The Who - Live At Shea Stadium 1982

Rating: 3/5

Review:

Not a great live recording

This is a decent but not a great live recording.  I don't think The Who were ever less than good live and sometimes they were quite stunning (as they were when I saw the at The Valley in 1974).  For a variety of reasons, this isn't one of their best, but it's well recorded and a good record of the band at this time, if not much more.

There are some great songs on this album, and it's always a pleasure to see The Who perform their classics, but even those are a little lacklustre at times.  As others have noted, Kenney Jones is a great drummer but didn't quite gel with The Who so that magnificent, driving rocket behind them, which Moon provided before his death and Zak Starkey has provided more recently, is missing.  Even the great, great Who songs don't quite blaze as they should.  Also, some of the material from around this time isn't that great in my view, so there are some pretty ordinary passages.

This is certainly no Live At Leeds, and in some ways it's a little sad to see such a great band running into the doldrums slightly.  As a Who fan of 50 years standing I'm glad to have this, but it's not one I'll be playing that often, I suspect.  If you're looking for a really fine Who performance on DVD, I'd recommend Quadrophenia Live In London.  Obviously, it's very different: there's no Entwhistle and Townshend and Daltrey are 30 years older, but as a live performance it's superb and miles (and miles and miles) ahead of this.  Only a qualified recommendation from me for this one, I'm afraid.