Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Roger Daltrey reunited last year to breathe new life into their 1970s classic, Quadrophenia. After the show's premiere at Hyde Park and subsequent American tour, The Who returned to the UK in December to give two stunning performances at Earl's Court. Mark Cunningham was there to get the full sound story.

For many of the 150,000 audience gathered in Hyde Park last summer for the all-star Masters of Music concert, the highlight was surely the live premiere of The Who's Quadrophenia, performed by Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, Roger Daltrey, and a huge supporting cast, which included Gary Glitter, Adrian Edmonson, Phil Daniels, and David Gilmour. For those under 25, it was probably their first sighting of The Who, the band which over its 33 year on/off history has arguably remained Britain's most exciting live rock act.

As impressive as it was, my overriding wish during that overcast day was that this show would eventually surface in a conducive indoor arena. I was, therefore, thrilled when news filtered through of winter dates in London at, erm, Earl's Court... not the most conducive venue for anything really, apart from the Ideal Home Exhibition and the annual PLASA show. I walked away from Earl's Court in December with a quite different impression and no one was more surprised than me.

Not since the early '80s had I experienced a sound in that cavernous void that was quite so crystal clear, yet retaining the kind of power that could only emanate from a band like The Who. The drums, in particular, had a wonderful hi-fi feel to them, and much of this quality can be attributed to the fact that the volume was, for once, at a sensible level (I had to remind myself that this band was once in the Guinness Book Of Records under the category 'Loudest Concert'). It was without reservation that after the show I headed straight for front-of-house Engineers Dave Kob and Donovan Garber to congratulate them on making the impossible possible.

More so than at Hyde Park, I was reminded of the unique chemistry between the three Who members that continues to distinguish them from other '60s survivors. Daltrey, fit and agile as ever, is still capable of delivering his gut-wrenching roar as he rules the stage with characteristic menace. Although lacking in the hair department these days, Townshend retains a devilish look in his eye, and despite restricting himself to an acoustic guitar for most of the set (while brother Simon handles the lead duties), his unpredictable nature keeps the audience on edge all night. Entwistle, meanwhile, the rock world's greatest bass player, looks as unfazed by it all as he did in the era of 'My Generation', while holding down the rhythm like an anchor and letting rip with the occasional breathtaking flourish. Adding a sense of urgency is 31 year old drummer Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr, whose style is the nearest that any of his predecessors have come to matching the once-in-a-lifetime flavour of the late Keith Moon. Put simply, it is the best Who line-up since 1978, and one which will hopefully continue.

WHO'S SOUND

As the engineers line-checked during the late afternoon, long-standing Who aide Bob Pridden weaved in and out of various work posts, uttering a uniform 'Everything awright?' Where The Who's sound is concerned, the buck stops with him, even though some of the world's top engineers are at front of house and on monitors. Pridden's role has been to design the system, decide on how to run the show, and hire the right crew for the job. For many years, Showco was his favoured sound, rental company, until 1989 when American rivals Clair Brothers took the opportunity to work on The Who's 25th anniversary tour, and last year, they provided all the services for the Hyde Park event before embarking on the Quadrophenia dates.

Dave Kob is the main man at front of house, as he was for the Quadrophenia segment of the Hyde Park gig. A Clair Bros engineer since 1975, Kob escorted me around the stage and his mixing platform prior to this, the second of two dates at Earl's Court. Firstly, he explained the PA configuration. "This rig is like a giant stereo, comprised of full-range cabinets. It's a Clair Brothers JBL-loaded system, with the same basic two kinds of S4 Series II cabinets that we used at Hyde Park: the long-throw P and short-throw F boxes. However, whereas we had 266 cabinets on that outdoor event, in this indoor situation, we are flying just 48 of these cabinets above the stage. Considering the amount of drivers in the air, it's quite a compact PA. Each cabinet is four-way, with 10 drivers in each, and there are no sub-lows under the stage — everything is flown. I prefer that situation to sub-lows, because where are you going to position sub-lows where someone isn't getting killed by an overdose of low end? Whether you have them down on the floor or under the stage off to the side, there's always going to be someone receiving the full force of them."

The system is driven by Crest Audio 10004 and 9001 amplifiers, and controlled by Clair's own CTS Coherent Transfer System. Says Kob: "The amps are brand new and have been modified especially for Clair Bros by Crest. The actual power averages something like 1,000 Watts per box, so at peak power the total system is somewhere in between 50,000 and 60,000 Watts. We also have some Carver stereo amps for the monitor system, which are very reliable and have again been tweaked especially for Clair Bros' use."

Kob says that the notorious acoustic properties of Earl's Court demanded a delay system formed of two clusters of four R4 cabinets just behind and above the mixing platform. "The room is about 300 feet long so you have to be well prepared with efficient long-throw speakers, but we couldn't get away without delays. Don Garber ensures that everything is tuned and hanging OK on every show, and he tuned the delay signal to about 115ms from the main stacks to the delay cluster position, which is about 120 feet in distance. There is a function on the TC Electronic TC 1280, which will give you a very close estimation of time measurement if you punch in the distance in feet between stacks, but you also need to consider humidity and atmospheric conditions. To back that up, Don plays a click track through the stacks, walks around the room, and fine tunes the delay measurement by ear. Yesterday afternoon, he adjusted the timing by 4ms, which just proves that even sophisticated technology needs the support of the human ear."

To set up the PA system equalisation, Kob employs a number of TC Electronic TC 1128 graphic equaliser modules, which he uses in conjunction with the TC 6032 remote controller. The remote has a motorised fader operation that can address up to 33 modules either individually, by group, or all at once, and up to 99 memories can be stored and recalled in any of the 33 modules. Kob is truly impressed by its ease of use. "We are basically using seven EQ settings at once: one each for the front fill system, the delays, the long throw cabinets, the short throws, etc. It's a brilliant tool that saves so much time, because I can punch in what I did at the last gig in New Jersey and see how it sounds in Earl's Court. The chances are that it will not sound right, but if the hall is of a similar scale and type, you have a good starting point to help you tune and trim the system from there. We have the whole tour in that remote controller, and if we should ever return to Earl's Court, I can hit a button, and the system is instantly EQ'd. Ain't life great! I'm not wild about digital EQ, but TC's equipment sounds very good to me."

"Their big anthem, 'My Generation', was conspicuously absent — maybe the line "Hope I die before I get old" is a little redundant these days."

WHO'S MIXING

Despite many major changes to the show since the Hyde Park debut, some aspects remain the same, such as the choice of two 40 input Yamaha PM4000 consoles for the front-of-house mix. The front-facing desk is Kob's primary board, which handles most of the band's instrumentation, while the second desk, to the left, appears to be mixing everything else. On the second desk, 28 channels are always reserved for the support band, which at Earl's Court was Stereophonics. "Percussion, effects returns, and the video tracks, which are a large part of the show all appear on the second board," comments Kob. "The acoustic guitar that Roger plays at the end of the gig is on the second board, and I also use it to send returns to my tape machines for recording the shows."

Where new technology is concerned, Kob believes it is important to maintain a balanced, practical attitude. He says: "If you have good ears and musical sense, the new stuff will help. You don't want to be ignorant of the latest developments, because there are some really neat things around. But it can get in the way of some engineers, just like computers have sadly become the only means of working for some people. I recently mixed the MTV Video Music Awards in New York City on the totally digital [AMS] Neve Capricorn desk. I flew to Nashville and took a crash course in running it, and we mixed 10 live bands without a hitch, I was relieved to find. But that's a total quantum leap compared to the PM4000."

Kob tends to travel with the same outboard tools from tour to tour, such as a Lexicon 480L, two Eventide H3000s, a TC 2290 (his main delay), Yamaha SPX 990s for drums, Aphex 612 noise gates, and a rack of dbx 900s. Although a huge palette of processing is at his disposal, he admits to using any colouration sparingly. "With effects, I know what I like to hear and how to get those sounds out of the machines, so I keep that in mind when I hear of the 10 new products that are coming out every month but do more or less the same things I'm used to. There's always going to be something new that takes your fancy, such as the 2000, a pretty nifty little single rack space unit from TC Electronic that I use for adding chorusing and reverb to horns. It's a two input, four output box so you can get two separate machines driven together to get two completely different sounds and blend them together.

"The Lexicon PCM 90 is still relatively new, and I use it for some special effects, like big reverbs on the horns and piano. More than anything, though, I am the world's biggest Summit fan, I love their tube limiters. I use TL 100s on Roger and Pete's vocals, and DCL-200s on lots of other things like Pete's guitars, horns, and our guest singers, Billy Idol and P J Proby. The Summits have been really reliable for me. When they first came out, I bought a TL 100 myself and loved it, so Clair Brothers put an order in for some more."

John Entwistle is probably his own worst critic when it comes to his bass sound, especially in a recording scenario. On stage, the full impact of his playing comes alive, and to ensure that all his qualities are heard at their best, Kob is currently using a "hideously expensive" Crane Song STC-8 Discrete Class A Compressor/Limiter, made by former Summit designer Dave Hill. "Everything Dave does is custom-built, and I just happened to see this box in a magazine somewhere," Kob comments.

"It has the fastest peak limiter that I've ever come across, apart from Clair's own processors, and has some very smooth compression settings which you can combine in any way you want. With John's very eclectic bass style, there's a challenge to get him to be heard clearly without notes jumping out at you because of his wide dynamic range. One minute he'll be playing relatively quietly and fast, the next it'll be loud and heavy. It took me a few gigs to get control over his sound; I'm addicted to this box now. John takes a bass solo in '5.15' and gets the room rockin' as only he can! It's pretty cool and you hear that STC-8 working hard! Early on during the American dates, John came out front, and I played him a DAT of his bass playing, and he really liked the sound of the compression."

WHO'S MICROPHONES

Shure microphones have virtually dominated The Who's stages around the world for more than 25 years, and Roger Daltrey continues to exclusively use and abuse that old warhorse, the SM58, as his vocal mic (see 'Daltrey's Choice'). Meanwhile, Pete Townshend and the other vocalists use Beta 87s. Kob says: "Being a tight cardioid, the Beta 87's good rejection is a big asset when it's in front of monitors, so I like that mic a lot."

Shure's UHF wireless hand-held mics were chosen for Billy Idol and P J Proby's use. CAD's 100 and U47-like 300 condenser mics are used on Simon Townshend's guitar rig and Zak Starkey's drum kit overheads, respectively. Elsewhere on the drums, Kob has Sennheiser 409s on the rack toms. "Zak likes them for the look, because they are flat and really low profile," says Kob. "They work well, although they wouldn't have been my first choice.

"We have 421s on the bottom toms, Beta 52s in the double kick drums, an AKG 451 on hi-hat, and on the snare, we have the new Beta 56, which is like an updated 57." Surrounding Jody Linscott in her percussion cockpit is a selection of 10 mics, including Milab M96s on her overheads, an AKG 414 on congas, a 421 on bongos, and Sennheiser 441s on her timpani and gong.

Unlike most rock horn sections, which tend to move towards an R&B feel, the section for this tour were required to re-create the orchestral flavour of the original album's horns, as played by John Entwistle. This approach governed Kob's choice of mellow-sounding Beyer M160 ribbon mics for the trumpets and Sennheiser 441s on the trombones and euphonium.

Where microphones are not required, Countryman DI boxes are the order of the day, especially on keyboards, Townshend's Mesa Boogie guitar rack amps, and Entwistle's Trace Elliot-amplified ASS bass rig. Townshend's Gibson acoustics, on the other hand, are DI'd through warm-sounding Tube Direct boxes, made by Jim Demeter.

"Those noisy days are definitely a thing of the past for these guys!"

MONITORS: WHO CAME FIRST

The man often credited with inventing on-stage monitoring, or at least instigating it, is The Who's Bob Pridden, who says: "I must apologise to all the poor sods in the world who are monitor engineers... I'm sorry!" It occurred around the time of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival when the band toured throughout Europe and America with a WEM PA system. Pridden recalls how monitoring was born: "I used to turn in one of the PA columns at each side of the stage. On the amp that drove those cabinets, I had a volume pot, which I used to trim the level, so they had a whole mix flying across the stage, which could be quite devastating. It escalated from there to the point when I talked to Charlie Watkins and asked if, like an echo send, we could have another auxiliary pot so I could send that signal to another amp and feed separate speakers on stage."

Pridden has good reason to smile when he compares those formative steps with the enormous system in place on the current Quadrophenia tour, manned by Engineers Andy Sotille and Rex Ray, who each take charge of one 40-channel Yamaha PM4000M console at stage left. A total of 64 channels over the two desks are in operation, and, like Kob at front of house, they devote a section of the B console to the support band.

I was interested to notice the absence of a set list. Ray explained that because of the slightly theatrical nature of the show, borne of numerous video segments, the 'set list' takes the form of a thick pad which outlines every item of dialogue and musical cues.

Of the monitors, 28 are Clair 12AMs, while Zak Starkey's (loud) drum fill consists of a 12AM, with an ML18 sub-bass cabinet running three-way. Starkey himself says: "I have a lot of John, Pete, and Roger in my drum fill, and for the instrumentals of 'Quadrophenia' and 'The Rock', I need a lot of keyboards. Thank God for sophisticated monitoring, because when you're playing in a band of this size, you need to hear everyone really well and be comfortable to be able to play at your best. All my drums are tuned low so there isn't so much acoustic volume. To bring the drums out in my monitors, I have quite a bit of reverb on them. It sounds loud when I play on my own, but once the band starts up, I hardly notice the reverb at all."

Of the 22 mixes on stage, Sotille says that his main challenge is ensuring that Daltrey is content with the sound he hears. "Roger is the most temperamental and fussy about the monitor mix, so Bobby and I pay a lot of attention to it, while Rex gets on with the rest of the band's foldback, looking after 11 musicians. Really, I'm looking at Roger for the entire show. As long as Roger is happy, things go very smoothly. You've really got to take care of the guys on the front line, or there's trouble!"

Both Daltrey and P J Proby are using Garwood Radio Station in-ear monitoring systems. Daltrey wears just one ear mould, in his left ear; otherwise he relies on regular monitoring. Sotille comments: "For Roger's sidefill at stage right, we have one Clair R4 running three-way, through which we give him a full mix. Standing in the middle of the stage, he also has four monitor wedges in front of him and two behind, the afterburners as we call them."

After instigating monitoring as we know it, Pridden became one of the first engineers to put effects into wedge mixes, and The Who have continued to ask for this treatment ever since. "We use nine Yamaha Rev 5s, which Bobby is very keen on, and we have one kind of reverb for vocal, another for guitars, and so on," says Ray. "There is also a Lexicon 224 for Roger's vocal in certain parts, and, really, there are more effects here than I would normally use for monitors, but they like it, so why not?"

At the end of 'The Real Me', Daltrey's last vocal line appears to be laden with an incredibly long, repeated echo. I ask Ray which outboard device he uses for this effect, to which he responds:

"Ah, that's nothing to do with me. It's actually a sample played by Jon Carin, who is also responsible for sounds like water drops, trains, and various bleeps and bloops that are vital to the ambience of the production. He stores all that stuff on his Kurzweil keyboard."

Surprisingly, Entwistle, even with his traditional monster bass sound, does not pose a monitoring problem. "He's a dream," enthuses Ray. "I go over and check his mix every day at soundcheck, ask him if everything is OK, and invariably he'll tell me it's fine. Over in his bass domain, the sound is pretty stout, but he has cut his rig down for these shows compared to the Hyde Park and Madison Square Garden dates. He just stands in his little sweet spot and blows happily."

Townshend, who is known to suffer from tinnitus, has an area of refuge just in front of the keyboards and percussion that is surrounded with plexiglass. If the volume becomes too much for him to bear at any time during the set, he is able to retreat into that area to protect his ears. Ray comments: "The plexiglass helps to minimise spill into his area, because apart from when he's playing electric guitar towards the end of the show, he likes to have things fairly quiet. Those noisy days are definitely a thing of the past for these guys!"

Thanks to Lisa Johnson for being my backstage fixer, and Juliette from Harvey Goldsmith Entertainments for her kind assistance.

Zak Starkey had already worked with Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle prior to receiving the invitation to join The Who last year. During his childhood, the many rock star guests regularly invited into his household by father Ringo included original Who drummer Keith Moon. As soon as he took up drumming at around the age of 10, Starkey harboured an ambition to one day perform with his favourite band, The Who, and even practised along to the Quadrophenia album in his headphones. Funny old world, isn't It?

On the perfect timing required of him for this multimedia production, Starkey says: "I use a Tama metronome, because I have to stay at the correct tempo in order for the music to slot in nicely with the video footage in the show. So the songs will always start at the right tempo and hopefully stay that way. I don't use the metronome for the encores, because they are pretty loose affairs, none of them rehearsed. Pete just says, 'Right, let's go back on and do these numbers; do your best!' That's the kind of tension that makes this new band what it is."

Sitting aside the monitor desks at stage left was a rack of guitars that could only belong to Mr. Peter Townshend. Pictured in the rack (on the flightcase) are, left to right, his number two Rickenbacker and four Eric Clapton Signature model Fender Stratocasters. Two of the Strats have a Fishman acoustic bridge, which enable Townshend to deliver both acoustic and Strat sounds from the same guitar, while the other two have locking tremolos. On the stands at the front are three Gibson J-200 acoustics (the middle sunburst model is used by Roger Daltrey on 'Naked Eye') and his number three Rickenbacker, although neither Ricky was used at Earl's Court. Note how all these axes are in one piece and very well looked after!

Also pictured (above) is Townshend's guitar change check list taped to guitar tech Richard Davies's work bench. Townshend used his J-200 on almost every number apart from 'The Rock', 'Love Reign O'er Me', 'Who Are You', and 'Substitute', on which he played his red Strat. Backstage guest Mr. Clapton, accompanied by Sheryl Crow, must have been mighty proud.

Having been The Who's sound technician since 1966, Bob Pridden has seen enough wrecked guitars, backstage punch-ups, and hotel room debauchery to last several lifetimes, and as such knows more about the band than anyone else in the world, apart from the members themselves.

When The Who decided to take their new double album Quadrophenia out on the road in the autumn of 1973 (after only two days in rehearsal), it was clear to many that the kind of show they intended was stretching contemporary technology and their expectations of it beyond its capabilities. As a result, songs were dropped and the complete work, it is believed, was performed only once until it was revived last summer.

On that tour, the PA system consisted of JBL-loaded Sunn cabinets, with eight 1 x 15-inch bass bins and four 2440 radial horns at either side of the stage, mixed on a Mavis front-of-house console. Pridden says: "The original Quadrophenia shows were very problematic. We were running tape machines, which had backing tracks as well as Spotmasters that carried all the effects such as a kettle boiling, railway station sounds, and tape-looped gulls; Keith Moon kept time with the tracks by playing along to a click track in his cans. He and I spent a long time working on those tapes.

"We had started experimenting with sounds in that way a few years earlier on the Lifehouse project (1971). But this was the first time we had tried to do it properly live, and the cueing system and synchronisation weren't very reliable, so things were often very hairy. If something went wrong as it did with amazing regularity, Pete got more than a little annoyed! If one of the tapes broke, there would be a big, embarrassing hole in the performance, and nerves got easily frayed all round, and there were only two of us in the sound crew to sort things out. Even today, with all this sophisticated, reliable equipment, my heart is in my mouth whenever a cue is coming up.

"Our first total breakdown on the Quadrophenia tour was in Newcastle [in November 1973]. One of the tapes was cued a little earlier than it should have been, and Pete got rather frustrated, pulled me over the desk, pushed over all our equipment racks, then smashed his guitar, and generally went a bit nutty. At that point, we only had one guitar left so I had to go out the next day to buy a spare guitar with my own money, because no one else had any dough on them. I got it back, mind you! You look on that stage today and it's just unbelievable what we have up there, it's like Star Trek. One would never have foreseen that 20 years ago, but we helped to create these monster shows that now proliferate."

John Entwistle, who played his graphite Status Buzzard bass throughout the concert, has been using ASS cabinets since the mid '80s. His gear is now modest compared to the bass rigs, which at one time consumed huge areas of stage space. He says: "Originally I had eight 15-inch and 16 12-inch speakers in my rig, but I took them into our warehouse in Shepperton, played a few notes, and every piece of equipment in the place began vibrating like hell, so I thought, 'No, this is too powerful, even for me!' So I cut the system in half, including the amps, sent half over to America and kept the rest in England. I'm still using my Trace Elliot 500 amps and a Trace computerised graphic preamp. My main effects sound comes from a Sans Amp, and on top of that in my rack, I have a TC graphic EQ to add some presence on the top, and below that a Yamaha SPX."