Gina Salamone
“Tommy can you hear me?” Nope, and neither could anyone else for parts of The Who’s concert at Jones Beach Theater on Long Island Sunday night.
After guitarist and singer Pete Townshend complained several times onstage about sound issues, the audience eventually couldn’t hear anything while the classic rock act was performing the end of “Imagine a Man” after 9 p.m. The sound cut out again for a longer period of time during a new song they played right after that.
At first, the band continued to perform but soon stopped, and giant screens showing closeups of the musicians either went out or were turned off.
Lead singer Roger Daltrey tried to use his mic at one point to talk to the audience until he was filled in that no one could hear him.
The power was eventually restored but not before going out again, forcing the band to walk off the stage while the issues were worked out.
“This is what happens when you put a venue in the sea,” Townshend told the crowd once everything was fixed and the band returned to the stage. “That said, this is one of my favorite venues to play in.
“It’s always really lovely,” the English rocker added of the amphitheatre located on the water in Jones Beach State Park. “So we’ve been having some very weird things happening up here.”
Later, Townshend, 74, cracked, “I’m not in particularly good form anyway, so it’s probably better you didn’t hear me.”
Despite all the technical issues, the legendary rockers still cranked out hits like “The Kids Are Alright,” "Eminence Front,” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” the latter being from the rock opera album “Tommy,” about a “deaf, dumb and blind” boy.
The crowd mostly stayed calm during the outage, with one fan jokingly shouting, “Pete’s gonna trash the stage.”
But while the sound glitches were frustrating, thankfully the band didn’t take to smashing their instruments onstage as they used to do in the ’60s.
The band’s 12th studio album, “Who,” is due out Nov. 22.
They’re next set to play Wednesday in Atlanta. Hopefully, they won’t get fooled again.
