The Who Performs 1st Concert In Cincinnati Since 1979

The Who staged their first concert in Cincinnati in over 40 years when they performed on Sunday night at TQL Stadium. The band had not held a concert in Cincinnati since December 3, 1979, when 11 people died and several more were injured at The Who’s show at Riverfront Coliseum.

Prior to Sunday’s concert, The Who, which features frontman Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend, shared a message on social media regarding the tragic event that occurred in 1979. The band performed that night, having not been told about the rush on the venue’s doors that led to the deaths and injuries.

On Sunday night at TQL Stadium, the names of the 11 victims were shown on screens wrapping around the venue. At the start of the show, Townshend addressed the audience, stating:

“I’ve been trying to think of to say. What would be cool to say, what would be uncool to say. And really there’s no words that we can say that can meet with the fact that you guys have come out tonight and supported this event. Thank you so much. And you probably know that we’re not being paid for this, so I’m not going to work very hard. You are paying and your money is going to great causes. Many of which are related to what happened back here in Cincinnati in 1979 which is probably time for us to remember and try to forget … We’re going to go back and try to play the way we did in 1979.”

The penultimate song of the night, “Love, Reign O’er Me” began with a piano solo while the images of the 11 people who passed away at the 1979 concert – Walter Adams, Peter Bowes, Connie Sue Burns, Jacqueline Eckerle, David Heck, Teva Rae Ladd, Karen Morrison, Stephan Preston, Philip Snyder and Bryan Wagner – were projected onto large screens surrounding the stage.

Sunday’s concert was part of The Who Hits Back! Tour that features the band backed by a local orchestra for most of the show. Originally scheduled for April 2020 but postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the concert in Cincinnati stuck to the typical setlist the band has played over the course of the current tour. Among the final songs was the orchestra-supported “5:15,” which was particularly fitting given the May 15 date of the performance.

Proceeds from The Who’s concert in Cincinnati will be donated to Finneytown High School’s P.E.M. Memorial, which was named after Preston, Eckerle and Morrison who were students at the school. Current Finneytown High School students were part of the orchestra backing The Who, while others emerged to help sing the evening’s final song, “Baba O’Riley.”

“This whole thing happened because I visited Finneytown [High] School about four years ago,” Daltrey said at the end of the concert. “And I was really moved by the way they’ve run the memorial for so long, giving out scholarships every year. I just thought this is something we can fix for a long time to come. With a bit of luck, with the money you all used tonight, there will be scholarships for 11 people in the names of all the wonderful people that we miss, and I’m sure you do too. We’ll never get over it, but we’ve got to live and we’ve got a chance to live.”

Below watch audience-recorded video of Sunday’s The Who concert in Cincinnati: