This is a newspaper article of the first concert I went to on Aug. 23, 1968. It was the first tour of the U.S. by the Who, and let’s just say they weren’t filling any stadiums or arena’s at this point. It was a hot, windy day, usual for Oklahoma, and I was enthralled. They had just released “Magic Bus” and was Keith Moon’s birthday. They gave him a cake onstage which he promptly grabbed handfuls of and threw into the audience, of which I was a recipient. They did, in fact, close with “My Generation” and destroyed their equipment. Moon did kick his drum kit off the stage and my friend ended up with a broken finger to prove it. A good time was had by all! Unmentioned in the article was that Roger Daltrey, being from England, had never met an American Indian and wanted to do so. The park’s management didn’t have any workers of that descent, so they had a Mexican worker come over to meet him and Roger was told he was a “real American Indian”. Roger never knew of their deceit and walked away happy in his quest. So here is a recounting of that concert.

Rock bands, such as The Who, and other performers drew fans to Wedgewood Amusement Park. Carl Dunn, rock ‘n’ roll journalist and historian, has the only known photos and video from The Who’s rooftop concert at Wedgewood in Oklahoma City in these rarely seen photographs.

The Tornado, the Wild Mouse, the Calypso and the Roto Jet. These were the names of rides at the Wedgewood Village Amusement Park in northwest Oklahoma City in the summer of 1968. And then came The Who for one of the wildest rides the park had ever seen. On Aug. 23, 1968, The Who climbed atop the roof of the swimming pool pavilion. It was drummer Keith Moon’s 22nd birthday. John Dunning was 15 that summer when local radio DJs announced The Who would play three shows at Wedgewood, one Friday night and a Saturday afternoon and evening show. Dunning and friends anticipated the show for weeks, and then the big day came. Wedgewood was opened in 1958 at NW 63 and Northwest Expressway, and Dunning already had become a fan of The Who. In winter 1967, he saw Herman’s Hermits, Blues Magoos, a 1960s psychedelic band, and The Who at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. “It was just incredible to see that in person. I was a big Herman’s Hermit fan, but when I left the show in St. Louis, I wasn’t a Herman’s Hermits fan anymore. I was a Who fan,” Dunning said, taking a moment from a busy afternoon to play the song, “Magic Bus,” on a turntable at his Oklahoma City record store, Trolley Stop Record Shop. Dunning had witnessed Herman’s Hermits play at Wedgewood Village in 1966, when so many people showed up that the band had to be dropped onto the stage by helicopter. In the mid-1960s, The Who was known for the smash hit “My Generation.” Guitarist Pete Townshend was known for smashing guitars, his arm swinging in a windmill downstroke, with loud power chords and lots of feedback. Singer Roger Daltrey was known for twirling a microphone on a cord like a lasso. And it was all set to the beat of Keith Moon’s drumming mojo and John Entwistle’s thumping, string popping bass guitar. In northwest Oklahoma City, the Wedgewood Village pavilion near the Olympic-sized pool had a snack bar, lockers, changing rooms and a flat roof. It would be the stage for The Who. “It made for a great stage for Herman’s Hermits and later The Who, especially The Who,” Dunning said. ‘It was good’ In a 2013 article in The Oklahoman written by longtime music journalist Gene Triplett, Wedgewood Village employee Greg Wells recalled being sent to pick up the band members at Will Rogers World Airport. “(Pete) Townshend had a recorder, and he was real quiet,” Wells recalled. “He was way, way to himself. I guess he had a lot of music goin’ on in his head. (John) Entwistle (bassist) was a regular guy, Moon (drummer) was crazy, and Daltrey was carrying a ditty bag. And as he got off the plane, we started walking down the concourse and he unzipped the bag and pulled out about a four-foot snake and wrapped it around his wrist and his arm and put his thumb in his pocket and walked out with a snake on his arm. And I guess it was a fashion statement, but it was something he did.” The crowd of people at Wedgewood included a lot of teenagers, Dunning said. And the young crowd was a vocal one that Friday night, he added. “Girls back then screamed a lot,” Dunning said. Mike Shannon, managing editor at The Oklahoman, was a 20-year-old University of Oklahoma journalism student from Lindsay who was working in the oil fields as his summer job. Shannon drove on a hot, muggy Friday afternoon with a friend to Wedgewood. The admission was $2 for the show. People rode the rides and looked for shade trees for the 8 p.m. show. The opening band for the Friday night show was local group, The Noblemen. And then The Who took the rooftop stage and opened with “Substitute,” and then blasted into “Can’t Explain.” “Summertime Blues,” an Eddie Cochran cover, and “Shakin’ All Over,” a song from the British rocker Johnny Kidd, were on the set list that night. The encore was“My Generation.” “They played all the songs we knew,” Shannon said. And Shannon recalls the flat birthday cake that was given to Moon, on his 22nd birthday that Friday night. Moon died in 1978. “Keith grabbed a piece of it and then started throwing pieces of it into the audience,” Shannon said, who stood about 60 feet from the rooftop building during the set. Dunning had moved as close as he could get to the building, but not too close. He said he had to stay back about 30 feet to be able to see the band members on the roof. Drumsticks were flying around. He saw Daltrey twirling the microphone. “They were up on the roof, and man, they were killer. It was Keith Moon’s birthday. Those instruments were torn to heck, and Keith was kicking those dang drums off the building, as I recall, though I wouldn’t want to make a sworn statement, but if they didn’t actually come off the roof it sure seemed like it,” Dunning said. “It was wild. … It was good,” Dunning said. Dunning said the images of that show have stayed with him, and he’s been a lifelong fan of The Who.

Carl Dunn Recording history
On Saturday, at both shows, in the audience was Carl Dunn, a 23-year-old Chickasha native and budding rock photographer who then lived in Plano, Texas. Dunn had brought a battery operated, reel-to-reel tape recorder to Wedgewood Village. He made bootleg recordings of both the Saturday afternoon and evening shows. And he also took some of the only known photographs of The Who on the Wedgewood rooftop. “I had seen The Who, and back then, I was really more interested in making recordings,” Dunn said. Dunn, who lives in Whitesboro, Texas, today, visited Oklahoma City this week and remembered making it to see The Who on Saturday for both of those historic shows. Dunn said he regrets missing the Friday night show, but living in Plano, Texas, he didn’t hear about it in time, he said, and he can’t remember exactly how he found out about the Saturday shows, after five decades have now passed. Dunn does recall that Saturday afternoon was more baking than shaking, he said, as the sun and the August heat kept the crowd smaller than had been reported on Friday night. He said on the last song, Roger Daltrey proclaimed, “This is where it all ends.” And the band played “My Generation.” “It was very hot, and there were just a few hundred people that afternoon,” Dunn said.“You didn’t have to worry about any restriction against recording or taking pictures back then.” So he didn’t have to hide his equipment, and he took both color and black-and-white pictures, then stayed around for the evening shows. His bootleg sound recordings of many of the songs caught more clapping than screaming in the background from the crowd. The amusement park in northwest Oklahoma City closed in 1969.
Robert Medley/oklahoman.com

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