The Who's Next Concrete Monolith

[Ineedanewname]

NB: the initial comments in this thread have been cut and pasted from a seperate thread, hence them all appearing to have been posted by me. The original author is named above their comment.



ronmanager

[Ineedanewname]

Yellow Printer

It's still there! Cool!

[Ineedanewname]

Nnic

No f**king way! That's awesome!

[Ineedanewname]

Ineedanewname

Now that comes as a real surprise because I've been trying to figure out where that place is for years.

I even emailed Ethan Russell, but he doesn't seem interested in replying to questions about his Who photography.

As for the twat in the video vandalising it...

[Ineedanewname]

Yellow Printer

Its a slag heap at Easington Colliery

www.feelnumb.com/?p=2522

[Ineedanewname]

coley

I read about it years ago in a who book. They were on tour and on the bus back from scotland or newcastle. They saw it, got out and the rest is history!

[Ineedanewname]

Ineedanewname

Sept 28, 2011 0:40:05 GMT Yellow Printer said:

Its a slag heap at Easington Colliery

www.feelnumb.com/?p=2522

I've known for a while it's in the vicinity of Easington, but try finding where. Satellite mapping shows nothing similar in the area today apart from one grey patch on the coast with no concrete constructions.

I'd drawn such a consistant blank in my quest that I'd assumed it was long gone. That appeared to be confirmed when I saw an account on a website (with photos) from someone who'd visited the town and spoken to local residents. That seems to be from where the information in the above link also came.

This subject deserves a thread of it's own. Which nutter buried it in here!

[Ineedanewname]

coley

Sept 28, 2011 11:14:57 GMT Ineedanewname said:

Sept 28, 2011 0:40:05 GMT Yellow Printer said:

Its a slag heap at Easington Colliery

www.feelnumb.com/?p=2522

I've known for a while it's in the vicinity of Easington, but try finding where. Satellite mapping shows nothing similar in the area today apart from one grey patch on the coast with no concrete constructions.

I'd drawn such a consistant blank in my quest that I'd assumed it was long gone. That appeared to be confirmed when I saw an account on a website (with photos) from someone who'd visited the town and spoken to local residents. That seems to be from where the information in the above link also came.

This subject deserves a thread of it's own. Which nutter buried it in here!

Ha! thats dead on! This mate of mine told me years ago it was orgreave, near sheffield. I never checked it out as i was about thirteen at the time but nevertheless we were so proud! Wherever it is, it is in yorkshire and it is documented. And why has'nt it got a thread of it's own indeed!

[Ineedanewname]

Yellow Printer

Perhaps some of our flat cap wearing Northern chappie readers can seek the correct location out for us in return for some brown ales and a couple of woodbines.

[Ineedanewname]

I fired off a number of emails this morning to various people I assume may have useful local knowledge of the area, but I'm not sure how much informed response I'll get for asking of the whereabouts of a concrete block somewhere in Yorkshire.

We shall see....

[Yellow Printer]

It's correct term is "pile" for those of you not clued up on slag heaps. (You slags!) We should all make a pilgrimage to this holy shrine as the druids did in ancient times and...er... p**s on it.

[whoireland]

is this for real??
surely we'd have seen many pics of it over the yrs a la Abbey Road fan pics?

[Ineedanewname]

Half of me does have some doubts because it's almost too surprising to be true. Especially as the only visible change appears to be a few tufts of grass here and there.

But, that said, it's all about location. Which brings us to your point. Abbey Road is in a major city and easily accessible (even I've been there, and you know how I feel about The B****es!). This thing is (or was) in a corner of Yorkshire way off the beaten track.

[boristhearachnid]

Typical - The Beatles go for Abbey Road,Pink Floyd for Battersea Power Station and The Who..?..they go for something in the a**hole of nowhere!!!

[dazedcat]

Well if this is THE location, I wish they had p****d on it instead of spray painting and writing all over it.

Concrete slag heaps are sacred

[Ineedanewname]

Sept 29, 2011 23:09:42 GMT dazedcat said:

Concrete slag heaps are sacred

Careful, you'll set Yellow Printer off about his piles again!

[Ineedanewname]

Also, tonight I had my first email reply, from the local council. They did a bit of research but unfortunately where unable to trace anything of relevance in their records. They did provide a couple of other possible leads though.

[Yellow Printer]

It does look like THE ONE. It has the same shuttering scars and rebar holes etc but one would have thought after 40 years there would be more corrosion. Intriguing. You would think the owner of the site would have sold it on ebay for £1000s by now, or put it in his garden. There's a thought...

[dazedcat]

Oh you better believe it. If I owned this property? Hell yes, Ebay here I come.......and let the bidding begin. With the proceeds I'd finally get that beach house in Tahiti that I've dreamed of my entire life...............

[garethox]

Tried to do a bit of research on this and it was at Easington Colliery in County Durham. Reports on various sites say that the slag heaps have all been removed during redevelopment - meaning our sacred piece of concrete would be no more..... hope that isn't the case though!

Found this:

THE WHO - WHO'S NEXT
Easington Colliery, Durham, UK

img825.imageshack.us/img825/1596/snext.jpg

It's probably impossible to know exactly where this concrete monolith stood but most people agree that it was in the general area above this beach. The "cage" shown in the picture is actually the bottom of an old pithead (mine entrance).

img200.imageshack.us/img200/7973/pithead.jpg

This is one of the Easington Colliery slag heaps, similar to the one in the album cover photo.

img64.imageshack.us/img64/2352/slagheap.jpg

The picture below appears to be the results of someone possibly trying to create a "now" photograph of the famous Who's Next "slag heap monolith," but there was no accompanying information so I have no idea.

img546.imageshack.us/img546/9015/recreation.jpg

The Easington Colliery was located near the coast in County Durham and is most famous for a mining accident which occurred on May 29, 1951 resulting in the deaths of 83 men. The colliery closed down in 1993 and is now part of the National Trust.

[Ineedanewname]

I would be 99.9% confident it was long gone were it not for that damned video.

As regards the location, we have to remember the original Easington reference came from Ethan Russell (the photographer), and it was probably the first and only time he visited the area.

This is very important to take into account because Easington is a tiny village which had four collieries within a 2 minute drive of the main street.

To give you an idea of how extensive the coal industry was in that corner of the world, by the 1950s an area surrounding Easington approximately 20 miles square had no less than twenty four mine workings.

So it would have been very easy for Russell, not native to the area (or in fact, the country), to have considered at least 3 or 4 collieries as being in "Easington". Though admitedly I'm making that statement in the assumption he didn't drive through the main gate and see a big sign proclaiming "WELCOME TO EASINGTON COLLIERY - WHERE COAL IS THE GOAL!". ;D

The problem I've recently developed with Easington being the correct location is that none of the local residents or amateur historians who've replied to my emails have any knowledge of that concrete block. If it had been in the field by the pit head in the photo you linked to it would have been clearly visible to many generations of villagers, a fixture on the landscape.

One gentleman did suggest it may have been in the vicinty of Blackhall, a couple of minutes down the road (and, fact fiends, where the climax of the original Get Carter movie takes place). He's going to ask around a bit more for me.

It also seems likely that (despite what we've traditionally been told in Who-lore) the concrete block has nothing to do with holding slag piles in place, and is actually a remnant of some type of mine-related machinery. There's a very similar block on the beach at Horden (again just a couple of minutes drive from Easington) which was a supporting part of the apparatus dumping mining detritus into the sea.

I've learnt more about the coal mining history of Durham in the past few days than I knew for an entire lifetime prior to this. Never let it be said The Who aren't educational. This is much more fun than that thread which led to us discussing the rolling stock of the Norweigian rail network of the 1960s!

[Yellow Printer]

I've always related Get Carter to Who's Next. My favorite lp and film (and superb soundtrack by Roy Budd) were both released in 1971 and have the same bleak imagery of the industrial North. I suppose finding our lump of concrete will be like looking for "pissholes in the snow"...

[garethox]

It was also mentioned that it might be in Peterlee, which is up Durham way..... I feel a roadtrip coming on!!!

[Ineedanewname]

Peterlee is literally 2 minutes from Easington, which makes for a much simpler roadtrip!

[gerrard2]

Hmmm.....?

I only live about 40 miles away from the location in which the video was shot. When I can cut the time I intend to go to the place armed with every Who's Next picture I can get my hands on. Hell....CSI Yorkshire ? ;D

Hey...I ain't knocking the video. It looks kinda right. However, The Coal Board at the time made hundreds of 'piles'. The piles are poured and molded from concrete. They are 'all' identical. They stuck them in every single slag heap from Yorkshire to Durham. Still...ya never know.

I'll take a look a report back on what I find.

'The Who at the Locarno in Sunderland, on Friday 7th May 1971. It has been said that on the way back from the show the next day, the band stopped off to relieve themselves against a huge stone monolith.'

Yellow printer. Get Carter ? Years ago me and my mate went to the location they used for the ending of the film. On the right hand side as you walked up the beach....there must have been 2 dozen ' concrete piles' .

Some say that the photograph was taken after the Sheffield gig 2/5/70 ? Again...who knows ?

[Yellow Printer]

I love Get Carter. To the point of obsession. As I do The Who of 1971.

www.getcartertour.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/getcarter/blackhallrocks.htm

[boristhearachnid]

Oct 7, 2011 1:33:57 GMT Yellow Printer said:

I love Get Carter. To the point of obsession. As I do The Who of 1971.

www.getcartertour.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/getcarter/blackhallrocks.htm

Poor Alf Roberts,it was such a long way of that car park.

[Ineedanewname]

Gerrard, it's interesting you mention seeing lots of those concrete blocks, because none of the local residents or historians I've contacted had any recognition for the one on the album cover. This just gets stranger! Were the blocks you saw exactly the same type of as on the album cover?

I've had a suggestion from a local that the monolith was part of the base of what was known as an "aerial flight", a cable-car type system which carried mining detritus over the cliff and tipped it onto the beach. At one point in the video a second larger concrete structure can be seen in the background, which if this was part of an "aerial flight" could have been the next link in the chain.

Returning to the video, the really weird thing is how the landscape is completely unchanged since 1970. Yet the huge clear-up of the area which Gareth mentioned has managed to revert almost all the tainted land back to its natural state, even adding nature trails and picnic areas etc. Consequently the landscape in the monolith video simply does not match with the modern landscape of the Easington coastline.

To get an idea of how the area looked prior to the clean up, and how The Who would have seen the landscape, check out the first minute of this video;

www.durhamheritagecoast.org/dhc/usp.nsf/pws/Durham+Heritage+Coast+-+Durham+Heritage+Coast+-+Videos+-+Turning+The+Tide

The coal mines were burying a 12 mile stretch of coast beneath two and a half million tons of waste every year.

Now look on a satellite view such as Google maps or Flashearth and see the difference today. Aside from the occasional grubby patch the coastline is sandy and green from Blackhall to Seaham


So I'm now left assuming there are but three options;

1) The location seen in the video is an impressive fake. Supremely impressive.

2) The video was filmed at the actual Who's Next site, but before the area was cleaned-up.

3) The video was filmed at the actual Who's Next site recently, but it's nowhere near Easington.


Gerrard, if you do get there for a poke around, remember....we expect a detailed report! ;D

[garethox]

I have just studied the video again and there are a few things which aren't quite right. At the start when the album cover is in front of the monolith, one can see an angle of approx. 30 degrees halfway down on the left which extends to the middle - sort of where the concrete has been chipped away. On the video monolith this is about 60 degrees and does not extend to the centre.
At the top of the monolith there is also a pipe sticking out - on the album cover there seems to be no such pipe.
Another thing that caught my eye was at 1.33 - the monolith looks like a drawing or a superimposed image.
Intriuging to say the least!

[garethox]

Further to my previous answer, I have contacted Peterlee Tourist Info and they are looking into it for us. Funnily enough there was a lady in the shop at the time from Easington and she had never heard of it!