Product Details

• Actors: Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, Keith Moon, Pete Townshend
• Directors: Murray Lerner
• Format: Color, DVD, Live, NTSC
• Language: English (PCM Stereo)
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: November 3, 1998
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305131147
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,472 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Filmmaker Murray Lerner's documentary Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival--The Movie took more than a quarter-century to make it to theater screens. But when it finally did, Lerner's footage of the Who's incendiary performance at that open-air show proved to be a real highlight. Lerner's complete coverage of the group's appearance, generally considered by true believers to be among their greatest shows, can be seen in this excellent concert film. A full year after the band's ragged concert at Woodstock (at which guitarist Pete Townshend, according to legend, was suffering the ill effects of a drug-spiked drink), the Who brought their potent act to the troubled Isle of Wight fest, making rock & roll history with a magnificent noise. Except for an allusion or two by singer Roger Daltrey, there's no mention in the film that the band was between their lengthy tour in support of Tommy and the recording of an album they would eventually scrap (substituting it with the epochal Who's Next). This concert contains three then-new tunes from the aborted project (and they're so awful you'll instantly understand why it was dropped), but much more important is the band's rendering of an abridged but thrilling Tommy and full-blooded shouts of some old warhorses: "Shakin' All Over," "I Can't Explain," and "Magic Bus." Comic relief is provided by the late Keith Moon, whose exchanged witticisms with Townshend grow lengthy enough at one point to demand an actual, discrete, click-to scene of their own on the DVD release. Otherwise, as far as the DVD goes, there are no other goodies; this great concert speaks for itself. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

In 1970, 600,000 people came to the Isle of Wight to attend a music festival. 2 A.M., August 30th, The Who appeared and gave one of the most memorable performances of their career, with early hits and live Who staples culminating in one of their last-ever complete run throughs of the seminal rock opera "Tommy." Songs: Heaven and Hell, I Can't Explain, Young Man Blues, I Don't Even Know Myself, Water, Shakin' All Over, Spoonful/Twist and Shout, Summertime Blues, My Generation, Magic Bus, Overture, It's a Boy, Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker), Christmas, The Acid Queen, Pinball Wizard, Do You Think It's Alright, Fiddle About, Go to the Mirror, Miracle Cure, I'm Free, Tommy's Holiday Camp, We're Not Gonna Take It.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Electrifying Footage but Still Chopped Up, September 4, 2004

By 

Brian J Hay (Sarnia, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 (DVD)

The sound and picture are in much better shape than on the first release. On the first edition four of the first five songs ("Can't Explain", "Young Man Blues", "I Don't Even Know Myself" and "Water") were largely untouched. Heaven and Hell had some of its footage sped up slightly but otherwise was just as electrifying as the other four numbers. From there the film became a slice and dice of patchwork concert footage that looked a like a badly pieced together jigsaw puzzle.

The bad news is that the editing is still a hatchet job. The concert is still out of order. "Tommy" was played in the middle of the show not at the end. Much of the material is cut. The Shakin' All Over/Twist and Shout" medley has at least a third of its content missing as does "Magic Bus". "Substitute" and "Naked Eye" are missing completely. In the case of the "Naked Eye" footage that may be a case of copyright blocking presentation. The footage does exist and can be seen on the "Message to Love" DVD. The content from "Tommy" is a mess. The "Overture", "It's a Boy", "Eyesight to the Blind", "Go to the Mirror", "I'm Free" and "We're Not Gonna Take It" are all presented as fragments edited into song form. "1921", "Amazing Journey/Sparks", "Tommy Can You Hear Me", "There's a Doctor", "Smash the Mirror" and "Tommy's Holiday Camp" were omitted the first time around and haven't been inserted. Most of the editing is smooth enough but the gaps are still glaring.

The saving graces for this film (and especially this release) are the parts of it that have been done right. The interview with Townshend is enlightening and enjoyable (though allowances have to be made for his sense of drama). The picture is much clearer than before. The sound is vastly improved. It's noticeable everywhere but particularly outstanding on the bass and drum tracks. Keith Moon's drums sound the way they should. It's amazing how much of what couldn't be heard before can be heard clearly now. The same can be said of John Entwistle's bass lines. Anyone wanting to understand and appreciate his contribution to the group should be watching this issue. The re-master places his contribution where it should be rather than burying much of it as happened with the first release. And then there's footage that has been left intact. This is some of the most electrifying concert footage ever captured on film, period. The Who were a blistering band that made playing rock sound and feel like a matter of life and death. If nothing else this film captures that. As such it's an invaluable historic record for anyone wanting to know what makes rock and roll tick.

But, it's still not what it could have been.

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hind Sight is 20/20, but buy this DVD anyway, March 14, 2005

By 

Jefferson T. Packer (Taos, NM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 (DVD)

First, for those who own and love the original release DVD - this remastered version sounds and looks MUCH better. Thanks to Pete and Murray for giving us that.

As for all the complaints about choppy footage, missing songs, out-of-order song list and the like, well, they're all true.

We should remember that, at the time, neither Murray nor The Who knew that this set was going to become one of the most legendary rock performances of all time. Murray Lerner was out to make a rock movie about the Isle of Wight Festival, and The Who (just one standout of the many acts who performed there) were going about the business of being The Who. They had performed hundreds of times before this, and had many, many shows to go afterwards. For them, it was just another night on the job, (although it seems to have been an exceptionally good one.)

No one knew that Keith would eventually semi-fry his brain and then leave us far too soon. No one knew that the short, fragile, golden age of authentic, people-driven rock was about to end. If Murray Lerner had been able to know all of these things, I'm sure he would have given us the complete set, in order, without a single note left out. And while we're dreaming, we'd have a DVD bonus feature of film from a camera pointed directly and unerringly at Keith for the whole length of the concert. Drummers everywhere would give a pint of blood for that one.

But we don't have these things, and we never will. The cut footage from the 1970's editing room floor has undoubtedly long since been swept into the dustbin of history. What we do have, is a glimpse of magnificence. We have a flawed gem, and an irreplaceable one. In a nutshell, if Rock and Roll moves your soul, then the Who's performance on this DVD will leave you slack-jawed.

And when you finally get tired of watching it, get off your couch, find some people with equipment, set up in your garage, and do something new, something fresh, something that says who you are and what you feel. Just be sure to do it loud enough to piss off your square neighbors. Somewhere, Keith will be raising a glass to you.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A+++Rock and Roll, September 29, 2004

By 

A music fan (somewhere in Maryland) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 (DVD)

One of the best film documents of rock'n'roll ever, "Listening to You: The Who Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970" captures a legend of rock at the absolute height of its powers.

If you're expecting a high-fidelity kind of Event Coverage that Sees All and does everything except an indepth study of John Entwistle's nose hair, you either were born too late or have gotten too spoiled by culture and technology. It's easy to forget that at the time this concert took place in 1970, Led Zeppelin didn't sell cars and the Rolling Stones didn't shill for Bill Gates. Rock was youth music, viewed with suspicion by Old People (i.e., over 30. Yes, if you're 34, old as you may feel, you were probably an embryo when this gig went off). You never heard real rock on TV, and had to hunt to find it on radio. The Square View was what prevailed in the national media: squeaky guitars, flashing discotheque lights and gyrating girls in plastic dresses and boots. Hippies figured in there somewhere. But the so-called general public, i.e., you, if you were over 30 at the time, didn't know what rock sounded like. The huge potential of the young as consumers was just being sniffed about by The Establishment.

Then there's the filming. Murray Lerner's crew was, well, about as big as your immediate family. There was no Sky Cam. You had a camera here, one there, one someplace else. They pivoted when the person holding them did. OK, not that home-movie primitive, but essentially a hand operation. Rock gigs weren't mass merchandise yet, and you couldn't buy plane, hotel and concert tix on the Internet (something that makes the enormous gatherings at places like Monterey, Woodstock and the Isle even more amazing in retrospect and attests to the pangenerational power of the infant Rock). So big technology wasn't being catered to, even to the extent it existed at the time, because the big money wasn't there yet to cater to it. (I once bought a Led Zeppelin ticket from a scalper. For twenty bucks. That kind of money is what we're talking about here.) Filming the Stones or the Who was like filming a Vietnam firefight, only without the ordnance.

So don't complain about how few camera angles there are, or how the same stuff keeps getting filmed. (As one who saw this lineup from the second row one night, I can tell you that Daltrey really did do the same stuff, over and over and over.) Focus instead on how everyone in this band plays lead - unlike the Stones, for example, who anchored firmly to a dynamic yet by comparison pedestrian rhythm section - yet everyone, somehow, stays right on time, even when somebody screws up! (Pay attention; it happens more than once.) Focus on the incredible energy and fluidity Townshend brings to the guitar, and the Olympic athleticism of his physical presence. Focus - and this disk does, further evidence that this crew knew its stuff - on John Entwistle's breathtaking finger runs up and down the fretboard, and on how much he holds down the sound and plays second guitar through Pete's flights of fancy and violence. Focus on Keith Moon! You can't help it; the camera loves him, and he loves it back, and he shows here why he probably didn't need to so much as lift a finger between shows to keep the weight off. Focus on Daltrey's stage presence; he was immobile compared to Mick Jagger, but knew how much to do of what when, and sang the roof off the joint. There is enough, no, wait, way more than enough, way more than an abundance, of every single thing that made The Who great to see and hear on this DVD. Yes, the modern monkeying with the picture and sound helped a lot. And what the heck is wrong with that, eh?

Focus on what you can see, and be happy that you can see it. Shot in 1970? Sometimes, it's hard to believe. If someone wants to erect a monument to The Who, this film, playing in perpetuity on a Pyramid-size screen, will do. Quite nicely, thank you.