It was the summer of 1968 and Vance Rabius walked into the Jenkins Music Store in downtown Kansas City to purchase tickets for an upcoming Quicksilver Messenger Service concert. While standing in line, he watched an employee put up a poster advertising a new show: The Who at the Municipal Auditorium on Thursday, August 22nd.
A year earlier in June of 1967, The Who played at the Monterey Pop Festival during their first North American tour, which became known as the band’s breakout performance in the US. After gaining recognition and fame, in 1968 the band was touring the US for a second time to promote their latest album “The Who Sell Out”.
Eager to jump on this golden opportunity, Rabius bought his Quicksilver tickets and decided to also purchase tickets for The Who. Jenkins Music Store hadn’t even received the official tickets yet, so Rabius was told that they would have to write him a receipt and send the tickets later. He didn’t care and proceeded to spend the rest of the money he brought with him to reserve 7 front and second row center Who tickets. He left the store with a handwritten receipt for the tickets… at five dollars each.
Twenty-four days after Rabius reserved his tickets for the Who show, it was finally time for the concert. The seven friends met up and drove to the Municipal Auditorium to claim their seats. During the show, Rabius and his friends managed to take 17 close-up photos of The Who — particularly Pete Townshend as he rocked out on his 1965 Fender Stratocaster guitar, occasionally flipping it high in the air and ultimately performing his famous, show-ending guitar smash. Picking up the chunks of the broken guitar, Pete Townshend threw them out to the crowd, at which time Rabius caught the piece of the body with the pick guard, pickups and control knobs.
Riding high with excitement, Rabius and his friends stuck around after the concert to see if they could meet The Who. They did. Rabius, having nothing for them to sign but a scrap of paper, got all their autographs.
Two days after the concert, on Saturday, August 24, 1968, Rabius went back to the Jenkins Music Store where he saw they still had the promotional poster for the concert hanging up. He went inside to ask if he could purchase it. A store employee took it off the window and simply gave it to him.
About twenty years passed and Rabius was living in Austin, Texas. There he met British rock musician Arthur Brown (of 1968 "Fire" fame), a close friend of Pete Townshend. After losing a bet with Rabius over a game of pinball, Brown agreed to get Pete to autograph Rabius' piece of the guitar that Townshend had smashed in 1968. So Pete did — right across the pick guard.
For 47 years, Rabius held on to his 1968 Who concert relics; his ticket receipt, his concert ticket stub, the fully-signed piece of paper, the 17 photos of the group, the piece of the guitar that Pete Townshend smashed, and the concert poster. Recently, he decided to sell this extraordinary lot of Who memorabilia to Rockaway Records. Separately, these items possess a mix of sentimental and collectible value; the poster alone is worth over $10,000 and the parts of the vintage guitar can bring as much as $5,000. Together, this collection beautifully documents the story of a classic moment in rock history.
