When the Who met the Dead for the last time in Oakland

San Francisco is a city rich in rock music history, and The Chronicle has covered most of the big moments, but finding usable photos from these concerts or seminal events isn’t easy.

The lighting can be terrible, access is often limited and, sometimes, we find that classic photos or negatives have been stolen over the years from the archive.

That’s why there’s no question that this set of concert images by Chronicle photographer Gary Fong from a 1976 Who show is a huge find.

When I stumbled upon this set, the details were scant. We had the “who,” so to speak, but we needed the where and the when. Seeing that it was an outdoor show with a huge crowd, a little research confirmed the shots were from the Day on the Green with the Grateful Dead on Oct. 9, 1976, at the Oakland Coliseum.

The Who had played in the Bay Area several times, including a handful of legendary shows. At a 1970 show in Berkeley, the band performed nearly all of “Tommy.” In 1971, The Chronicle’s John Wasserman artfully reviewed a show and said of Pete Townshend: “I watched him tear across the stage, bounding and crashing, knocking microphones 20 feet and I could feel the crowd sensing a disaster that never came. Only that incredible music. Music for 2001.”

In 1973 at the Cow Palace, drummer Keith Moon collapsed on stage with “a bout of the flu” near the end of the show, and an audience member — a guy named Scott, apparently — sat in for the final three songs.

When I found the negatives and confirmed it was the 1976 show, the memories flowed. I remember hearing about the concert while listening to KSAN on the car radio. Like many San Francisco rock fans, I had seen the Dead many times, including at the first Day on the Green at Kezar Stadium in 1974. But this was the Who — what a lineup.

I rushed home and started to call friends to figure out who was going and how we were getting tickets. This was 1976: no e-mail, no social media, cell phones, no voice mail. That meant finding tickets and coordinating a concert-going crew took a lot of phone calls. After making some calls, I looked at the calendar and realized I was going to be 6,000 miles away that weekend.

I missed the Who. My friends assured me it was a legendary performance, and it turned out to be the last time the quartet would play together in the Bay Area. I’ve still never seen the band, but Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are coming to town later this year.

I’ll have to make some phone calls.

Bill Van Niekerken is the library director of The San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. In his weekly column, From the Archive, he explores the depths of The Chronicle’s vast photography archive in search of interesting historical tales related to the city by the bay.