Last update May 2007

The Who Put the Boot In . The Valley. Charlton Athletic FC 5-31-76. Celtic Football Club Glasgow 6-5-76 Swansea City Football Club . 6-12-76 The Who, Sensational Alex Harvey Band ,Little Feat, Outlaws. Streetwalkers .

Charlton recollections .

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        Although I knew our tickets to be genuine, I wa still concerned that we weren't going to get in, since we arrived part way through the first set. There was a lot of drunkenness around - I think I got 'stuck in' early on in the day, and ended up with a crushing headache through the Alex Harvey set, and slept it off some, but recall the Who's set bringing me back to some semblance of sobriety. They were stunning, as were the pyrotechnics.

Crowd in process of foolishly ignoring Little Feat Photo© Nick Gough

I do recall some noisy Scots calling for Alex (Harvey) all the way through Little Feat's set - which pissed me off more than somewhat - then some wag a way behind us rejoined the plaintive call for 'Alex' with the riposte 'bollocks' - which said it all, really. The Who went down a storm, as you can imagine. The Outlaws I recall being pretty good, although I remember their albums being a lot flasher than their live set (maybe I'm wrong about that one).        Sorry I can't furnish you with any set lists, after this length of time the old ever-failing is doing its job again! Martin Faulks

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The 1976 gig was a bummer as I recall it rained virtually all the way through and both myself and my girlfriend were soaked.  It didn't detract from the music though which was fantastic especially the Alex Harvey band and The Who again took the stadium by storm, although it was clear they were not happy bunnies.  I well remember the comments made by Moony to Pete Townsend about his "vested interests" etc.           Another memory was Daltrey swinging the microphone around on about 20 feet of cable during an instrumental part of one of the songs and bringing it straight back to his mouth for the next verse and also, as a result of all the swinging around of the mic it came off the heavily gaffer taped cable.

           His roadie immediately threw another which Roger caught and carried on singing without any loss of tempo or anything, superlative showmanship.
I still have the posters which I cherish. 
Keith Parker

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          My first major gig, so I couldn't give a shit if I got wet.  I WAS GONNA SEE THE 'OO'!
Great line up of bands, Streetwalkers and Alex were great, Little Feat were soooo laid back and even the Outlaws were OK.Widowmaker were excellent too.  Shame they fell apart so quick.
Don't make 'em like this any more!
Incidentally, as it was my first BIG gig I am desperately trying to track down bootlegs from the day.  Anyone help?
Cheers
Steve H

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            I was a 15 year old who freak allowed to go and see the boys for the first time and in london! AWESOME.
A few memories of a special day do linger,  these include the skips provided outside for the booze people were not allowed in with, the aeriel acrobatics in the floodlights,and SAHB really grabbing my attention(does anybody remember Alex eating a rose during ''love song''.)

           Then it was time for the 'orrible 'oo, they did not disapoint, they come running on and Daltrey slid flat on his arse it was so wet (he played barefoot in the end). They played a powerful set that was complimented by the awesome laser display that seemed to fill the sky. Pete Townshend threatened to send in his lightweight bouncers  to sort a scuffle out at one point.
A SPECIAL GIG. 
Gary C.  I.O.W.

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Hi
            I went to both Charlton festivals mainly as I am a Who nut.
76 was musically a far better Who gig than 74, the only problem was the bloody rain.
The first memory I have was the security guys making people either drink all their alcohol or throw it in a skip before entering the stadium.
This created the scenario of thousands of pissed festival goers by late morning and consequently led to all sorts of nastiness later on.

Chappo with (as yet ) unsmashed tambourine photo © Nick Gough

My first band recollection were Little Feat who came on full of the joys of beautiful hot Louisiana day and threw out loads of assorted maracas and tambourines to the crowd. The trouble was this was south east London on rainy horrible day with a pissed off Who audience who promptly threw said instruments back and proceeded to make Lowell George and co wish they had never worn those lovely Hawaiian shirts.         Next I think were Streetwalkers who everyone loved because Chappo smashed all his tambourines to pulp and then threw them to the audience, who this time kept hold of them. Anyone who wants to see a class act go and see Roger Chapman the man never fails.

        Alex Harvey I would now thoroughly love but I spent his set moving myself and my beautiful hippy lady through what was a war zone to be close to the stage.The Who kept us waiting a long time ,they always did,and I remember Daltrey mopping the stage with a shirt .A huge fight erupted immediately in front of us ,a young guy took an almighty swipe with a smuggled in wine bottle at some bloke and nearly croaked him. My girl was terrified but there was no way I was leaving especially as the scrap had opened up my view.Townshend said 'Pack it in down there or we send in our bouncers '

        Anyway the Who were great .It was to be the last time I saw them with Moon and I suppose the last time many people would watch the best live act the rock world has known. Biased ,maybe but tell me a better one.
        The stupid thing is I don't think they did an encore ,they very rarely did, but as the crowd walked away into the tight streets surrounding the ground The Who must have heard 20,000 voices singing 'Pinball Wizard' I hope Moony did
Cheers
Paul Trew
P.S. my ladys name was Dianna Jones and if she ever reads this I hope she's forgiven me ,but you got to see THE WHO .......

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           If you were nineteen in 1976 the Who were a band that the "old blokes?" at work (who were 30 at least), used to listen to.
You remember them on black and white TV, ten years ago at least; Ready Steady Go when you were nine, mods, crap record players, buying ex juke box records with no middles, etc. I remember learning the words to Pinball Wizard and singing it on a school holiday in Switzerland aged 12.
Everyone hates the very recent past and only gets nostalgic for it when it ages a bit . . .
those fucking lava lamps for instance, all of a sudden everyone loves them again and people
who would never have admitted having one suddenly whip them out of the garage and back on
the coffee table.

         "Who’s Next" was a bit like that, for us it was new music and all of a sudden everyone "always liked the Who". I never heard it until 1974, it took longer for albums to get heard back then, especially if they didn't’t have a “single”, although I think “WGFA”was released as a single in a shorter version. Not only were the Who “back” but they were relevant with a new anthem that was actually an anti-anthem if you listened to the words but still had bollocks.

         The Stones still had bollocks but were remote, this was different, an aggressive sound but with lyrics that played loud in your head as you walked home along deserted wet streets at dawn on a cold Sunday morning with your head down and your hands deep in your pockets, lyrics that actually seemed to be about you in real life, about everyone . . . you all know them so I won’t bother quoting any. . . who hasn't been Jimmy at least once?

        When you look at things in retrospect it's easy to classify everything and mix a lot of stuff in that weren't connected at the time.The ’70s for instance.Most people think of platform shoes, flares and Saturday Night Fever, but there was much more than that and not all at the same time.

       The mods were long dead, hippies had come and gone, skinheads, suedeheads . . . Punk wasn't until next summer, the music scene was a bit stale, no new bands for ages. I loved the Faces at the time and Bowie was still reinventing himself every now and again.

       Being young was probably the same as now; as a teenager you were into sex drugs and rock'n'roll, although admittedly mainly drugs and rock'n’roll, you lived in hope. Drugs weren't as easy
to come by then, and even rock'n'roll was fairly difficult. No internet or phone booking services. As
soon as you heard about a concert that was a definite or at least a definite rumour, you
had to take a day off work, go to London, queue up for fucking hours or go to record shops and go through the laborious process of ordering a ticket, which involved getting all your mates
to put money in, then if you were the one organising it putting all your money in 'cos they promised to "give you it on pay day".Then after you'd paid you had to go to the shop every lunchtime for about a month until they finally admitted they'd forgotten to book them, the staff had
stolen them, or miraculously, as in this case the tickets finally turned up the day before.

      The night before in the pub someone knew someone from his brother’s mate’s football team who
had some blues to get rid of. I was voted the buyer and so . . .armed with only 30 quid, half a packet of Rothmans and a digital watch that you had to push the button on to tell the time . . . I went off to a Ford Zodiac parked down the customary dark alley to do the biz. There was a lot of looking over shoulders, checking mirrors and trying to look tough, streetwise and cool all at the same time.Following drug etiquette I tried a bit of haggling, but of course they never belong to the bloke selling them and in this case he claimed to be an agent of the near legendary "Black Ron", so it went without saying that he wouldn't let them go for any less than the asking price.50p each and ’cos I was buying 60 I got one thrown in for luck in case of a miscount.

We met at the station. Everyone had a plastic bottle half full of vodka and half orange which had spent the night in the freezer and was now a solid block. Glass bottles usually weren’t allowed in at outside concerts so it seemed a good idea. I had divided the pills up and everyone got 10 each on the platform, mainly ‘cos I figured being caught with ten was preferable to being caught with 60. Everyone was in a great mood the night before, about 3/4 of the pub were going to the concert and the atmosphere was good, plenty of Who on the juke box etc. Consequently we all had killer hangovers and it was early.

SAHB wow the crowd at Charlton 76 photo © Nick Gough

The train ride was pretty silent until the blues kicked in and by the time St Pancreas station came up in half an hour we were all "leaping along". Charlton Athletic football ground was strange. It was at the time a fairly average-to-crap team (apologies to any supporters) that had a stadium out of all fucking proportion to it’s talent/support. The biggest football ground in London besides Wembley Stadium.Figuring the pubs were going to be packed round the ground we had a couple in the Euston Tavern near the station then headed "up west". Picking a pub that was fairly empty we proceeded to talk our way through around 12 pints of lager each in 2 hours (not an exaggerated figure, the strange thing about blues is that alcohol doesn’t seem to affect you until I suppose it overtakes the speed.)

Back on the tube to Charlton, think the nearest station was London Bridge. When we got there blokes
with great stacks of tickets were standing at all the entrances, I was fucking pissed off that I'd gone through all the hassle of getting tickets and could have just paid a couple of quid extra and got one here.

Then we noticed that ours were blue and the ones for sale on the street were green.

After being released by the old bill (probably only because there was nowhere to put us) for pissing up a wall en-route (12 pints of lager has to go somewhere) we found an off-licence (liquor store). There was a huge queue. All of a sudden cases start coming over everyone's heads "quick pass 'em back". When ours came over we grabbed two and ran off up the street thinking we’d just pulled off the hospitality industry equivalent of the great train robbery.Anyway two streets later we stopped and found we had just knicked two cases of fucking nonalcoholic pear juice.      At the gates it was bedlam.There were at least as many people with forged tickets as there were with real ones, so to avoid a riot they let everyone in. So the attendance figures of 76,000 published were bollocks. It was packed.

The real mccoy, courtesy Graham Rosso

     The support bands were dutifully ignored, while we got into the sort of 'deep and meaningful'
conversations that go with lots of pills. I grew to like one of the support bands, Little Feat a few years later, but at the time didn't take much notice.We drank the vodka which was by now warm, spent hours at the time honoured outdoor festival sport of picking our way through the crowd to go for a piss, trying not to tread on anyone, smoked a bit and got wet. It pissed down on and off all day.The stands (bits with a roof on) were packed so most people stayed on the pitch so as to be nearer the stage when the time came.One of the support bands was the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, they were quite big at the time, and sounded pretty good live, but there’s something strange about seeing even good bands in daylight . . . I can’t explain it but it’s sort of unnatural.

The ooo on Ice Photo© Nick Gough

As it got a bit darker although still not really dark, a big roar went up, everyone craned their necks to see what was going on and, as usual, fuck all happened. This went on a bit and just when you were starting to ignore it a curly haired figure slid in the water on the front of the stage and said "the Who on ice".       Everyone was up and scrambling forward, I lost the others but it didn’t matter. It started to rain again.Pete was wearing a white boiler suit and doctor martens, Roger had jeans and t-shirt, John, I can't remember, but I think everyone who went and could see the stage will remember what Keith wore: A full fox hunting outfit, with red jacket and hat . . .Mind you, most of us in crowd had flares and cap sleeved T-shirts on, so who I am I to take the piss?

        Townshend tuned up a bit then walked to the mike and said "So . . . you’re wet".This worked wonders in getting the audience going, a challenge,so much better than all that "where are we? Oh, Sydney Australia, gee we love it here, it’s our favourite place" I still had 4 blues left, took two and gave one to a bird who was standing next to me, she later gave me an ear bashing for singing along to "behind blue eyes" too loud . . .Talking of loud it was fucking loud, (not my singing, that was just crap) but the concert was louder than an orange suit at a funeral. Most outdoor concerts aren't a patch on indoor ones because it’s never loud enough, but this one was!

       Being a football ground there were floodlights, I had never seen this before and don’t know if anyone else had done it, but as it got dark one, by one, lasers went from the stage to the pylons of the floodlights and were reflected up into the dark London sky, it looked fucking brilliant if you’d never seen it before, and probably even if you had.

     I still remember some "stage banter", Pete saying something about Keith and him saying "yeah, I don’t have to wear a white suit to prove I’m a star" I can’t remember exactly what he said but Townshend had a bit of a go at the audience during "we’re not going to take it", the irony of paying to stand in the rain to watch I suppose. The hypnotised never lie (promise not to use any more lyrics, but you can hear Pete sing "Do ya?" in WGFA.)

      Back to the music, by this time everyone was up and right into it, you imagined that everyone in London could hear it (probably close to the truth).The thought of "wow it’s really them", even when they played old stuff that you remembered seeing on top of the pops as a kid. TV never did them justice, the power and agression on stage, all feeding off each other and sort of held together by Pete, who was windmilling and leaping around as good as he ever did. It’s funny but if you ask a teenager who he'd like to be in a band that he likes; most people pick the lead singer. But everyone wanted to be Pete.

     The Tommy excerpts went down really well, by now everything was just black (and wet) and nothing else seemed to exist except the bright energy radiating from the stage. If you go to a concert now, probably even a Who concert, there’s loads of people who are there just because it’s trendy, or they work for the record company, etc.There didn't seem to be any there,no-one who wasn't a die hard fan would stand in the rain all day just to watch a band they didn't particularly like and I think theatmosphere was all the better because of it.

      If there’s a better finale song than Won't Get Fooled Again I've never heard it (and I've seen Zeppelin do Rock and Roll). Everything I’ve seen before and after pales into insignificance.The laser show went along with the music and the opening bit on the organ with the stage in total darkness and just one light after another going out across the sky as far as you could see was brilliant. Every few minutes Pete’s docs were visible above the heads of the crowd as he leaped into the air and it seemed that the whole day, year even was just created just for this one song.

     In the end the lasers criss-crossed the whole sky,pretty tame now I suppose but . . . you had to be there. The band just left the stage as the last note was stil ringing in our ears. No encore . . . class.

     Then the usual problem of how a minimum of 76,000 people who are soaking wet, nearly deaf, half
pissed or out of it get home. I had to wak back to the mainline station from London Bridge. Met the rest on the way.We stayed at St Pancreas station for the night on the plaform, just us and about 500 people. I remember a big cheer going up when the station clock got to 5.15.The first train out was known as the milk train, but we searched all over and not a fucking bottle in sight.

      I'm older now than my dad was then. I live in Sydney Australia by the beach in a 'cool' suburb, it looks nice, its not often cold, a bit like living in California I imagine (but mercifully without Rod Stewart). There’s lots to do . . .but somehow, when I hear a Who song it still conjures up not 'mean streets' as such, but terraced houses and narrow English city streets, it isn’t 'sun and fun' music. For me it will always be 'the numbered seats in empty rows it all belonged to me you know.'Why should I try to write something that would take me 3 pages to explain when these lyrics do it in one sentence?

      You want your heroes never to grow old, to stay the same and to be great forever.There is always talk of a " new oo" I think the Jam were the closest thing to it. But to me the Who will always be the band who played " Won’t Get Fooled Again" in the rain at Charlton and convinced a skinny, 19-year-old that he was in the presence of greatness.
graham rosso

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I knew I was there with a bunch of mates, but forgot it was my 17th birthday. Who better to celebrate with?
 
Sadly, I have few memories of the day, except:
• At one point, we were trying to move around the pitch (where many of the fans were), and the sheer number of people trying to do the same thing was frightening. I was fairly used to the old-style soccer stadiums in London, and the occasional crush of people when goals were scored (or nearly scored). This was much worse, to the point where we were basically being crushed for several minutes - a human logjam, with way too many people in a confined space. Close to panic.You read about the various tragedies at places like Cincinatti (The Who again), and all the English soccer disasters, and you realize that it could quite easily have happened at Charlton. (The promoters just weren't very scrupulous about safety and numbers.) 
• The Who were my favourite band at the time, and I can't remember a thing about their set. (No chemical excuses, even.) Shame on me, and my memory. However...
• I remember Streetwalkers...Roger Chapman was getting his share of press in the likes of NME, and he and Charlie Whitney had a new album out, "Red Card". I bought it in red vinyl (eat your heart out). At Charlton, they did a rousing version of the "epic" song from the album, "Decadence Code."
• I'm pretty sure SAHB played "Delilah"...
Keep up the good work!
 
Jonathan

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    I was at the 1976 Charlton gig with a mate, Frankie Allan, sadly no longer with us. Catching the train from Nottingham then a tube before finally another train to Charlton, we arrived early before the gig had started so missed a lot of the reported nonsense that happened later on.
 
    At first we sat on the terracing furthest away from the stage, we watched Ariel Bender's Widowmaker in the sunshine from there. I don't recall them being particularly notable. Chapman and Whitney in Streetwalkers livened things up and were very enjoyable as you might expect from the ex-Family men.
 
    The Outlaws were not particularly my kind of thing at that time as I was very much more into British bands. They were however excellent with their southern boogie. At this point we steadily edged our way forward to within a few feet of the stage where we watched the rest of the gig from. Although I was into Lowell George at that time after seeing Little Feat on the Whistle Test etc they really didn't set the heather alight with their set. At about this time I noticed some of the nastiness developing in the crowd.
 
     If I recall correctly the rain began to pour during Alex Harvey's set, it didn't seem to matter though as SAHB brought the house down with a fantastic set. Alex, bassist Chris Glenn and Zal Cleminson did their stuff with one foot on Alex's pirate treasure chest posing whilst singing and playing. The band were turned out in their usual attire, Alex with his buccaneers coat and stripey tee-shirt, Chris Glenn with his underpants worn outside his trousers! Zal in his clown costume with full make-up and drummer Ted McKenna in his pin stripe jacket. Alex had his usual dusty tome in front of him with which to tell his stories.
 
     Half way through the set Alex shouted loudly 'stop that f***ing fight' at an altercation near the front of the stage, stopping the band whilst pointing accusingly at the perpetrators. The fight fell apart meekly.
 
    By the time The Who came on conditions were pretty soggy. Roger Daltrey sprinted out and slid straight on to his back side shouting 'The Who on Ice!' as he did so. Shortly after this I felt a huge blow on the back of my head as an orange flung by someone hit me on the back of the head. It felt like a housebrick!
 
    The Who set went on pretty late and our train home became in some doubt. Knowing the The Who habit of not coming back out, we decided to make a break for it and legged it out onto the street behind the stage as the band sailed into the usual set-closer Won't Get Fooled Again. The sound of that song was incredible as we ran through the back streets of Charlton - a feeling I'll never forget. At the same time the green overhead lasers continued to amaze people.
 
    We shouldn't have bothered as we ran to the local train station only to find a huge queue already there. We missed our train and consequently missed our connections back home to Nottingham. The night was spent sleeping  on the platform at St. Pancras before catching a 'milk train' to Leicester in the morning. We finally arrived back in Nottingham at lunch the next day, weary but with memories for a lifetime.
 
   SAHB were fantastic and would have probably stole the show from any band apart from The Who. The Who, as always, were absolutely immense though - the best live band ever in my opinion.
 
Stuart Frew

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    Ah memories of this day...Ticket price £4.00 just imagine ...!!,bought in conjunction with "The Sun"  Factor in 10.000 forgeries...you have a crowd of 80,000 plus.

    First up Widdowmaker... Aerial Bender formally of a latter day Mott The Hoople,only "hit" and moment of the day "Pin A Rose On Me"

    Next up DJ Nicky Horne of Capitol Radio spinning The Eagles (One Of These Nights),Daryl Hall & John Oates (She's Gone) and The Stones (Sympathy For The Devil).....The Stones instantly bring rain...Lots of it!!

   Next Chapman Whitney....Me and me Horse and Me Rum,Burlesque and My Friend the Sun....during rain!!

   The Outlaws.... Imagine guitars instead a of a fiddle...Turn up the power...then loosen up... then turn it up again..you've got 15 minutes of "High Tides And Green Grass"...country rock madness at its finest!

    Then the mighty Little Feat, one of the finest bands on the planet...except on this day..
It's tea time and it's raining,some hero has climbed the floodlights(who knows what he is on!!) and is hanging by the back of his knees god knows how high in the air....so it's all eyes on the drama as security try to talk him down...Sadly no-one notices the Feat.

    And so to Alex....with a stand in keyboard player...Ladies and Gentlemen,Boys and Girls I would like to take time to introduce you to my band...it shouldn't be one of SAHB's finest hours but somehow...opening with a cover of the Tull's Love Song and Alice's School's Out ..they pull it out of the bag."Amos Moses" rocks..Alex bursts through the wall during "Framed" dressed as Hitler.No he isn't embracing the right wing..he's just sussed enough to recognise the rise of the national front and is holding a mirror up to the situation......the day's only fight breaks out and it is stopped immediately with the immortal words from Alex.."Stop That Fucking Fight"...no one argues with Alex!!
And so to The Who..

    The rain abates...the band run onto the stage..first Pete stage left,he immediately chops out the chords for "Can't Explain",,,he's followed by Moon and Daltrey.
Daltrey slips on the rain lashed stage...the whole thing looks likely to collapse at the start but is somehow retrieved...
I look at the set lists on various websites...where is Bellboy ? Pretty damned sure it was played that day...Maybe I'm mistaken,a look at the NME review of the time
will confirm or not,I'm sure I remember Moon swearing in the London night air...well it was 6 months before the Sex Pistols v Bill Grundy!!
And so to Tommy...by this time I have a girl from South Africa on my shoulders and I'm in heaven ...Moonie does his Uncle Ernie bit...Pinball Wizard..I'm Free.. then the lights are killed..
Smoke begins to billow from behind Moon's drum riser....See Me... just visible,Townshend windmills furiously,Daltrey,marching on the spot swings his mike...Feel Me...
A green laser rises from behind Moon and hits the stage right floodlight...See Me...
It hits a mirror and bounces to the rear floodlight and then around the stadium and back to the stage...Feel Me...
Green lights criss-cross the floodlights...See Me....
(approximately) 6 lasers span out like fingers into the night sky...Feel Me...
A red tracer beam just hits the first light and simply bounces off the other lights and returns towards the stage...See Me..
Finally spotlights light up the sky from behind Moon...Feel Me..
Add 80,000 hands all raised and clapping in perfect time...LISTENING TO YOU I GET THE MUSIC...
I'm sorry but my words alone cannot describe the scene...
My Generation follows...as does Won't Get Fooled.. But NO BLOODY ENCORE !!!!
My first Who gig and still the finest....
 
 
Winty
 
 

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