The Who/Paul Weller at Glastonbury 2015 review – sparky, belligerent and packed with hits

“What a night you’ve got,” says Paul Weller gruffly, not, one suspects, a man who’s ever been much given to spending his weekends trudging through mud with glitter on his face carrying a flag that says PAUL AND SPUD’S BARMY ARMY. “Not just us, but The Who as well.” The audience roar: there are people here in F*** KANYE T-shirts and a lot of blokes with Liam Gallagher hair. But these days, at least, Weller is nowhere near as musically conservative as some of his fans. The hits understandably get the biggest response – Changing Man, You Do Something To Me, That’s Entertainment, a slightly trudgy version of Start!, a sparkier take on A Town Called Malice that concludes the set – but the most intriguing stuff he plays is off his most recent album, Saturn’s Pattern: if it’s less fragmented and strange than its predecessor, Sonik Kicks, there’s still something exploratory and off-kilter about the piano-powered title track, and the dense, ominous psychedelia of opener White Sky.
The Who, claims Pete Townshend – even more gruffly than Paul Weller – have an easy job: “We’ ave to send you ’ome ’appy.” They do this by rolling out the hits in quick succession: Who Are You, the Seeker, Pictures of Lily, Behind Blue Eyes. My Generation now comes with an odd, slow little coda in place of the old explosive, Keith Moon-fuelled ending that’s presumably there to circumvent the inevitable question of what a 71-year-old man is doing singing the line about hoping he dies before he gets old: “My generation, we’re still here today.” From a projection at the back of the stage, the young Moon stares down, doe-eyed.
Daltrey can still swing a microphone around with considerable panache, but his voice is rougher than it was. Even so, it still has a powerful belligerence about it that matches the sound of Townshend’s guitar and brings out the distrust and paranoia at the heart of I Can See for Miles. The guitarist seems a bit underwhelmed by the set. “It could have been better,” he says, before a version of Won’t Get Fooled Again that sounds great. The band didn’t get to soundcheck, he complains, although frankly no one would have known if he hadn’t mentioned it. And then he raises an amused eyebrow at Kanye West’s line about being the greatest rock star on the planet.