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On December 4th, 2006 I found myself living the life of Riley. I woke up next to m’lady in a fabulous split-level hotel room that overlooked the massive infield of the Toronto Skydome (my only hotel room to date that featured two or more floors). The night before we had enjoyed a fabulous meal at a window seat in 360, the restaurant at the top of the CN Tower.
You know, the one that spins around.
The CN Tower has long been one of my favourite manmade structures in the world – I won’t bore you with the details as I’m sure I have in other missives – but let’s just say I was ecstatic for everything surrounding that meal. Eating in the restaurant up there was something I had dreamed about for years and it lived up to those expectations and then some. And it was quite reasonably priced too. My main and starter came to about $30 plus tax. Consider that you get a free ride up the tower with your reservation and exclusive after-hours access to the outdoor observation tower on your way out, and it was well, well worth it.
Ah, but this story is supposed to be about the one and only time I saw The Who – just steps away from our surprisingly luxurious room – at the Air Canada Centre.
(Did I ever tell you about how my first concert was supposed to be The Who’s first-ever last-ever concert, in Toronto on December 17th, 1982? I was suspended from school for being a rebellious fourteen-year-old so I was free to spend twenty-eight hours waiting in line* outside the Lamport Stadium on King Street West for tickets – which was one of the greatest parties of my life – only to sell my pair once I heard the historic concert would be televised. Young naive me figured I would have a much better view watching the concert on television than I would seeing it from the 21st row of the floor of Maple Leaf Gardens. As a reminder, my first concert ended up being a Loverboy show in Moncton about eight months later. What a stupid, irrevocable missed opportunity.)
Though I’ve never been a huge Who fan, as a rock music aficionado I can only respect their vast and varied repertoire and acknowledge their undeniable contribution to the early development of rebellious pop music as a whole. But like I say, I’m not such a big fan.
Roger Daltrey opened the show by telling the audience that he had a cold and couldn’t sing well. He was right. To be honest I think he maybe kinda shoulda thought about cancelling the show but as an out-of-towner I suppose I’m glad he didn’t.
It was a fun enough show though – half of the band’s founding members doing their aging best to live up to past feats of over-the-top youthful exuberance and nearly succeeding. During Won’t Get Fooled Again the couple seated in front of me flagged down a security guard and asked him to tell the people in front of them to sit down. At this point in the concert everyone – and I mean everyone – was standing up. The security guy just sort of shrugged and left. He returned a few minutes later and I believe offered to move them to different seats but the disgruntled couple stayed where they were. Torontonians, I tell ya.
Despite a lead singer who was clearly not in top form fronting a band that is extremely far from being my favourite (though I’ll be the first to tell you that Keith Moon was a musical genius and a rhythmic savant) overall I had a good time. But mostly the concert was a major tick off the list of rock and roll giants that I must see live before they (or I) am gone from this realm. It is what it is. Or was…and was.
It being a Monday, after the concert m’lady and I booted it to the Orbit Room on College Street to catch the second set of Kevin Breit and Sisters Euclid’s weekly gig, which must have been nothing but brilliantly jaw-dropping; the band was always brilliantly jaw-dropping. Afterwards it was a short haul to our very swank (and absurdly cheap – booked on Priceline and miraculously upgraded) split-level stadium-view suite at the Skydome just beneath my favourite tower**, where we probably ordered pizza. For some reason I’ve always seen ordering pizza from a hotel room as one of life’s great luxuries, and after a such a swoony couple of nights I was definitely in the mood for more luxury.
(The Pretenders opened the concert, which was an extra-special, almost hotel-pizza level treat, and good on The Who for booking them. Lots of bands do the “Evening with” thing nowadays and I’m not a fan at all. It just means they didn’t shell out for a cool opening band like The Pretenders.)
*Nearly coincidentally, when that lineup ended and I bought my tickets it was December 3rd, 1982, exactly twenty-four year plus one day before this concert. I know the date because of this photo from the lineup, which was printed the following day in the Toronto Star. I’m pretty sure I’m not in the picture, but I must admit that the kid on the left looks an awful lot like fourteen-year-old me.
**Fun fact: Whilst the CN Tower currently stands at a height of 1,815 feet, five inches tall, but when it was unveiled to the world in 1976 it was 1,815 feet, eight inches tall. Settling of the concrete has caused the tower to shrink by three inches.
Todd Man Out 