It was 26 Years Ago Today . . .

I attended my first big rock show 26 years ago tonight. It was at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, and it featured former New York Dolls singer David Johansen, The Clash, and The Who.

Johansen had a minor MTV hit at the time with his “Animals Medley,” which was a melding together of some of the hits by the great British Invasion band, The Animals. Johansen gave a good performance, if memory serves. But I really wanted to see The Clash (pictured above, top) and The Who (pictured above, bottom, in 1982 in a photo from TheWho.com).

The show was the second of two nights at Shea Stadium for the three acts. The Who would play later that week at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey with Johansen (but not The Clash).

The Clash were touring behind their Combat Rock album at the time, and were performing with their original drummer, Terry Chimes. Topper Headon was having serious legal problems back home in the UK and was unavailable to tour. The Clash put on a ferocious set that night, and blew The Who off the stage. The Clash’s performance from that show has just been released as a live album. That album is definitely worth picking up.

I was excited to see The Who for the first time, but it was kind of obvious that Pete Townshend didn’t want to be there. The Who had already announced that the tour would be their “Farewell Tour.” They’ve since gone back on that promise, obviously.

The stage was in the outfield, and was made up to spell out the word ”WHO.” The “W” and the “O” covered the massive speaker racks. The stage was in the bottom part of the “H.” On top of the “H” was a giant video screen, which I mostly relied upon to watch the show as I was sitting in the nosebleed seats.

I’ve since grown to despise stadium concerts, strongly preferring club shows. But I had nothing to measure that concert against at the time. And I have to admit that it was pretty cool to see 65,000 people going nuts when The Who hit the stage and tore into the opening number, “Substitute.”

Overall, it was probably as good a gig as you’ll get at a stadium show. It was mostly memorable because of The Clash. I’ve seen The Who give much better performances at other venues.

Shea Stadium is currently being demolished to make way for parking spaces fro the New York Mets’ new home, Citi Field. But I’m sure that the memories of that October night in 1982 will remain strong for all who attended.

To watch The Clash’s performance of “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” from that night, click here. (Embedding was disabled by request.)

To watch some of the other performances from that night, click in the appropriate places below:

The Clash, “Career Opportunities”:

The Who, “I Can’t Explain”:

The Who, “Sister Disco”:

The Who, “Love, Reign O’er Me”: