emailed by a friend, probably ripped from Wiki…..
Quadrophenia reached #2 on the US Billboard album chart (kept from #1 by then-labelmate Elton John with his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album) and was the highest position of any Who album in the US as they would never hit #1 on the US album charts.The band viewed the tour in support of the album as disastrous. Owing to extensive use of synthesisers and sound effects on the record, the group elected to employ taped backing tracks for live performance, as they had already done for “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again“.Initial performances were plagued by malfunctioning tapes. Once the tapes started, the band had to play to them. The band felt constrained in playing to these recordings, preferring a more free-form attitude.On the first night of the US leg at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, drummer Keith Moon collapsed onstage. Scot Halpin, an audience member, was brought on to finish the show.Pete Townshend now looks back on the album with great pride. “The music is the best music that I’ve ever written, I think, and it’s the best album that I will ever write”.
The replacement drummer was a guy named Scott Halpin, 19 years of age. In one of the Who’s videos, entitled “30 years of MAXIMUM R&B” there is black and white footage of the incident. Pete asks “Does anyone know how to play the drums… someone good.” Halpin shakes Pete’s hand and climbs behind the drum kit, looking a bit unsure of himself. Apparently he was able to get a steady beat going for one song, but was less successful for the final tune. After the gig, he told reporters that he admired the Who’s stamina, playing a three hour show. “I was dead after three songs” he said. Scott Died on Feb 9th 2008 from a brain tumor
More on the story of Scot Halpin. Mike Danese is a friend of Scot’s who was with him at the show:”Afterward he was invited backstage and managed to get Danese back there as well. They were escorted into a party room, and Daltrey gave him a tour jacket and promised him he’d be paid $1,000. Danese recalls that “Daltrey was drinking Jack Daniel’s straight out of the bottle.” Halpin remembers mostly the buffet table. “We were about the last ones to go,” he says, “because we’re eating all this food and taking food with us.” To do so he put down his souvenir tour jacket and sticks, and somebody snatched them. Then he drove his Volkswagen Beetle back home to Monterey, woke up his girlfriend and told her the story. He might have passed anonymously into lore, but pop critic John Wasserman put out an all- points bulletin in a column titled “Mystery Drummer Into the Breach,” and the mystery drummer responded. Then Townshend sent him a thank-you letter from Los Angeles, but it did not contain the $1,000 Daltrey had promised. — perhaps his memory was clouded by that Jack Daniel. As a result of his fame, Halpin got an audition (but no job) with Journey, and Rolling Stone magazine named him”Pick-Up Player of the Year.”
The Who returned in 1976 for a series of shows at Winterland, and Halpin went down there to seeabout some unfinished business. Again without a ticket, he waited four hours at the limo entrance until he found a way into the show. Afterward, he found Graham, who took him backstage to meet Moon. The drummer was his old self, changing clothes in front of everyone, blathering nonsense. “He said something, and I couldn’t even figure out what it was,” Halpin says. Like many Who purists, Halpin lost his heart for the band when a drug overdose finally killed Moon in September 1978.
