Manchester review from Manchester Evening News

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

Available online at:
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/Entertainment/liverevdel.cfm?revurl=livemusic/32rev.html

There's no substitute

THE WHO - M.E.N. Arena (Nov 2)

IT COULD so easily have been a sad postscript to a stormy, but illustrious, career. Old mods doing it once more without feeling.

Then Pete Townshend stabbed angrily at his Stratocaster, and Roger Daltrey - lean and impossibly youthful at 56 - whirled the mic on
its lead like a cowboy with a lasso. I Can't Explain struck up, raw and taut, sounding like the best of the pub bands who live off
The Who's songs. And Townshend performed that distinctive, windmilling strum.

Blimey, we thought, the old geezers still have fire in their bellies.

Middle-aged men stood in their seats and strummed air guitars, and young rascals jostled at the front of the stage.

It is 18 years since The Who put a new song in the top 40. So how could they sell out this massive arena? Simply on the reputation
that, on their night, The Who are the best live rock act . . . ever.

It was an unashamed return to the music of their youth - barely a song less than two decades old. Now the old motto ''Hope I die
before I get old'' will forever haunt them.

As they struck up 1981's You Better You Bet, Townshend wickedly observed: ''This song is The Who's last major hit - the only one
Robbie Williams hasn't pinched.''

With Zak Starkey filling the drum stool Keith Moon vacated permanently in 1978, this gig was a thundering success, tinged with the
feeling that we will surely never again see The Who on this stage playing all these old songs. But then they said that on their
farewell tour in 1984.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm