Who fans: ‘Rebels’ of two eras

Waiting to enter the parking lot of Joe Robbie Stadium, waiting 3½ hours before the first note of The Who, a stringy-haired young man’s early-’70s beat-up orange Dodge Charger overheated short of the gate. Two middle-aged couples glided past the fan in the air-conditioned comfort of a silver four-door Volvo.

And if the fan with the heated clunker looked as the Volvo passed through the gate he might not reach, he saw that the new car’s back window read, “Who Bound.”

“I was too young really to know what it was all about the first time. But they’ve got a cool message.” — Scott Freedman, 18

Meet the new fans. Same as the old fans.

Twenty-five years past their start and several years past their prime, The Who draws a crowd that is a mix of those who weren’t born when the rockers first said “people try to put us down,” and of those who are still here to prop them up on this anniversary tour.

If The Who had gotten its wish years ago in My Generation when in youthful cockiness that challenged mortality they sang “hope I die before I get old,” they wouldn’t have been around long enough to gaze from Joe Robbie’s stage into the 53,000 faces of its rock ’n’ roll legacy. Into faces that, like them, are survivors. Into faces that could be their children.

“I was too young really to know what it was all about the first time,” said Scott Freedman, an 18-year-old Broward Community College student. “But they’ve got a cool message.”

The math on that is that Scott wasn’t yet even a seed looking for an egg when the British bad boys broke in 1964. Still, he has heard My Generation and believes it is about his.

Scott and his 19-year-old friend Mike

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