The Who Pt 2: A Crowd Crush, a Death Trap, and a Tragedy in Cincinnati
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We launch a new scripted episode every Tuesday, bonus chat episodes every Thursday, where you, the listener, get to interact with me, Jake Brennan, the host. And on Fridays, we rewind a previously released episode from our archive of over 235 scripted episodes on subjects like The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Snoop Dogg, Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift, and too many to mention. Hope you guys dig the show. I hope you stick around and become part of the disco community. Rock a rolla.

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This is a story about rock and roll and a rock and roll tragedy. About 11 rock and roll fans who died too young and a rock and roll band who somehow is still alive. It's a story about The Who. Our second story about The Who, actually. A band who made great music. Unlike that music at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.

That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Eminence Blunt MK II. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to No More Tears, Enough Is Enough by Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. And why would I play you that specific slice of your mom's cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 3rd, 1979.

And that was the day that a crowd crush outside the Riverfront Coliseum before a concert by The Who killed 11 people. At the time, the deadliest rock and roll show in history. On this episode, a crowd crush, asphyxiation, 11 dead, Cincinnati, the Riverfront Coliseum, and The Who. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. ♪

Rock and roll is more than music. You know this. Pete Townsend knows this. Pete Townsend, the guitarist, sometimes singer, and chief songwriter for The Who, once described rock and roll as one part music and one part, quote, the celebration of energy, losing yourself, and getting high.

The "getting high" part doesn't necessarily mean illegal drugs, though many who have performed and/or listened to rock and roll of course over the years have done so while on one substance or another. Getting high was scraping the strings of your Rickenbacker on the mic stand and then thrusting the guitar's headstock through the low ceiling above you, as Pete Townshend did in 1964 inside a West London club.

Getting high was smashing the shit out of your cherry sunburst Gibson Les Paul or your gold top Gibson Les Paul or your Gibson SG or your Gibson Thunderbird, which Pete did over and over again at Who shows throughout the 1970s. That was getting high. That was losing yourself. And that was rock and roll. Rock and roll was violence and euphoria wrapped into one. And it had a beat you could dance to.

And no one on the planet was a better example of that violent, euphoric high than Pete's bandmate, the drummer Keith Moon, a wild man on and off the stage who assaulted his drum set with equal vigor and abandon as Pete Townsend assaulted his guitars. But this was January 1979, and Keith Moon was dead. Pete Townsend assumed it was a swift and painless way to go.

So many prescription sedatives were found in Mooney's stomach that 26 of them were still undissolved. And as much as Pete missed having his friend around, missed that fearless sense of humor, Keith wasn't really gone-gone. Not really. He was inside Pete's ears, endlessly ringing, that nonstop, high-pitched tone driving him mad. Keith Moon's cymbals reverberated throughout Pete Townsend's cranium.

In fact, the tinnitus he'd developed from years of maximum rock and roll was so bad that Pete had decided even before Keith shuffled off this mortal coil that The Who would stop touring. Besides, they'd made their point. Eight albums, two rock operas, 126 decibels , and millions served from Woodstock to the University of Leeds. But then Keith died.

which, you would think, would only underscore Pete's desire to quit the road. It was impossible to imagine The Who without Keith Moon flailing away at his drum kit, just as it was impossible to imagine them without John Entwistle's thunder fingers rattling the bass guitar or Roger Daltrey belting out that iconic rock god's scream. There was no one like Keith Moon. Who else would install spotlights on the beach of his Malibu home?

and point them at the home of his neighbor, Steve McQueen, in hopes that he could catch a glimpse of Steve's girlfriend, Ally McGraw, naked. Pete Townsend sat in silence as his dead friend split his head open from the inside out with tinnitus and he tried to think, what if? What if Keith's death was a parting gift? What if in Keith's absence, there was opportunity? And not just opportunity, but duty.

A feeling came over Pete, something so overwhelming that it elbowed the ringing in his ears out of the way. Fuck his tinnitus. Fuck the haters who would never acknowledge the band without Mooney. And fuck the fact that Pete's marriage was falling apart. And by going back out on the road, where temptation and indiscretion were plentiful, he was essentially saying so long to that once happy union. Pete didn't care about all that. He felt an unwavering desire to prove himself again.

As if The Who were starting over. And that's all there was. Making music, writing songs, touring and performing. If he simply did the work, then everything else would be okay. At least that was the idea. But the work required a workhorse. Not a clone of Keith Moon going buck wild behind the kit. A drummer who could keep a steady rhythm and guide the rest of them forward. But what about Phil Collins? Phil was keen.

Nah, but Phil had his hands full keeping Genesis on the rails, what with Peter Gabriel leaving and all that. Pete wanted Kenny Jones, formerly of The Faces. Roger Daltrey thought it was a bad idea for the same reason Pete thought it was a good idea. Kenny wasn't Keith. Keith used to play to Roger's vocal, and in turn, Roger danced to Keith's performance. It was like this symbiotic musical relationship. It was in the blood. To Roger, Kenny Jones was bloodless.

But Roger Daltrey wasn't the arguing type, and when Pete Townsend wanted something done, just like Paul McCartney and the Beatles or Rod Stewart and Kenny's old band, The Faces, Pete Townsend got it done. So it was decided. The very much alive Kenny Jones replaced the dead Keith Moon, and The Who hit the road.

First, the Rainbow in London, then the Frézou Sampa Theatre in Cannes, France, where their excellent documentary, The Kids Are Alright, was having its debut, as was the new movie version of their rock opera, Quadrophenia. And then, on to America. Where on December 3rd, 1979, in Cincinnati, a crowd of excited ticket holders were already assembled outside in frigid temperatures, hours before doors opened.

There was little assigned seating at tonight's show, so these fans were there early in order to claim a spot up front before others beat them to it. And the high school kids that remained in the Who's target demographic in particular were ready to have the night of their young lives. And it would be a night to remember. A night of maximum rock and roll. A celebration of energy, of losing yourself, and of getting high. But the underpinning of violence that characterized any Who show.

which was typically reserved for one of Pete Townsend's poor guitars. Tonight, that trademark violence would instead strike into the heart of a restless crowd.

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Hey, discos, if you want more Disgraceland, be sure to listen every Thursday to our weekly after-party bonus episode, where we dig deeper into the stories we tell in our full weekly episodes. In these after-party bonus episodes, we dive into your voicemails and texts, emails, and DMs,

and discuss your thoughts on the wild lives and behavior of the artists and entertainers that we're all obsessed with. So leave me a message at 617-906-6638, disgracelandpod at gmail.com or at disgracelandpod on the socials, and join the conversation every Thursday in our after-party bonus episode.

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Joni put her parents' Volvo sedan in park and cut the engine. The car needed new brakes and the check engine light kept flashing ominously from the dash.

Nevertheless, this bulletproof hunk of steel had somehow made it all the way from her small town outside Cincinnati to here, a garage adjacent to the Riverfront Coliseum where, in just a few hours, The Who would perform a sold-out show for an audience of 18,000 people. Her friend Jean's sitting shotgun sparked her Bic lighter and brought the flame to the tip of a tightly rolled joint between her lips. She took a small hit, held it in, exhaled, and then she passed it to Joni.

"The fuck?" Joanie said. "I told you to do that outside. My dad is gonna kill me if he smells that shit in here." Joanie still couldn't believe that she'd managed to convince her parents to let her go to the show in the first place, let alone take their car. Dad was a hard ass, but mom was a pushover, so that was the angle. Get mom alone, ask her, and then have her deal with dad. It worked. Joanie was stoked.

This was her first show ever, and it was about time. She was 17 for Christ's sakes. Going to see a show at the Coliseum was a rite of passage for any high school student in the greater Cincinnati area. Though she was being honest, she didn't care that she didn't see Kiss the year prior. All that makeup and tongue wagging was fucking goofy. She was bummed though that she missed the Zeppelin show, even though something like a thousand kids without tickets crashed the gates and nearly caused a riot.

And that was what her dad was really worried about. All these kids hopped up on dope, libidos raging, adrenaline pumping, jockeying for position. The Who is not her father's rock and roll or anyone's father's rock and roll for that matter. Joni's mom reminded her dad that the Coliseum had learned from the Zeppelin incident and now only allowed ticket holders onto the plaza outside the venue to ensure something like that would never happen again.

And that's where Joanie and Jean were headed now. Up the walkway from the garage to the plaza was freezing outside, 20 degrees give or take. A cold wind blew the red hot end off what was now Jean's roach and tangled Joanie's long brown hair in front of her face. Doors weren't scheduled to open until 6:30, but they were here early, as were thousands of others.

The show was first come, first served. Quote unquote, festival seating, as it was called, which basically means general admission for arenas. And if you wanted a spot up front in the pit where the action was just feet away from Roger Daltrey twirling the microphone cord and Pete Townsend erupting into a flurry of windmills on his guitar, where you not only heard but felt the power of the loudest rock band on the planet, you better show up well in advance.

Joanie thought. She surveyed the crowd, not nearly early enough. The plaza was a zoo, thousands upon thousands of people. All 16 doors leading inside were of course still closed and would be until the appointed time. Joanie looked at her watch, 5:30, one hour to go before they could get out of the cold and receive that dose of maximum rock and roll. With Jean by her side, she claimed a spot among the rest of the fans.

and they huddled their bodies together for warmth. And then, they waited. Inside the Coliseum, Pete Townsend was getting in tune. He had his trademark Marshall stack assembled, one speaker cab on top of the other, a configuration that Jim Marshall himself, the man the Marshall stack is named for, once told Pete not to do because one of those giant ass speakers could topple over and kill somebody.

That meant it was dangerous. Not to mention necessary, because every time Pete added some extra wattage to his rig, John Entwistle did one better on his side of the street. Fuckin' Entwistle. Always trying to drown out Pete with his bass. This is the real reason why the Who were so damn loud. Two sparring egos on either side of the stage, each unwilling to let the other have more juice.

The Who's manager, Bill Kerbishley, meanwhile, tried to remain egoless and matter-of-fact as he surveyed the scene. His band was about to perform the most anticipated show of the year in Cincinnati. It had sold out in under an hour. Close to 15,000 festival seating tickets on the floor at $10 a pop and another $3,500 or so at $11 each for loge seating up above. Bill Kerbishley made the rounds. He walked through the mostly empty Coliseum and imagined it packed through the rafters.

He passed the vendors prepping Budweiser's and Orange Julius, the guards stationed at ramp entrances leading into the venue, and the off-duty cops collecting time and a half. And one of those cops passed Bill on his way from taking a piss in the men's bathroom heading back outside to where he was one of 25 officers overseeing what was now a crowd of approximately 8,000. Again, 25 cops for 8,000 kids.

It was now long past 6:30. All 16 doors remained closed. Joni and Jean were still huddled together, still trying to stay warm. Now somewhere in the middle of the mob, thousands of people in front and behind them.

and people were getting restless. They were cold, they were anxious, and they were pissed off that the doors were supposed to be open by now. Some were screaming, "Let us in!" Others ran from outside the perimeter of bodies and catapulted themselves into the middle. Amongst all this commotion and impatience, the crowd began to shift on its own. Not as 8,000 separate individuals, but as one connected mass.

Joni felt herself getting pushed forward. And then suddenly from inside the Coliseum, she heard it. They all heard it. The sound of rock and roll. The sound of The Who. There was no mistaking it. There are conflicting reports on what this sound actually was. If it was The Who performing a late soundcheck or whether it was a test run of footage from the new Quadrophenia movie, which was going to be shown directly before The Who's performance in lieu of an opening band.

Whatever it was. It made the 8,000 people and counting outside lose their minds because they thought the show had begun and they were missing out. "They're starting! They're fucking starting! Let us in! What the fuck?" The crowd surged forward. Jodi tried to move, but there was no room, nowhere to go. She felt her feet lift off the ground. And up ahead she could see two doors were open, right? Was that what she saw?

Was that it? The crowd surge brought her back down again. Only this time, her feet weren't touching the plaza floor. Now, her feet were on someone's back and someone's chest. Some poor kid flat on the ground underneath her wheezing for air. The kid's cries drowned out by thousands, screaming and shouting, and then abruptly like a bomb going off, the sound of the plate glass windows of the dozen or so locked doors up ahead shattering.

Kids who just moments ago were pressed up against those locked doors, their faces flattened against the cold glass, were now being thrust inside through the glass shards. Their shoes, their coats, their shirts ripped right off their bodies as they passed through the jagged narrow openings. For those lucky enough to be in front of one of the only open doors, it was a mad dash to get through.

You were only as fast as the mass of people that surrounded you, all shoving forward to the same destination, the same doorway, the same turnstile all at once. Bodies squeezed tight against bodies, chests compressed, and that flow of oxygen was cut off just like that. Joanie watched in horror as bodies began to be hoisted into the air and passed to the back of the crowd above her. Those bodies were limp, passed out in shock or worse.

The mere sight sent Joanie into shock. She looked around for Jean and only now realized that they'd been separated. She screamed out, "Jean! Jean!" She continued to be pushed forward, unable to control her movement. Getting closer to one of the open doors, nearly there, trying to call out for her friend again but finding she could no longer breathe. The crush of bodies around her pushed closer to the entrance. She struggled to break free to get air into her lungs. No use.

She was inches from the door now. And then, a massive wave of momentum came from behind. Joanie was helpless to resist. Her body was thrown forward, wrestling her free from the bodies surrounding her. Finally, she could breathe again. And as she catapulted toward the ground, she took a huge gulp of air.

Her body landed next to her, lying on the plaza floor. A kid younger than her. Skin turned blue. Unconscious or dead, she couldn't tell which. She freaked. Feet were raining down on top of her now. A stampede that kept coming and seemed to have no end. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

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He had that look because, just moments earlier, while in the middle of dinner with United States Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, Blackwell was being briefed on a tragedy unfolding at the Riverfront Coliseum. What the hell? A tragedy? What do you mean a tragedy? Fatalities, he was told. The voices of Cincinnati police and fire on the other end of the line were breathless. Mayor Blackwell was stunned. How many fatalities are we talking about?

The total number was unknown. But they all seemed to be occurring outside the Coliseum at the plaza level. The fire marshal suspected mass overdosage. You know kids today, Mr. Mayor, sir, thinking they're invincible and all that, thinking they can handle a puff off this and a tab off that, and you also can't rule out a batch of bad dope making its way through the crowd like a silent killer.

The fire marshal, of course, was unaware, as everyone was at the moment, that the real reason people were dying was not because of a quote-unquote mass overdosage and also not because they were being trampled, according to the long-held theory, but instead because they were squeezed together so tightly that their lungs couldn't expand. They were literally asphyxiated standing up, strangled by the people crushed alongside them.

Still, at the time, at this moment, all that was known was that the scene outside the venue was chaotic and gruesome, and the show was about to start. "So what do we do?" the mayor asked. The fire marshal's opinion was to shut the whole thing down before more kids died, and the mayor scrunched up his face. He could feel the tension headache coming on strong right between his eyes.

If they shut it down now, now that the show had started and all 18,000 people were on site, who's to say that wouldn't create a more dangerous situation? What if it turned out like the Zeppelin show from last year, but even worse? And let's not forget the people were dying not inside the venue, a private space, but outside on the plaza, which is public property. Did they even have the legal authority to stop it? With that, Mayor Blackwell made his first major decision as Cincinnati's new mayor. On day one, no less.

The show would go on. Joanie was stumbling around in a daze. She took stock of her surroundings. Somehow she made it inside the Coliseum. She had no idea how she'd done it, how she'd managed to get off the ground, avoid being trampled to death, avoid being asphyxiated to death. But however she managed, it felt like she'd gone through a war zone to get here.

To her left, she saw piles of shoes and clothes. Sacrificial offerings stripped off the feet and backs of those who had only minutes earlier clawed their way in. To her right, people scrambled past her, no doubt making a mad dash to the pit down in front of the stage. And behind her, outside in the plaza, red and blue lights swirled hypnotically. Police cars, ambulances, news crews.

They are all descending on the disaster unfolding in the freezing night. There were bodies scattered across the cold ground. Some were already dead and covered with blankets, while others were being revived by overwhelmed EMTs not sure where to direct their efforts. And what about Jean? Where the hell was Jean? Joanie frantically looked for her friend as she made her way inside the Coliseum and to the main hall, where the stage was set with the Who's martial stacks.

At the moment, a giant screen was hanging from the rafters and on that screen, scenes from the newly released Quadrophenia movie were being played. Quadrophenia was The Who's second rock opera, following the group's groundbreaking Tommy, originally released as a double album in 1973. It told the story of the Mods and the Rockers battling it out in London and Brighton.

It's a world from which the Who were born, one which now represented their old legacy, their past life, one in which Keith Moon sat on their drum riser and not Kenny Jones. But the crowd of thousands looking up at the screen weren't thinking about legacy. Right now, they were watching a bloody scene unfold, a scene in which the Mods and the Rockers brutally attack each other on Brighton Beach.

The violence, the blood, the chaos. It was as if what had just transpired outside was now being re-run on the screen. Art imitating life or the other way around. For those who had just gone through a harrowing near-death experience simply to gain entrance now felt like they were being shown that whole ordeal all over again. Joanie wasn't looking at the screen. She was looking for her friend. And she was still looking when the house lights went down and the Who at long last appeared.

Roger Daltrey with his blonde hair cut short, a bearded Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, The Ox, locking into a groove with Kenny Jones, still trying to prove he was worthy of Keith Moon's vacant seat. All four of them, completely unaware of what had just happened. As were many of the thousands in the audience. Listening to the audio from the show, it sounds like just another Who show. A killer performance for a pumped up crowd.

Of course, we now know that there were some in the audience that night who sat on the sidelines, traumatized by the stampede, stunned and dazed, letting the music wash over them like the cold waves crashing on Brighton Beach. They didn't even applaud. All they could think about were the bodies they'd seen on the ground, on the plaza, faces gone blue, eyes glazed over. All there was left to do now was not to enjoy the show, but simply survive it. Count down the minutes, song after song.

"Who are you? Pinball Wizard." Entwistle taking the reins for my wife. Until the show, mercifully, came to an end. And when it did finally end, thank fucking god, it was time to get the hell out. And Joanie watched as thousands of people began moving toward the exit. And she was back to the beginning, back to a few hours ago when the masses had been streaming in the opposite direction.

Freedom was just a few footsteps away. She could see it there through the shattered plate glass doors, past the piles of clothes and shoes, the bodies covered in blankets, the pulse of ambulance lights. Then she felt hands grab her shoulders. She spun around, and it was Jean. Holy shit, it was Jean. It was all too much. For both of them, the tears came. Tears of relief, of confusion, of fear.

Tears that you shed when you realize that not everyone in a crowd of 18,000 had lived to see what you had just saw. Backstage, there were no tears. Just celebratory drinks and that post-show euphoria. Pete, Roger, John, and Kenny were high on rock and roll. Still, blissfully unaware of the tragedy that had occurred just beyond the doors of the venue they were currently sitting in.

And this is because their manager, Bill Kerbishley, had purposefully kept them in the dark so that they could finish the show as if it were any other night. The alternative wasn't pretty, stopping the show and risking a riot and more deaths. But now it was time to bring the boys back down to earth. And the high they were riding on was about to come to a sudden, sobering end. Bill Kerbishley had that look on his face, a look he only expressed when things were unspeakably grim. "Gather round, boys," he said. "Something terrible happened out there tonight."

Pete Townsend's ears throbbed with the noise from that night show and every night show from the last 15 odd years. This is one of those moments when he wished his tinnitus was so bad that he was actually deaf because then he wouldn't have to hear what Bill had to say next. 11 people were dead.

December, 1981. New York City. Pete Townshend was going on hour 12. Half a day spent sitting on a ratty old couch in a drug den.

Some Wall Street trader sitting to his right sparked a lighter and held it to a slab of tinfoil. Pete moved in, piped between his lips, and took a hit. His lungs burned and his eyes teared up, and then the space between his ears went numb. The ringing, the ghost of Keith Moon, it all just went away. And Pete Townsend was transported. Freebasing cocaine was Pete Townsend's ticket to a fantasy land.

And I don't mean a couch in a drug den somewhere in New York City, which was, in its own unique way, the very definition of a fantasyland. I'm talking about the one inside of his head. The one where he wasn't an alcoholic, or wasn't over a million dollars in debt from mismanaged funds, or wasn't trying to navigate a girlfriend on the side while his wife understandably fumed at home, or that it didn't feel like his band was about to implode at any moment. At this moment, however, Pete was on a self-imposed break from the who.

one during which the band's manager, Bill Kirbishley, strongly advised Pete against drinking and drugging. But if the work was on hold, the work being the thing that got Pete through the hard shit, the work being the thing that made everything okay, something else had to fill the void. And Pete Townsend sure as shit wasn't going to take up golf. Hitting a ball into a hole wasn't going to push something like Cincinnati down deep into the recesses of his mind. You needed the hard stuff for that.

To not think about the 11 kids who died that night just two years ago, and they were just kids really, with the exception of one 27-year-old, all of them between the ages of 15 and 21. To not think about questions like, why weren't more doors open for a crowd of 18,000 people? Or did the anxiety over festival seating or the potential it presented for overselling the show contribute to the tragedy? Or who exactly was to blame? The venue? The promoter? The city? The who?

Relatives of the dead sued all of the above. And just months after the show, a settlement was nearly reached. But then Pete shot his mouth off in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine, in which he said of the Cincinnati aftermath, quote, Our guard dropped, just for a second. And then it was back up again. It was, we're not going to let a little thing like this stop us, unquote. The little thing being the deaths of 11 people.

Again, it was the same logic Pete used when Keith died, allowing a tragic event to galvanize you, not hold you back. And yeah, that's kind of fucked up, but that's how Pete saw it. Not that he was seeing clearly at all. Cocaine, heroin, prescription drugs, and alcohol had him fully checked out from dealing with anything real. He knew living like this was unsustainable. Hope I die before I get old and all that were the musings of a 20-year-old. Pete was in his mid-30s now.

He'd seen death up close, and he wanted to be on the other side of that. In 1982, Pete checked himself into an electroacupuncture clinic in San Diego and got clean, at least for the first time. Months later, The Who released their 10th studio album, "It's Hard," featuring the single "Eminence Front," which was all about the drug-induced facade Pete had been putting up for years. And then Pete put up the money.

In 1983, the majority of the lawsuits stemming from the Cincinnati concert tragedy were settled. $2.1 million in total. That's about $6.8 million today. The families of the victims received about $150,000 each, which left $750,000 to be split between 23 others who had been badly injured.

Only 9 of the 11 victims were represented in the settlement. One family chose not to sue, and another opted not to settle, instead seeking a court trial and over $8 million in damages. They later settled for an undisclosed amount. But when it came to facing what happened in Cincinnati, to really dealing with it, that took much longer for Pete. 40 years to be exact. It was 2022 when Pete Townsend and the Who returned to the city for the first time since 1979. Things were different by then.

Kenny Jones was out. John Entwistle was dead. Pete and Roger weren't as loud or as dangerous as they once were. But they could still use music to celebrate energy and losing yourself and getting high, while at the same time rejecting, once and for all, the notion of rock and roll as nothing but a tragic disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Net. ♪

All righty then. Thanks for hanging with me in the Who in this episode. Apple Podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss any downloads. Guys, this week's question of the week is, was the Riverfront Coliseum tragedy the worst tragedy in rock and roll history? There are plenty of others to choose from, and we've covered a bunch on this podcast. Let me know. 617-906-6638. Leave me a voicemail. Send me a text with your answer, and you might hear yourself on the After Party bonus episode.

Coming up right after this, leave a review for Disgrace Land on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. Alrighty, I gotta return some videotapes. Here comes some credits.

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