Music: The Stampede to Tragedy

It was a tough ticket. All 18,348 of them were gone 90 minutes after they went on sale in late September at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum. The Who had not played the area since 1975. It was an event.

Fans converged from all over. Danny and Connie Burns left their two young children at home, got on a chartered bus in Dayton and headed for the concert.

Though the music was not billed to being until 8 p.m., the crowd started building outside the coliseum around 1 o'clock Monday afternoon. By 3, the police had arrived to keep watch. With so long...