Teenage Wasteland: The Who at Winterland, 1968 and 1976 is a fabulous new hardcover photo book that will be released by Schiffer Publishing on February 28th in the US, and April 28th in the UK.
This is a loving follow up to author Edoardo Genzolini’s epic book The Who: Concert Memories from the Classic Years 1964 to 1976, which is an amazing collection of photos and memories from fans who attended some of the most legendary shows of The Who’s career.
Genzolini’s new book narrows it’s scope to focus on The Who’s performances around San Francisco and the Bay area between 1967 to 1976, featuring shows at Fillmore Auditorium (June 16-17, 1967 & February 22, 1968), Monterey Pop (June 18, 1967), Winterland (February 23-24, 1968 & March 27-28, 1976), Cow Palace (November 18, 1967 & November 30, 1973), Fillmore West (August 15, 1968 & June 19, 1969), Berkeley Community Theater (June 16, 1970), and SF Civic Auditorium (December 13, 1971).
There are over 500 rare photos from previously unreleased archives and private collections, which include fantastic shots of the band on stage and behind the scenes. The detailed firsthand accounts from fans who were there helps bring the photo’s to life and provides a glimpse into what it was like to be present at such historically important shows.
As the book title alludes to, the bulk of the photos are from the 1968 and 1976 Winterland shows. These performances represent snapshots from the transitional periods that bookend The Who's stratospheric era of Tommy, Who’s Next, and Quadrophenia. In 1968, the band embarked on their first headlining tour of North America, not long after The Who's breakthrough appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 that finally brought them major recognition in the US. They were still playing at small venues, and the first Winterland concerts took place in front of just a few hundred fans. By the time they played at Winterland in 1976, The Who were globally recognized as one of the greatest live rock and roll bands, regularly performing at much larger arenas than the comparatively tiny 5,000 capacity venue that sold out instantly, after tickets were chosen from a mail-in lottery of 43,000 requests! The 1976 North American Who tour ended up being their last with Keith Moon.
The Who’s San Francisco shows were put on by Bill Graham, the innovative concert promoter and musical impresario that helped establish San Francisco as the epicenter of the counter culture movement in the 60’s. The book has an interesting chapter that covers Bill Graham’s business practices in San Francisco, including information about educational seminars and lectures he provided to musicians. The venues he ran and the shows that he promoted are legendary, and launched the career of many of the bands who played at them, such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin. The Who’s early shows there were critical in helping them get established on the West Coast. Bill Graham adored The Who, and told a fan who provided many of the photos from the 1976 Winterland show that he thought they were the best live band out there, and the Winterland show was the best concert he had ever seen! [Check out more about what Bill Graham had to say in the book excerpt below.]
Besides the shows, the book covers other interesting events that took place when The Who were in San Francisco. There’s an exciting account by Rick Chapman, who was the head of the Meher Baba Information center in Berkeley. Pete Townshend had met Rick a few days before the Winterland shows in 1968, when he visited a bookstore in the office of the Sufism Reoriented group to find books about his beloved Avatar. They hung out together for a few days, and Pete made the decision to quit smoking pot after he discovered Meher Baba’s message against using drugs. There is also an interview with Buck Munger, the director of Sunn amplifiers who discussed the stage equipment The Who used on their 1968 North American tour, and a nice series of photos of Keith Moon and John Entwistle taken before the first Winterland show.
Teenage Wasteland: The Who at Winterland, 1968 and 1976 is a joy to read, and is a real treasure trove of wonderful photos and stories to add to the collection of everyone who is a fan of Pete Townshend and The Who!
Many thanks for Edoardo Genzolini for providing his exclusive write-up about the book and all the lovely photos from it for this article, and for letting us include the nice excerpt from photographer Sansara-Nirvana Murphy!
Winterland, March 28, 1976. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy.
Cow Palace, November 18, 1967. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy.
A few words from author Edoardo Genzolini
Picture yourself in San Francisco one night of the second week of February 1968.
As you are leaving the Fillmore Auditorium after a blues night with Paul Butterfield, James Cotton, and Albert King, you walk past the poster that has just been made for the following week, which reads: The Who, Cannonball Adderley, and The Vagrants. February 22 at the Fillmore; February 23 and 24 at the nearby Winterland.
Now, hear this: you are with The Who, in San Francisco, during that very weekend.
The Who have just returned from San Jose, their first concert of their first North American tour as headliners. They’re looking forward to meeting their Bay Area fans, especially Roger Daltrey: “Ah, San Francisco! What a town,” he bubbles with excitement. “In LA, people come to your show with frowns on their faces, sit on their hands and as much as say: ‘All right. Go on. Blow my mind.’ In San Francisco, people arrive with their minds already blown. They’re so happy to see you. They’re a joy to play for.”
Guess what? You’re invited up to their room at the Continental Lodge! A very modest accommodation, nothing fancy or glamorous. You must be wondering who’s the other guest: meet Rick M. Chapman, head of Meher Baba Information. He’s the guy Pete met two days ago at the bookstore in the office of the Sufism Reoriented group, just a few blocks from where you are now, on Van Ness Avenue. The bookstore is literally down the street. Pete wanted to know more about this mystic, Meher Baba, the Avatar of the Age he first heard about in England a few months back from a friend, and so Rick filled him in on many things about Baba on the way down to San Jose. Meeting Rick was a real watershed: when Pete learned through him about Meher Baba’s view on psychedelics and drugs in general, he declared, “If Meher Baba says, ‘No drugs!’ then for me it’s law!” Pete was of course mindful of his bad trip back from Monterey last June...
Now, time to get your things: let’s go down to the Fillmore district – the band’s called for soundcheck. Don’t mind the line of people around the building – remember: you’re with The Who, and you’re going in the dressing room with them. At the Fillmore and at Winterland, it’s just a whirlwind on and off the stage: the Who are sharing the same dressing room with Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and his quintet, including legendary pianist Joe Zawinul; Leslie West of the Vagrants is sitting near Pete and he’s tuning up a red Gibson SG. All of a sudden, Pete is greeted by a couple of kids who have carried an acoustic guitar for him as a gift! They were escorted by a guy called Jim who was handed a cymbal from Keith Moon during the first set! Turn around and see Roger Daltrey chatting with… Ronnie Spector! There are literally as many people in the dressing room as in the audience.
On stage, you see all the opening bands: the Vagrants trying to steal the Who’s act by destroying the instruments; Cannonball Adderley walking around the stage, smoking during Joe Zawinul 20-minutes piano solo, and then… The Nice, unannounced act with Keith Emerson attacking the Vagrants’ Hammond organ! The Who’s sets are one harder than the other: “Summertime Blues” is played twice, upon an audience member’s request – two times just like the smash-up of the equipment: one per set! Pete confronts a guy in the audience, who tries to grab Roger’s ankles throughout the show, until he gets Pete’s Stratocaster smashed on his hands. All of this goes on in front of the eyes of a kid sitting near to where John Entwistle is standing – so close to his amps, and yet not looking traumatized at all by the deafening volume.
After the sets, back in the dressing room, it looks like no one is nowhere inclined to call it a day, but The Who need to leave early, and so you do: in the morning, you’ll have to meet legendary photographer Jim Marshall for a photo shooting of the band outside the Continental for Teen Set magazine...
If reading these paragraphs you don’t understand why you are being continuously referred to as someone from the Who crew, that’s apparently because you still haven’t delved into the pages of this book. Because that’s what this book makes you: a guest of The Who with an All-Access-Area to their appearances in the San Francisco Bay Area from June 1967 to March 1976, with a particularly dedicated look at their Winterland concerts of February 1968 and March 1976 – on and off the stage, minute after minute. Many of the words used in the paragraphs above are mere descriptions of what more than 500 photos reveal for the first time and hold as undeniable, unmistakable proof: that is, a band represented in an intimacy, in an up-and-close approach, “in almost impossible detail,” like Joel Selvin wrote, that very few other books have tackled.
What you’ve just read also explains by itself the reasons behind the decision to focus this obsessive research on the Bay Area appearances of The Who: the special connection with their San Francisco fan base, the excitement of Pete for sharing the bill with one of his heroes Cannonball Adderley, the feeling of being at home while being thousand miles away from home that only a serious promoter like Bill Graham could guarantee. These are just a few of the elements revealing a genuine and everlasting bond between The Who and “The City,” which each and every page of this book aims to deliver.
Edoardo Genzolini, February 2024
Winterland, February 23 & 24, 1968
Winterland, February 23, 1968. Courtesy of Dawn Hall Estate of Douglas Kent Hall.
Winterland. February 23, 1968. Courtesy of Dawn Hall Estate of Douglas Kent Hall.
John and Keith at someone's house in San Francisco, February 23, 1968. Courtesy of Dawn Hall Estate of Douglas Kent Hall.
Winterland, February 23, 1968. Courtesy of Dawn Hall Estate of Douglas Kent Hall.
Winterland dressing room, before the first set, February 23, 1968. Photograph by Frank Zinn, courtesy of Richard Martin Frost.
Book excerpt from Sansara-Nirvana Murphy, photographer at the 1976 Winterland shows and artist at Winterland Productions.
One of the times when Bill [Graham] came into the art department he was looking at all the stuff on the wall behind me and he asked me “So you like the Who?” I said, “Yes! I love the Who!” And he replied, “In my opinion, they are the best live band out there. I don’t usually tell people my opinion on that because I don’t want to upset anyone. But The Who far surpass all of the other bands when it comes to live concerts in quality and content and effort.” And I replied, “I totally agree, they provide the most intense musical experience possible and give their all in every concert which I have ever seen them perform.” He then replied, “The best concert that I have ever seen, and as you can imagine, I have seen thousands of them, was when they played Winterland in March of 1976. Did you happen to go to either of those two concerts?” To which I gleefully replied, “Yes! Both nights! And it was the most awesome two nights of musical ecstasy I have ever experienced! They were in top form and the music was so intense that it encompassed you in such a way as to make you feel like you were leaving your body – somehow losing yourself and becoming the music exploding and thundering through space and beyond time!!” Bill laughed and said, “That’s the best description of what it is like to see the Who in concert that I have ever heard.” Over the years I have written quite a few letters to Pete Townshend and he was gracious enough to write me quick notes back. One of the letters I received from Pete was written about a month after the two March 1976 Winterland concerts. And it turned out that Pete too thought that those two concerts were amongst the best that The Who had performed for years.
Winterland, March 27 & 28, 1976
Winterland, March 28, 1976. Transparency courtesy of Sansara-Nirvana Murphy, item photo by Stefano Domenichetti Carlini.
Winterland, March 27, 1976. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy.
Winterland, March 27, 1976. Photo by Dennis McCoy, courtesy of whocollection.com.
Winterland. March 27, 1976. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy.
Winterland. March 27, 1976. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy.
Roger's scream during Won't Get Fooled Again. Winterland, March 27, 1976. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy.
Winterland billboard. March 27, 1976. Photo by Dennis McCoy, courtesy of whocollection.com.
The quiet before the storm. Inside Winterland, March 27, 1976. Photo by Dennis McCoy, courtesy of whocollection.com.
Winterland, March 28, 1976. Photo by Sansara-Nirvana Murphy:
