Everybody puts us down . . . Talkin' 'bout my generation . . . Hope I die before I'm old . . . Talkin' 'bout my generation . . .

— "My Generation," by the Who

By Terry E. Johnson

and Jack Lloyd Inquirer Staff Writers

Marijuana smoke and youthful laughter floated from the four lines of humanity that snaked around the outside of the Spectrum last night. The voices that occasionally rose from the crowd alternately condemned Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Spectrum security officials.

Only a concert — a rock 'n' roll concert by a group called the Who — could attract such youthful crowds on a cold Philadelphia night. It was the group's first concert here since 1975.

The crowd had come to hear rock 'n' roll, to use the event to condemn Iran and to talk almost cheerfully about an incident last week that they referred to as, "Oh, that."

The comment referred to a Who concert in Cincinnati Dec. 3 at which 11 persons were killed as they crushed into Riverfront Coliseum.

But last night, things were different. There were, of course, beer and whisky bottles and marijuana. But there also were a beefed-up patrol of more than 100 police officers, some of them on horseback, and yellow barricades on the pavement outside the Spectrum.

When the doors to the Spectrum opened at exactly 6:30 p.m., the young people — estimated at 20,000 — pushed and screamed as they poured into the building. But no injuries or arrests were reported.

Before the doors opened, the T-shirt salesmen and scalpers sold their goods. Television and newspaper reporters repeatedly asked the spectators: "Aren't you afraid you might be crushed?" The answer was almost always the same: "No."

Amid the shouting, a policeman talked confidently about how the

(See CONCERT on 8-A)