At last some recognition from The Who or from those who represent The Who on the band’s official website that they too agree that The Who’s appearance at Union Catholic High School on November 29, 1967 was truly historic and unusual. Historic enough in fact to include a copy of the ticket stub and the page from school’s 1967-1968 yearbook devoted to the concert among a select few photos of The Who from the 1960s. Not only that but on the top row, smack dab in the middle. Wow! Pretty impressive especially when you consider that the ticket stub is the only live performance flier, poster or ticket among all the photos on the page from the ’60s. That’s right. No Marquee Club poster or Fillmore East ticket stub. Just Union Catholic High School.
Although the credit for posting the ticket stub is given to a Tim W, the ticket stub actually belongs to Nancy Mackow Scalera a freshman at the time who submitted the ticket stub to a Who memorabilia competition earlier in 2015 run through the Who’s website celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary. Nancy contributed mightily to the finished product of When Stars Were in Reach in many different ways – with photos and tracking down others who eventually were interviewed for the book to name just two. She checked her copy of the stub and sure enough those stains in the upper left hand corner of the stub are identical to those on her stub. During this internet and social media era, where photos are posted and re-circulated countless times, it’s not surprising that the attribution is incorrect.
The yearbook page has been circulating on the internet for years in various places. Several of the photos from the yearbook appear in “When Stars Were in Reach” with greater resolution (especially in the color, Kindle and Nook version of the book).
It is reassuring though to know that after decades have passed and context has become more obvious, that those who viewed the concert at Union Catholic as highly unusual, so unusual as to warrant a book about it, were not off base in the least.