Entertainment In Brief
Travel to the Isle of Wight, circa 1970, for a momentous Who concert. Plus, what’s so great about that rock?
The Who’s Best Concert?
On February 18th you can relive what some call the best Who concert ever, as The Who: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 screens at select Cineplex theatres.
But what does “the best” mean? Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and the late Keith Moon and John Entwistle played thousands of gigs over the years, and terms like “the best” tend to get thrown around with too much frequency.
“It was at the height of the extraordinary powers The Who have to create an almost religious experience,” says the film’s producer and director Murray Lerner over the phone from his New York home. “They build up the crowd’s feelings and involvement to such an extent that the crowd became the concert really. It’s like a religious experience or the height of a political celebration, an anthem really.”
And this was no regular crowd. About 600,000 rock fans (more than Woodstock) came by boat to the island in the English Channel. Frustrated by the event’s poor organization, concertgoers became rowdy — breaking down fences, trying to get in for free, and talking so loudly during many of the acts that no one could hear the music.
As a result, The Who didn’t take to the stage until 2 a.m. But Lerner says the late hour didn’t dull their performance.
“I think, actually, that the disturbance caused by the crowd, and the anxiety, that by not giving into it, that gave The Who a lot of energy, a breakthrough,” he says. “I think it made it more exciting for these kids. You can see the shots of the crowd, they were very much alive.”
The set list starts with such classics as “I Can’t Explain,” “My Generation” and “Magic Bus,” but the performance moves to another level as the band rolls into a series of songs off their then just released rock opera Tommy (“It’s a Boy,” “The Acid Queen,” “See Me Feel Me / Listening to You”) — a full five years before they turned the album into a feature film.
—Marni Weisz
Artifact
This month’s objet de film: Stone of Destiny
The British-Canadian co-production Stone of Destiny has Charlie Cox playingreal-life Scottish nationalist Ian Hamilton, who put life and limb at risk to steal a big, heavy rock. What’s so special about said rock that it could inspire both grand larceny and a feature film?
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Aside from the fact some believe it to be the pillow stone on which
Biblical Jacob slept while he dreamed of the ladder, the 336-pound
piece of sandstone was used during the inaugurations of Scottish
monarchs dating back to the Middle Ages. In 1057, it served as the seat
for Lulach, Macbeth’s stepson, when he became King of the Scots. Then
in 1296, Edward I of England invaded Scotland, stole the Stone and took
it to London where — for the next seven centuries — it was used to
enthrone English monarchs.
On Christmas Day 1950,
Hamilton stole the Stone from London’s Westminster Abbey and brought it
back to Scotland, but not before it accidentally broke in two. Without
giving away the end of the movie, we can tell you that the Stone now
resides at Edinburgh Castle — but will travel back to London to support
the new monarch’s bottom during the next coronation.
—Marni Weisz |