COMMENTARY

Talking 'bout my generation ….

At first I thought my wife was putting me on when she told me her nephew, Jeff, and seven of his friends from the University of Dayton wanted to crash at our house in Lakewood the other night. It was fine with me, but I couldn't imagine these kids had actually spent 23 bucks apiece and planned to drive all the way from Dayton to see The Who, three middle-aged men old enough to be their fathers, currently embarked on what is billed as the group's 25th anniversary tour.

I mean, I love The Who, and we were going ourselves, but we're of the age where that makes sense. We were there when they first burst on the scene in the '60s. Notorious for busting guitars onstage and trashing hotel rooms, The Who was the kind of rock band that made parents uncomfortable, which only made them all the more irresistible to us.

They exhibited remarkable staying power over the years, but still, the sun had long since set on this particular British musical empire. Had I ever mentioned them to Jeff and his pals, who grew up on stuff like Boy George and Michael Jackson, I would have expected them to look puzzled and say, "The who?"

And who could have blamed them? In my day (to use a phrase I used to hate when I was a kid), 25th anniversaries in the music business were for people like Lawrence Welk and the Harmonicats. I used to flee the room holding my ears whenever my dad put on one of his Andrews Sisters records.

After all, it was The Who themselves who sang: "Hope I die before I get old."

So I found it difficult to believe a gang of college students could be all that interested in their music. College kids today are all Reagan Republicans, for crying out loud. They couldn't stage a sit-in at the dean's office if their lives depended on it. In my day (there I go again), the campus Young Republican Club consisted of two guys with pen guards in their shirt pockets and a girl who looked like Lisa Loopner.

I couldn't see what this modern generation might possibly have in common with the defiant, revolutionary sound of The Who.

Must be an anthropology class assignment, I decided.

But when the kids showed up at the house Wednesday, I realized I was wrong. They were definitely psyched for the show.

"We-love the old stuff," Jeff said, and I could tell he meant it. Mike said he was crazy about The Who, too, although he confessed they are merely second in his affection. He was wearing a T-shirt with pictures of his very, very favorite group – The Beatles.

Maybe I shouldn't have been all that surprised. My sister's 11-year-old son has worn out a copy of Buddy Holly's Greatest Hits, and my own daughter recently attended a '60s party with her junior high friends.

But it wasn't until we reached the Stadium Wednesday night that I fully realized these are not isolated phenomena.

After squeezing through Gate B and finding our seats, I glanced around our section and was struck by the distinctly uncomfortable impression that we were the oldest ones there. The only elders I saw, in fact, were on stage.

In front of us were some teeny-boppers who took advantage of the breaks between numbers to make out. Behind us were a bunch of young studs in tank tops throwing their fists in the air and roaring inarticulately every time Pete Townshend did a scissors kick or windmilled his arm.

But they clearly were into the music, even coming from a band that looked like their dads' golfing buddies. Roger Daltrey was the best preserved, but he's getting up there, too. As he sings in "Substitute": "I look pretty young but I've been backdated."

And even the youngest members of the audience seemed familiar with the material, singing along with the group's earliest hits, songs like "My Generation" and "Can't Explain" that were oldies but goodies long before they were born.

I still don't understand it – can't explain – but there's something about that old music that still strikes a responsive chord in young people. And to think, my parents said it would never last.

The concert was, for me, very encouraging. Much as I've resisted the impulse, it's hard sometimes to avoid falling into that grown-up trap of assuming the younger generation is going to be the ruination of us all.

But as I left the Stadium, I couldn't help thinking, hey, the kids are all right.