24 Aug 2025
Tuesday 19 August 2025: Newark, NJ
Show report: 19 Aug 2025; Prudential Center: Newark, New Jersey
The Prudential Center – another big hockey and basketball arena that works well for concerts too. We’ve been here a few times before, I have vivid memories of the guard gate/buses area and also the catering! Food is good.
So let’s start there. One of the things not mentioned is our food. “An army travels on its stomach” is an old phrase, but very appropriate here, too. We love to eat. And this situation is a room called “CATERING” which we visit at least a few times per day. In the morning, the local catering company comes in and starts it up – preparing and cooking for three big meal services to be offered. Breakfast is what you’d expect and they have to be ready for our early-bird crew at 6.00 or 7.00am and then run forward ’til almost noon. Each catering company is given a budget and some basic guidelines – like here’s X-thousand dollars, and you need to feed 40 people at breakfast, 65 at lunch, and 100 at dinner. There must be three main choices, sides, various desserts, and vegetarian and vegan options, plus drinks like coffee, tea, soft drinks, milk, juices, Gatorade. It’s luck of the draw who makes and serves our food, so some days it’s rocking (like today!) and other days it’s lacking.
I decided, given the quality of what they were offering us, to take and show you photos of catering to start the day/blog. A nice healthy salad bar with variety. Meats and vegetables, great desserts, a fresh egg station in the morning (cook on-hand) turns into a BBQ chicken station at lunch, etc. If you have the right pass to get in, you can take and eat what suits you. Some places (like this) add a nice little touch, like THE WHO in light-up letters. Nice to know they know who’s here… Others go crazier with cakes and cookies with logos, or whatever. Happy flapJacks or SqueezeBox orange juice station. But we’re happiest just to have good options of well-made food.
Because of some weirdness during the first show, Pete’s taking the day to work on his on-stage setup; we set aside 30 minutes for him to fiddle about on the guitars, amps, and pedals. It seems to help, as he really starts noodling and zooming around the neck while he tried it all out. Then the entire band and crew return to a proper rehearsal. Today our VIP guests are as numerous (and maybe more than) those in Sunrise. It’s a lot of nice people watching us run through things. There is some discussion about that to do. Roger says the last show was 2 hours and 20 minutes (classic set length) which is a little too long for what they want to do this year. We will need to cut maybe 15-20 minutes from the show, which could mean three songs. Then they rehearse vocals as they always do – singing ‘I Can See for Miles’ a capella, with just voices layered. It sounds great this way, so Pete suggests they start the song that way; they try some options for the crowd to watch – and pick a version they like. Start with voices only, then the band comes in under that with a bang. It’s a cool change, and maybe even an improvement to the song. However – that IS one of the songs being cut-out tonight. Ooops! We run through ‘Who Are You’ as everyone has a part, it’s a basic-sounding track that also checks the live band against the playback of the backing synth parts, a critical thing on several of our biggest songs. Newark is only a short train ride over from New York City, so a lot of this crowd are New Yorkers, too.
Speaking of ‘Who Are You’ – has everyone seen this yet? Anthony is a good local friend of mine, and he’s 85% right about this sound. Pete’s amazing ARP synthesizer work is actually a guitar track.
and this one: ‘Relay’ . . .
This tour has some changes. I’d say we usually have three or five new people, most of the crew come back year after year. This year – it’s more like 14 new people, about a third of our team is new to us, so there are lots of cool people we’ve just met. It’s like going to a new school or office – except we’re all pretty careful to hire good people, flexible people with a good sense of humor, and all pretty strong at their jobs. I know maybe half their names so far – and soon hope to know more about their lives and what’s good about them.
Speaking of changes – we have a new team working on my side of the stage (Pete’s side). This is the Monitor area, those who make the sounds FOR the band to hear. It’s a tough job. Tonight, we no longer have our old friend J.J. running Pete’s monitors – for the rest of the tour he has to go take care of things back in England. JJ’s an old hand at this rock stuff; he was building the legendary Orange Amps in London, and toured with The Shadows and many others since.
Replacing him is “Fitz” (Michael Fitzsimons) trained personally by JJ and very, very capable in the job. Our man John Switzer has been doing monitors for Roger for over a year now – solo and The Who. Tonight he’s stepping down and we have his good friend Jimmy – who’s also worked on Roger’s tours – stepping up to the main Monitor board. Welcome aboard! Our new good friend Mera Royle (who’s seen in this photo above with Fitz) joins our stage team as well. She’s a fantastic harpist, originally from the Isle Of Man, but without room on the bus – her harp will have to wait for another tour.
Meet our Who Fans of the Day!
The five Boxmasters dudes were back to open – people really like it, but this is their last night with us. Billy Bob Thornton and his guys definitely put on a classic-rock American roots show. Go see them if you get a chance, they are just headed out on tour.
Video courtesy of Jim Powers
Then – us. Once onstage, Pete and Rog were both in a good mood. “Hey!” from Pete and big smiles from Roger. As soon as it kicks off – we can tell the work Pete put in is really helpful; he’s moving more and feeling the music, not to mention his hands are flying tonight. Just before ‘Who Are You’ starts, he mentions coming in early days to Passaic, another famous NJ town. On the side of the stage they always saw a young guy sitting there; Bruce Springsteen. People applaud and then we hear “Bruuuuuce” – which some people took as “boo”s – nope. They still love him. Next was ‘The Seeker’ and Pete explains about writing it while staying in Weeki Wachee swamp in Florida. He mentioned his old roommate (an American he roomed with at art school in London) Tom Wright, a fabulous photographer. Tom is gone now, but used to hang out on tour with us and ride the buses with the crew. Wonderful guy.
Video courtesy of Sammy Steinlight
Video courtesy of Pure and Easy
Roger starts slowly and builds fast. He’s having more fun, whatever the reasons. We NEED a good one tonight, to get the tour more solid and to have direction forward – maybe they’ll even get back some of that classic Who magic that happens now and then. Pete started ‘Eminence Front’ with a bluesy loose guitar solo – all by ‘imself – and then I kicked the track in, his classic Yamaha Electone organ beatbox, chords, and bass track. Somehow, he gets into it too quickly and starts singing Verse 1 where the first solo should be. (I know he loves that opening solo, it’s a bright spot in the show where he gets to cut loose.) So no solo – and the backing track sounds ok at the moment, but later on the chorus or bridge or something might crash – as the band is all playing over the wrong portion of the music. Many are worried with Pete and Roger (and the audience) seemingly oblivious. I am running the backing tracks during our shows, so I tried something that might work: there are markers telling us where each section of the song is. I got the mouse cursor placed right over the first beat of the chorus (about a minute ahead of where the track currently is) and them jumped forward to that when Pete went to the chorus. It worked – with the backing track now in-line, they could finish the song with no incidents. I don’t like that kind of risk, but it saved a major collapse later that was otherwise inevitable.
Video courtesy of DJ Fro
I’m loving the new videos – so cool. One for ‘My Generation’ shows the Goldhawk Road tube/subway station. If you’re ever in London, that’s ground zero for the scooter/Mod scene of 1963-65. Core stuff for The Who. So the video shows the location, a concert poster on the right side shows an old Who poster, while the right side poster on a wall shows black-and-white footage of the band in ‘64. Suddenly, it changes and the concert poster is THIS tour, and Newark (yes, it matches each venue every night) and the “old poster” with the old film is now tonight’s show onstage superimposed on the same spot. Very cool tricks, creative and meaningful. Oh – and once in a while, you see the train going overheard above the station.
Video courtesy of Jim Powers
Speaking of trains: 5:15 – this was notable only in that somehow, during a band jam towards the end – Pete’s guitar slid waaaay out of tune. He struggled to finish with it that way, but it just sounded rough. Luckily – next song = next guitar so it wasn’t long. Ending the Quad set was ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ – and we’re loving the bits of rain-stick and thunder rumble that Jody Linscott is adding to this section. Really appropriate and it sounds cool. At the end, we get the BIGGEST cheer for Roger, it seems to go on forever. His voice is – as usual – pretty damn amazing. “Not bad, eh?” Pete asks the crowd. (Earlier in the day, Roger was onstage telling soundman Robert Collins that he knew his voice was fine, it’s hearing the band that is the trick for him; lots of layered sounds, spill into vocal microphones from other instruments, weird timing delays.)
‘Baba O’Riley’ is up again – new video there, too, which I will describe to you soon in a video-centric post (likely when I run out of things to say from the daily grind.) Then ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, both right on the money. But tonight – one more change. Instead of ending with ‘Tea And Theatre’ into ‘The Song Is Over’, we swapped them: Better to get the band song out of the way, and then end with just Pete and Roger on an emotional note. Roger has conceived the new endings, as both songs have such strong messages for this tour. But the order is better this way – quite a nice touch. This show did indeed rock, and (for the first time in all our 2025 shows so far) showed a lot of the spirit I’ve been waiting months to see. To be honest, I was a little worried until now – new drummer and percussion and singer, new staging, time passing – will it be what it needs to be. Tonight, I knew it would be fine – maybe even great – on this tour. I know a ton of people saw this show and then went to buy tickets for Fenway Park or Madison Square Garden – they want to see it again. That’s a good sign.
Onward!
Tonight’s Set List follows this photo. If you don’t wish to know it, look away now.
I Can’t Explain
Substitute
Who Are You
The Seeker
Love Ain’t for Keeping
Pinball Wizard
See Me, Feel Me / Listening to You
Behind Blue Eyes
Eminence Front
My Generation
You Better You Bet
Going Mobile
The Real Me
I’m One
5:15
Love, Reign O’er Me
Baba O’Riley
Won’t Get Fooled Again
The Song Is Over
Tea & Theatre
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