The Who play at Freshers Ball in Falmer House. Published in Focus magazine in November 1970

This week in 1970, 1500 students packed into Mandela Hall in Falmer House (and hundreds more listened from outside) for the visit of rock band The Who during the Freshers Ball. Entry cost one pound. 

One attendee, writing for Focus magazine, described the band as "raving, roaring, screeching [and] psychedelic". 

Here is an extract from the original article published in Focus in November 1970:

The Who?

If genius as either Confucius or Chairman Mao has so sanely said is 99 per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration, then The Who, [sic] are indubitably four raving, roaring, screeching, psychedelic genii, because nobody, but nobody, sweats like they do. Unless perhaps its [sic] their audience.

And last month the audience who sweated it out at a pound a head were fifteen hundred Sussex University students gathered reverently as near as they could get to the four lime, purple, scarlet and puce lit figures who for the marginal cost of twelve hundred pounds pummelled electric guitars till the rising decibels made deafness a positive relief, pounded five drums as viciously as if each was the hated head of a rival pop star, and bellowed such niceties as 'Touch me, touch me' into mikes swung frenziedly first as lassos then more and more frighteningly as last note nooses.

To me, the whole experience, my first I must admit at a Pop Ritual, felt like an atheist might feel if he took a sauna in Westminster Cathedral...

To read the full article, download a digital copy of the original issue of Focus. 

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