The Who plans first Cincinnati area concert since 1979 tragedy

In this 1979 file photo, concert-goers and a policeman stand with a pile of shoes and clothing which were left after a crowd surged toward doors to Cincinnati’s riverfront coliseum to get into a rock concert by British rock band The Who. Eleven fans where killed in the tragedy.

CINCINNATI — The rock band The Who announced Tuesday night it will play its first Cincinnati area concert since 11 fans died 40 years ago in a pre-show stampede.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band will play April 23 at Northern Kentucky University’s BB&T Arena, across the Ohio River, seven miles south of the Dec. 3, 1979, concert site, where another two dozen people were injured Dec. 3, 1979, amid confusion and lack of preparation for thousands of fans lined up for hours for first-come seats.

The announcement came after WCPO-TV in Cincinnati aired a Tuesday night documentary featuring interviews with lead singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend, the remaining original members of the British band that emerged in the 1960s featuring songs of youthful rebellion such as “My Generation” and its “Summertime Blues” cover.

Both have said they’ve been haunted by the tragedy. Townshend recently told The Associated Press he was looking forward to discussing it in Cincinnati.

“Now we can have a conversation about it when we go back,” Townshend said.

“We will meet people and we’ll be there. We’ll be there. That’s what’s important,” he said. “I’m so glad that we’ve got this opportunity to go back.”

The band is adding the concert to its “Moving On!” tour 2020 dates.

The Who said it will donate a portion of proceeds from the Cincinnati area concert to a memorial scholarship fund benefiting students in the Cincinnati suburb of Finneytown. Daltrey visited a Finneytown High School memorial site in 2018 and the band has for years supported the scholarship effort there. Three of the 11 killed, including two 15-year-old girls who were the youngest victims, had attended Finneytown High.

The band didn’t know about the tragedy until the concert was ending. Longtime manager Bill Curbishley had made the decision to have the show go on, warning Cincinnati authorities that they wouldn’t be able to control the crowd if the concert was called off.

“Despite everything, I still feel inadequate,” he told WCPO. “I don’t know about the guys, but for me, I left a little bit of my soul in Cincinnati.”

Townshend says he’s always regretted not sticking around to deal with the aftermath.

Instead, the band left the Riverfront Coliseum on December 3, 1979, and moved on to Buffalo, New York, the next stop on their tour.

“I’m not forgiving us. We should have stayed,” Townshend told The Associated Press during a recent interview where he was promoting his debut novel, “The Age of Anxiety.”

Townshend then described the shock of seeing bodies sprawled on the ground as they left the stadium — “many of whom weren’t dead, by the way,” he said. “They didn’t know who was dead and who was just badly hurt, maybe 40 bodies under blankets.”

Townshend remembered the rage he felt toward Curbishley for not telling the band about the tragedy before the show, admitting that he “wanted to kill him.”

“You could at least give (us) a choice as to whether or not to go on,” Townshend said.

“But the choice none of us made, which was equally dim, was that we left the building. You know, we should have stayed.”

Curbishley declined comment when contacted by The Associated Press. However, in an interview with WCPO of Cincinnati, he said he fought with emergency officials and insisted the concert go on so there wouldn’t be more disruption, and believes it likely saved lives.

“I said, ‘If you stop them, you’re going to have more problems on the arena floor. You could have more people hurt for sure, and if they came back through this area, the medical teams are never going to be able to cope with what they’re doing,’” he told WCPO. “And if keeping my band on stage saves even one life, to me, that’s what it’s about.’”

Lead singer Roger Daltrey visited a memorial site at a high school near Cincinnati in 2018, but the entire band has not been back. That will change: Townshend said they plan to return for the first time: An announcement is planned for later Tuesday.

Townshend says he can’t help thinking about those parents who lost their children,

“It isn’t all about rock ‘n’ roll. This is about kids from Cincinnati who died — kids from Cincinnati whose parents went through trauma; kids from Cincinnati who were disabled or hurt or damaged by what happened there,” Townshend said.

A similar tragedy occurred in 2000 at the Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark. After Pearl Jam took the stage, there was a stampede that killed nine people and injured 28.

Townshend says he called the band’s frontman Eddie Vedder and told him to stay there.

“Don’t leave. I don’t care whether you’ve got another festival tomorrow for a million euros. Stay there.’ And they stayed there for three days. And I think it really helped,” Townshend said.