The Who Super Bowl Halftime Review

As halftime drew nearer I became increasingly nervous for The Who for multiple reasons. Probably most importantly was because I put money down on Townshend doing over 5 ½ full windmills and not breaking his guitar, but I was also nervous to see if The Who would embarrass themselves. Luckily I won both of my bets, Pete, according to Bodog.com, did twelve full windmills. Well done old man! Now whether or not they embarrassed themselves depends on who you ask. In my opinion I feel like they held their own quite well considering how bad it could have been, but these are obviously not the young punks that break guitars and hope they die before they get old.

The song selection was great, essentially a well fleshed out medley of classics that intertwined incredibly well with stellar sections of escalating drama. The producers paid particularly close attention to the light show - maybe in fear of Pete and Roger making fools of themselves, or maybe just because the light show was quite entertaining. As old men who are far past their prime, they sounded pretty decent. Cringe worthy moments were far and few with Pete sounding like he was sucking air during “Who Are You” and the harmonies often being way out of time. Other than that however I was fairly impressed with Roger’s vocals. Although this raises another question of whether or not this performance was pre-recorded. As a big fan I hate to think this was even a possibility, however there were some large gaps between Roger’s vocals and his lip movements. It is possible that he was singing along with a pre-recorded track, which is still a little unnerving. The one point driving me away from the lip-synching worries is that there were some notable flaws that were glaringly obvious, so the optimist in me can say maybe there was just a delay. One thing is for certain though, that primal scream on “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was not entirely natural.

The boys held their own with a very entertaining stage show. Pete flung that windmill around hard enough to practically hover off the ground, and jumped around the stage like an AARP member who gets his fair share of exercise. At times his jacket would hang over the guitar showing his protruding gut, but it was good to see the man still has energy. Roger wasn’t as exciting as Pete with pretty minimal on stage activity - the mic didn’t swing to the heavens for this performance.

All in all I was impressed with their performance, my wallet left a little larger and my ego as a fan of the band was left intact. Hopefully I won’t have to explain to anyone at work why The Who are one of the best.