessly, perpetually moving; and John Entwistle is the apotheosis of the inward bassist, standing otherwise motionless as he studiously plucks intricate, melodic lines that anchor the melee. Stage center, of course, is Roger Daltrey, whose matador poses, lassoed microphone flourishes, and tossing curls have since become the lingua franca of two succeeding generations of arena rockers.

The camera work hews tightly to the band, succumbing to the fast zooms and sudden cuts of its day and capturing a few telling moments of irritation or fatigue among the members, but there are few establishing shots that take in the full scale of the performing site. Limited stage lighting often bleaches the color from performers and crowd alike, while the audio recording, coupled with doubtless limitations to the sound system, exacerbates ragged vocal pitches. In a post-MTV era when even concert footage is usually subjected to sonic surgery, extra takes and insertions, Live at the Isle of Wight may look and sound crude, but as a document of one of rock's most powerful, passionate bands, it's definitely worth a look, as well as comparative viewing with both Woodstock and Monterey Pop. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

Electrifying Footage but Still Chopped Up
The sound and picture are in much better shape than on the first release. On the first edition four of the first five songs ("Can't Explain", "Young Man Blues", "I Don't Even Know Myself" and "Water") were largely untouched. Heaven and Hell had some of its footage sped up slightly but otherwise was just as electrifying as the other four numbers. From there the film became a slice and dice of patchwork concert footage that looked a like a badly pieced together jigsaw puzzle.

The bad news is that the editing is still a hatchet job. The concert is still out of order. "Tommy" was played in the middle of the show not at the end. Much of the material is cut. The Shakin' All Over/Twist and Shout" medley has at least a third of its content missing as does "Magic Bus". "Substitute" and "Naked Eye" are missing completely. In the case of the "Naked Eye" footage that may be a case of copyright blocking presentation. The footage does exist and can be seen on the "Message to Love" DVD. The content from "Tommy" is a mess. The "Overture", "It's a Boy", "Eyesight to the Blind", "Go to the Mirror", "I'm Free" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" are all presented as fragments edited into song form. "1921", "Amazing Journey/Sparks", "Tommy Can You Hear Me", "There's a Doctor", "Smash the Mirror" and "Tommy's Holiday Camp" were omitted the first time around and haven't been inserted. Most of the editing is smooth enough but the gaps are still glaring.

The saving graces for this film (and especially this release) are the parts of it that have been done right. The interview with Townshend is enlightening and enjoyable (though allowances have to be made for his sense of drama). The picture is much clearer than before. The sound is vastly improved. It's noticeable everywhere but particularly outstanding on the bass and drum tracks. Keith Moon's drums sound the way they should. It's amazing how much of what couldn't be heard before can be heard clearly now. The same can be said of John Entwistle's bass lines. Anyone wanting to understand and appreciate his contribution to the group should be watching this issue. The re-master places his contribution where it should be rather than burying much of it as happened with the first release. And then there's footage that has been left intact. This is some of the most electrifying concert footage ever captured on film, period. The Who were a blistering band that made playing rock sound and feel like a matter of life and death. If nothing else this film captures that. As such it's an invaluable historic record for anyone wanting to know what makes rock and roll tick.

But, it's still not what it could have been.

Hind Sight is 20/20, but buy this DVD anyway
First, for those who own and love the original release DVD - this remastered version sounds and looks MUCH better. Thanks to Pete and Murray for giving us that.

As for all the complaints about choppy footage, missing songs, out-of-order song list and the like, well, they're all true.

We should remember that, at the time, neither Murray nor The Who knew that this set was going to become one of the most legendary rock performances of all time. Murray Lerner was out to make a rock movie about the Isle of Wight Festival, and The Who (just one standout of the many acts who performed there) were going about the business of being The Who. They had performed hundreds of times before this, and had many, many shows to go afterwards. For them, it was just another night on the job, (although it seems to have been an exceptionally good one.)

No one knew that Keith would eventually semi-fry his brain and then leave us far too soon. No one knew that the short, fragile, golden age of authentic, people-driven rock was about to end. If Murray Lerner had been able to know all of these things, I'm sure he would have given us the complete set, in order, without a single note left out. And while we're dreaming, we'd have a DVD bonus feature of film from a camera pointed directly and unerringly at Keith for the whole length of the concert. Drummers everywhere would give a pint of blood for that one.

But we don't have these things, and we never will. The cut footage from the 1970's editing room floor has undoubtedly long since been swept into the dustbin of history. What we do have, is a glimpse of magnificence. We have a flawed gem, and an irreplaceable one. In a nutshell, if Rock and Roll moves your soul, then the Who's performance on this DVD will leave you slack-jawed.

And when you finally get tired of watching it, get off your couch, find some people with equipment, set up in your garage, and do something new, something fresh, something that says who you are and what you feel. Just be sure to do it loud enough to piss off your square neighbors. Somewhere, Keith will be raising a glass to you.

A reminder of why they were a great live band
One can easily say more negative things than positive about this concert DVD, but let me insist at the outset that the small number of positives unquestionably outweigh the many negatives. At the heart of the disc is a phenomenal live performance by the Who in 1970, when they were at their instrumental height, and before the excesses of the sixties and seventies began taking their toll on the playing and hearing of the quartet. Yes, there are many things to carp about, but in the end it all comes down to the fact that these guys were flat out superb that evening. Although much of the end of the concert consists of a performance of highlights from TOMMY, most of the concert on the DVD (more about the contents in a bit) contains a host of covers, all of them stunning. While all of the band members are outstanding, Pete Townshend (who was ironically of the three musicians the least virtuosic, both Moon and Entwistle having few peers) always seems able to steal the show with his helicopter power chords, brilliantly inept dancing, and congenial lunacy. I am not generally a fan of concert DVDs, but I had a whale of a time with this one.

There are, as I have said, some negatives. For me the most irritating is that the cameras had very limited angles to film the concert. Almost all of the concert seems to have been covered by two cameras, one onstage that seems to linger almost exclusively on stage left (the right side viewed from the audience or camera) and one that is in front of the stage. The result is a feeling of constriction, as if you aren't really getting a good view of what is going on. This is exacerbated by a tendency (primarily early in the performance) of the cameramen shaking the camera while filming the performers, as if an active, dynamic camera produces results preferable to a static one. As is always the case, they were wrong (one of the great benefits of Jonathan Demme's STOP MAKING SENSE is that since then almost all concert footage has been shot with rather static cameras). The problems aren't restricted to the visual. The sound, while not exactly muddy, isn't as crisp as one could hope.

The most controversial aspect of the DVD is the excision of a number of songs. I wonder about this. Perhaps another reviewer can expand upon this, but I wonder about whether there is actually footage for every song in the concert. Perhaps there is, but it is also quite possible that we lack footage (or usable footage) for a number of tracks for which we possess soundtracks. If so, this would not be the first concert film for which this would be true. Just because we possess a soundtrack, we mustn't assume that we possess film. Now, having said this, I will add that it is possible that such footage exists, and they merely decided not to include it, and if so, that is greatly to be lamented. Nonetheless, I do not regard this as a fatal flaw, and it certainly didn't lessen my enjoyment of the music that we have.

The Who were unquestionably one of the very greatest live bands in the history of rock, and this disc will go a long ways towards reminding their fans of this fact and of illustrating that fact for younger viewers who may have missed them at their peak. Either way, I am grateful this disc was released.