{"id":19036,"date":"2012-11-06T12:54:57","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T16:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=19036"},"modified":"2012-11-06T12:54:57","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T16:54:57","slug":"remembering-the-who-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2012\/11\/remembering-the-who-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Who Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

This week I\u2019m reading Pete Townshend\u2019s recently published autobiography, Who I Am<\/em>, and it brought to mind how we document part of his life here in the Archives & Rare Books Library.\u00a0 It was nearly 33 years ago that The Who played Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati on December 3, 1979 and eleven people were killed in a stampede for festival seating.<\/p>\n

\"Aftermath<\/a><\/p>\n

For my generation, Townshend was one of the giants in the music business, a key figure in the history of rock-and-roll with The Who, and today is one of the legendary individuals in the seminal 1960s and \u201870s.\u00a0 The book is quite revealing, and in some sections uncomfortably so, but still an important work in documenting late twentieth-century music culture.\u00a0 Townshend\u2019s childhood was absolutely horrific.\u00a0 He mitigated it as best he could with his talent in music, and one anecdote even struck home a bit.\u00a0 My late father-in-law, William Fenton, was a professor of music and a choral conductor.\u00a0 He once told a story of how, while marching in his high school band, he could suddenly distinguish the sound of every individual instrument being played and that he could bring all those sounds harmoniously together in his mind.\u00a0 He knew then, that music was his destiny.\u00a0 Townshend had a similar experience while playing the harmonica as a teenager.\u00a0 He realized he could hear the individual rhythms and sounds of everything on the street around him and that he could bring it all together with his playing.\u00a0 It was a key moment in his growth into the incredible guitarist he became.<\/p>\n

Townshend tracks both his personal and musical life in Who I <\/em>Am, but really they are inseparable, whether he is writing about his band mates Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle, the other British giants like the Stones and the Beatles, or his wife and children.\u00a0 It is a literate, fascinating book from a man who has both skill and experience as a writer and editor.<\/p>\n

\"Who<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, one of the sections I flipped to first was his account of that 1979 tragedy, and I was disappointed that it isn\u2019t listed in the index.\u00a0 So, I skimmed through the pages to find it.\u00a0 That Who concert is still one that resonates in Cincinnati history, and one I especially remember because it was only the month before that I had moved back to Cincinnati from Louisiana and began working at UC.\u00a0 \u00a0I remember the late bulletins on television that night, and all the news in the days that followed.<\/p>\n

Here are some excerpts from Townshend\u2019s account, found on pages 322 and 323: \u201cAfter the show at the Riverfront, we assembled in the band\u2019s dressing room.\u00a0 Bill had terrible news.\u00a0 \u2018Something terrible happened out there tonight.\u00a0 Eleven kids have died\u2026it was at the entrances, on the plaza outside.\u2019\u00a0 \u2018Before the show?\u2019 I got to my feet.\u00a0 \u2018We decided not to tell you,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018The crowd couldn\u2019t be allowed to leave the building while security was still dealing with the trouble outside.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBack at the hotel we all gathered in a meeting room and watched the television.\u00a0 Some of us were weeping at the images of bodies laid out\u2026We didn\u2019t say much.\u00a0 We had a few drinks, but I was already numb.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out that eleven fans were killed (and many more injured) in the rush for seating.\u00a0 The concert was sold out, and when the crowds waiting outside in the cold heard us performing the soundcheck they assumed the concert had started and stampeded.\u00a0 Those at the front were trampled to death by those pushing from behind, who hadn\u2019t realised that the doors were still closed.\u201d<\/p>\n

For that concert, there were 3,578 reserved seats and 14,770 general admissions, or festival seating, available on a first-come, first-served basis.\u00a0 Subsequently, Cincinnati City Council would ban festival seating for the next quarter-century.\u00a0 One of the news photographers sent to cover the disaster that night was Jack Klumpe, the chief photographer for the Cincinnati Post<\/em>.\u00a0 Klumpe worked for the Post <\/em>for over forty years, covering breaking news, sports, elections, and every other occasion of news interest in Cincinnati.\u00a0 Several years after his retirement from the paper, he donated some of his photos to the Urban Studies Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library.\u00a0 His images here show the concert tragedy in the hours after rescue workers tended to the injured and dead.\u00a0 In the poignant photograph of Who front man Roger Daltrey, the singer stands outside his hotel room after the devastating news was delivered to the band.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three years ago next month.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Remembering<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To read about Townshend, the book is Who I Am: A Memoir.\u00a0 <\/em>New York, NY: HarpeerCollins, 2012.\u00a0 To learn more about the Archives & Rare Books Library and its holdings, please go to our website, http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/libraries\/arb\/index.html<\/a>, email us at archives@ucmail.uc.edu<\/a>, or telephone us at 513.556.1959.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace This week I\u2019m reading Pete Townshend\u2019s recently published autobiography, Who I Am, and it brought to mind how we document part of his life here in the Archives & Rare Books Library.\u00a0 It was nearly 33 years … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[53,35,58],"class_list":["post-19036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-just-interesting","tag-urban-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}