By Ed Adamczyk
CNHI
NORTH TONAWANDA —
If you enjoy music, you likely have your favorites — Green Day, Tom Petty, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, whatever — and have a variety of ways to express your appreciation.
For local collector Darren Tucci, it’s The Who, the seminal and durable British rock band formed the year before his birth. Tucci has amassed a collection of more than 500 items that go beyond the magazines and concert souvenirs one would expect. His archives include concert footage, the band’s rehearsal recordings on obsolete formats of audiotape and rare promotional items.
More significantly, he is one of a small fraternity of traders in this small circle of collecting, this niche of remembering and honoring the band often cited as an important influence on rock musicians who came after them, and it’s a serious endeavor — Tucci’s business card reads “Audio/Film Archivist (The Who)”.
It was a 1982 concert at Rich Stadium that pushed him into this.
“Sept. 26, 1982,” he said in a scholarly tone that suggests he knows his history. He has seen the band 20 times since and has met its members several times, most notably at a Darien Lake concert in 1997.
“I spoke to Daltrey (Roger Daltrey, The Who’s vocalist) about the Melody Fair concert, and he remembered it,” he said.
He was referring to Aug. 4, 1968, the night The Who — relatively unknown to America at the time but with a hardcore following of fans — played Melody Fair, the recently demolished North Tonawanda theater-in-the-round which held Sunday night summer rock concerts.
True to form, the band played a blistering and memorable set, and smashed its instruments and equipment in a smoky, explosive and cathartic finale. What Daltrey remembered about the night is that the band finally was profitable enough for him to purchase a Corvette, which he shipped back to England.
According to Tucci, Daltrey recalled it cost him more to transport the car home than to buy it, and after a bit of thought, noted that he eventually sold it to John Bonham (Led Zeppelin’s drummer).
Despite his allegiance to one of music’s wilder band of practitioners, Tucci shows no evidence of a rock-and-roll lifestyle. He lives in Wheatfield after growing up in the Town of Tonawanda, a product of Heritage, Hamilton and Hoover Schools, and later Canisius High and SUNY Potsdam.
At age 45, he is an optometrist and married. When talking about collecting artifacts pertinent to The Who, his is an academic and informed attitude. The way some collect stamps or shotguns or tea sets, Tucci acquires rare items of a long-running musical ensemble that somehow could provoke deep thoughts, as well as rioting, in its audience.
Some history
Riding the “British Invasion” on the coattails of the Beatles in the early 1960s, The Who gradually carved out a spot on the radio dial with short, catchy hits, what band leader Peter Townshend called “pop art set to music.”
By the end of the decade, their artistic inclinations took over, in addition to an acknowledgment that each member of the quartet had exemplary musical skills (Townshend, as composer and guitarist; Daltrey, a tenor whose glissandos and phrasing became a model for every lead singer in rock that followed him; John Entwistle, whose bass guitar technique was revolutionary in its method and power; and drummer Keith Moon, a one-man wall of sound who made The Who seem to have a half-dozen percussionists).
Knowing his band was capable of pulling it off, Townshend wrote a “rock opera.” The 90-minute “Tommy” was released in 1969, followed by epic pieces like “Quadrophenia” and “Lifehouse.” The band was later among the first to employ synthesizers in its recorded work, and its 1970 album “Live at Leeds” is considered by many to be the best recording ever of a live performance.
The concert schedules grew more grueling, the ideas and ideals grew more artistic. Moon died in 1978, Entwistle in 2002. But the band never did. Their work can be heard in constant rotation on the radio and in the numerous examples of television’s “C.S.I.” franchise. The band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 (its first year of eligibility), and played the halftime show of the latest Super Bowl. Time Magazine famously wrote in 1979 that “no other group has ever pushed rock so far, or asked so much from it.”
Thus, a man like Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam can cite The Who as a major influence on his career, as can bands by the hundreds of thousands all over the world.
This stuff clearly has an effect on a young man from Tonawanda, as well.
“The first time I saw them, the music was powerful, engaging, empowering,” Tucci recalled. “In Townshend’s lyrics, you found your best friend. The Who had a banner in which you could identify yourself. For me, it was junior year (of high school), and life after seeing The Who was amazing.
“Every time I see these guys, it’s a reaffirmation of life. (Jimi) Hendrix referred to the experience as a ‘sonic church,’ and he was right.”
The redemptive power of rock and roll
Since it was 1982, “I had a lot of catching up to do. All the albums, all the bootlegs (recordings independently and somewhat illicitly circulated, once considered a crime but lately accepted by rock bands as a way to get more material in the hands of their fans), movies like (the documentary) ‘The Kids Are Alright.’ ”
Tucci mentioned other bands that became favorites of his, including Fleetwood Mac when guitarist Peter Green was on board, and Small Faces; both were early ‘60s British bands and likely unfamiliar to anyone as young as he. This man has really studied the era.
As a collector, Tucci seeks out alternate takes, throwaway studio recording tape and cassettes of concerts. The Who’s famous 1975 concert in Houston? He has it on 3/4- inch Nu-matic videotape (a format only useable in recording studios and TV stations), as well as about 60 filmed concerts.
And that Melody Fair concert from 1968, when Tucci was 3 years old and not there? He owns a 150-second film clip of it, shot by some fan with a small hand-held movie camera, as well as backstage photographs of the band.
“Everything is beginning to become better available these days, with CD burners and the Internet,” he said of his fascination with the buy/sell/trade aspect of being a Who archivist. “You find ads in magazines, you make trades, and it’s like a secret little society” of like-minded devotees. “It’s a thrill you can download.”
Indeed, a person not familiar with The Who’s iconic concert performances — all energy but with a distinct philosophical grounding — can quickly turn to YouTube or elsewhere for a quick tutorial on why this band remains so important to its fans and to the development of rock as a musical form.
Collecting, collecting anything, is not difficult to explain, especially if one is a collector. Tucci keeps in touch with one in Italy (even converses with him in his native language) who is, Tucci said, “something of a completist,” a person compelled to acquire everything, to the point of buying rare material from Entwhistle’s estate. This is the crowd Tucci runs with these days.
It is also an example of the detritus a long-running rock band leaves behind, the way a bar tab signed by a young Winston Churchill is of value, not necessarily to you, but to someone. Tucci hasn’t got one of those, but he has a master tape of a rehearsal of the song “Eminence Front,” used in a TV advertisement for The Who’s 1982 American concert tour.
The more obscure, the more certain people seek it.
Ed Adamczyk is a freelance writer from Kenmore.
