The Who Tour 1969
| Tour by The Who | |
| Associated album | "Tommy" |
|---|---|
| Start date | 17 January 1969 |
| End date | 19 December 1969 |
| Legs | 7 |
| No. of shows | 123 (approximately) |
| The Who concert chronology | |
The Who Tour 1969 was a series of performances and tours by The Who, partially in support of their Tommy album.
1969 was an extremely transitional year for the band, due almost entirely to Pete Townshend's rock opera Tommy, which they had begun recording the previous autumn. For the first part of the year, the group alternated between recording in the studio during the week and performing in clubs and universities on the weekends. With recording completed in March, the rock opera was reportedly performed for the first time in April at Bolton Institute of Technology and several other times in the United Kingdom through the early part of May. As no recordings of these shows have surfaced, it is not known exactly how much of Tommy was played at this stage, but by the time the group travelled to North America for a tour in May and June they featured roughly 40 minutes of the piece during certain shows, omitting songs like the "Overture", "Cousin Kevin", the "Underture", and "Sally Simpson" because they weren't considered suitable for live performance. Aside from the new material, songs such as "Happy Jack", "A Quick One, While He's Away", "Young Man Blues", "Summertime Blues", "My Generation", and "Magic Bus" continued to feature heavily in the group's stage show, among others. Meanwhile, the instrument smashing that had characterised their performances for several years prior diminished considerably by this point.
By the second half of the year, the success of Tommy began to elevate the status of the band, who continued to feature it as the focal point of their act. The group played high-profile shows at London's Royal Albert Hall and was one of the few acts to be paid for appearing at the in August, having travelled back to the United States specifically to perform at this event and just one other date before returning to England; they also were one of the headlining acts at the Isle of Wight Festival 1969. In the fall, they elected to expand the stage presentation of Tommy further, adding songs like the "Overture" and "Sally Simpson" that had been skipped in earlier performances; additionally, show-ending performances of "My Generation" were stretched out to reprise certain parts of the rock opera along with other instrumental passages (such as the chord progression that eventually evolved into "Naked Eye"). Following a second stint in North America, the group took Tommy to the London Coliseum in December, the first in a series of European opera house dates that would continue in early 1970.
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