My earliest memories of the Who are from Tommy, which was released in 1969 when I was nine. Later, Live at Leeds and Who’s Next became an important part of the lives of my friends and me. By the time The Who released Quadrophenia in 1973, I was fourteen, and we were full-fledged Who fans. I silkscreened the Who’s logo onto the back of the Army jacket I used to wear and my friends’ jackets. My friend Tony smashed an old guitar at a local park one evening.

I grew up in New Jersey, just outside of New York City. I was sixteen in 1976 when the deejay on New York radio station WNEW-FM announced the Who would be playing at Madison Square Garden on March 10. Tickets were distributed by lottery. Anyone who wanted tickets had to send a money order to a P.O. box in New York City. Lucky fans would get tickets in the mail. Everyone else would get their money orders back.

It took two days for mail to reach New York City from New Jersey. I knew tickets would be sold out by the time my money order could reach the P.O. box at New York City’s main post office near Penn Station. I cut school the next morning, rode the bus into New York City, took the subway to Penn Station, and mailed the envelope in the same post office it was going to. My tickets arrived in the mail.

On the scheduled concert date, I came home from school to the news that the show had been postponed until the following day because Keith Moon “had the flu.” We headed out to Madison Square Garden the next day after school. Our seats weren’t great, but my friend and I paid a guard ten dollars to move us down a section.

The set ended, and the band left the stage. The crowd applauded and then clapped for an encore, chanting, “More! More! More!” After about fifteen or twenty minutes, it looked like they weren’t coming back. The audience began slamming the seats up and down. When people started hurling bottles from the top level, we decided to get out of there.

It turned out that the Who had refused to do an encore. Backstage, Madison Square Garden management pleaded with them to get back on stage, saying the fans would destroy the venue if they didn’t.

We were on our way out when the band finally came back on. We turned around and caught the last three songs.

This concert was so loud, I couldn’t hear for about two days. The Guinness Book of World Records certified another show on the same tour as the world’s loudest concert.