When The Who make their way to Phoenix next month during their current North American tour, it will mark the first time in almost a decade that the British rock legends have blasted their way through the Valley.
No doubt their Oct. 30 Ak-Chin Pavilion return will draw thousands as Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and their full live band bring a generation (or two, or three) worth of classic songs. It’s also a good bet that their gear will leave the desert in one piece.
Neither of which you could say about their first Arizona show.
Back in August of 1968 in the unlikely setting of Phoenix Municipal Stadium — home today to the ASU baseball team — 15-year-old fan Rick Rieckhoff picked a whopper for the first major concert experience of his life.
He recalled this month that the band — still in its pre-“Tommy” days yet armed with hits like “My Generation” and, at the time, their current single “Magic Bus” — drew a lot of festival-style seating fans on the baseball field but that the grandstands that night were empty.
“I was struck by the stage dynamics,” Rieckhoff said by phone this month. He lived in the Valley for a brief time, from the summer of ’68 to the spring of 1969, and now makes his home in Dallas.
Rieckhoff on that night had wormed his way to the very front of the stage.
“The way Roger Daltrey swung his microphone around; he used to swing it like a lasso like he was roping a steer. I remember it going over my head a few times,” he continued. “I was in front of (bassist John) Entwistle, and then to the right of him was Daltrey and on the far right was Pete. But I found myself watching Keith Moon more than anybody. He was banging the hell out of everything. The drums; they seemed to be moving when he played them.”
In a sign of the pre-Internet times, Rieckhoff had heard plenty of songs from The Who, both in his singles collection and on the radio. (His favorite at the time was “Call Me Lightning,” which they didn’t perform that night.) But, Rieckhoff had never seen the band on film, and therefore didn’t know about their now-legendary signature at the time of completely smashing their instruments at the end of the show.
The closer that night in Phoenix was “My Generation,” and Townshend and Moon did their destructive thing.
“That came as a complete surprise,” Rieckhoff recalled. “My mouth was wide open I’m sure.”
In the midst of the chaos — smoke bombs and all — Rieckhoff managed to scoot his way half up the stage and grab a shrapnel chunk of Townshend’s preferred axe of the time, a red Gibson SG standard. He still has the piece of rock history to this day, but the chunk of Moon’s drum he also snagged was stolen at some point over the years.
The band’s second Arizona show came a couple weeks later at Hi-Corbett Field in Tucson, and soon after that The Who would make Phoenix a regular tour stop in 1971, ’76 and ’80 but across town at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
The Coliseum in fact was the hot spot for bands touring through the Valley in the late ’60s and early ’70s, much more than Phoenix Municipal Stadium. That’s where Rieckhoff saw The Doors (with Sweetwater and Albert King on the bill) in a show that drew some infamy when Jim Morrison supposedly started a riot.
“The Doors will never play the Arizona State Fair again,” a Rolling Stone article from December 1968 reads. “And a relatively small riot (for the Doors) has been blown up into a bad publicity campaign that has already cost them a TV special date.”
Rieckhoff — less than three months after corralling Who shrapnel in Phoenix — was on the scene there as well.
“I remember they turned on the lights in the arena, and Morrison was egging the crowd on to not leave,” he said.
“Of course nobody wanted to leave! There was like a mini riot. When my parents picked me up they told me they would not take me to another concert, and they never did,” he laughed.
Since he had no wheels and was at the mercy of his parents driving him to shows, Rieckhoff, who attended Washington High School at the time, ended up missing out on Phoenix tour stops from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and The Mothers of Invention.
Nothing stopped his appetite for live shows, though. The avid concertgoer estimates he’s been to more than 300 shows in his lifetime, including The Who three more times: twice more with Moon in the ’70s and once with Kenney Jones, in 1980. He’s also amassed a collection of 6,000 albums ever since buying his first — the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.”
These days, the last concert he attended was seeing Billy Joel just before COVID. Plenty of bands he loves tour and come through his hometown of Dallas, but for a guy that spent $3 to see The Who in Phoenix in 1968 the inflated ticket prices of today’s live music world keeps him much more selective.
“I’ve seen so many bands that I don’t want to spend $300 to go see The Rolling Stones right now. I’ve seen them seven times, and as much as I love them I don’t want to spend that money,” he said. “It takes the thrill away from it when it costs so much now.”
Steve Stockmar
News Editor | Sun Life Magazine & Arts & Entertainment
YourValley.net
@stevestockmar
sstockmar@iniusa.org
Meet Steve
Steve Stockmar joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2017, and has been an Arizona journalist for almost 30 years. He serves as editor of Sun Life Magazine and contributes to West Valley communities where he focuses mostly on arts & culture, education, and profiles of neighbors making a difference.
Community: Every season Steve serves as a “buddy” with the Miracle League of Arizona in Scottsdale, has volunteered his time with Family Promise in Glendale, and previously served on the Ghostlight Theatre board in Sun City West.
Education: Graduated from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff with a Journalism major and English minor.
Random Fact: Steve once won a 50-player live Texas Hold ’Em poker tournament.
Hobbies: Anguishing over his beloved Chicago Cubs and Bears; listening to Beatles and Grateful Dead music.
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