Manchester review from The Observer

The Who Manchester Evening News Arena
Of course I knew The Who were old - the three original members having a combined age of 166 and all that - but it still comes as a shock to see a balding, black-suited, stoop-shouldered man with the sombre visage of a pallbearer attacking his guitar with such aggression. The look on Pete Townshend's face for the first few minutes of Thursday night's triumphant gig in Manchester is really quite disturbing - in a way that it wasn't when he was 25. It's the facade of serene respectability that makes Townshend's clenched jaw and frenzied windmilling arm seem more than an old rock star's stage tricks. You can practically see the demons seeping smokily from this fingertips.

The Who, for me, are still several rungs below the truly great rock acts - The Beatles, Dylan, The Stones, The Clash, Bowie, Springsteen - not least because their albums (with the exception of Who's Next) don't stand the test of time. But as a live act, they are up there with the best. You can certainly see why America has embraced them so fervently in their autumnal years. And, professional and energetic as they are, the band's appeal has nothing to do with the supernaturally fresh-faced, full-voiced Roger Daltrey or the white-bearded, supple-fingered John Entwistle, nor the more recent additions - keyboard maestro John 'Rabbit' Bundrick, and Zac Starkey doing a credible impersonation of Keith Moon. It's all about Townshend.

I've been reading his internet diaries recently and it's complex, fascinating stuff - pretentious and self-important at times, but bristling with an intelligence that I suspect you wouldn't find in many rock stars' journals. On 5 October, for instance, he tackled the age question. 'Although there is perhaps nothing so ridiculous as this ageing man endlessly regurgitating the passion of his youth, repeating vengeful accusations against the weary old man I myself rapidly become - there is nothing more painful than to be made suddenly aware that the awful secret of growing old (that the young can never, should never, understand) is that one day the old grow young... I am conscious that I am behaving more like someone who is young than I did when I was really young.'

In other words, he is still talking 'bout his generation - and in a tone that is, unusually, neither apologetic nor smug. The fact that he didn't die before he got old does not invalidate the rebel rhetoric of 'My Generation'; rather, it gives the song another layer of meaning. Whereas Keith Richards more and more resembles some languid old bluesman, fossilised in his coolness, Townshend is visibly wiser and happier, but with the same core of volatility that sparked those three-minute mod anthems. When he tells the audience, many of whom are, like me, half his age, 'Please, please, do take care of yourselves - because every one of you is precious', it doesn't sound like sentimental flannel, but a sincere, paternal retraction of the nihilism of his youth.

Weird as it may sound, this is perhaps the best way to experience The Who. With The Stones, fun as their live shows are, you would always rather listen to Beggars Banquet or Let It Bleed. With The Who, that doesn't apply. The 'greatest hits live' is as good as it gets. And even for someone of a younger generation, Townshend strikes me as having more to say about life than most of 'our' pop spokespeople. Listen to The Who's 'My Generation' next to Limp Bizkit's song of the same name, and then tell me youth is innately more vigorous than middle age.

For all the explosive versions of old hits, all the show-off solos, the night's freshest moment is a tender reworking of 'The Kids Are Alright', dedicated to Townshend's own children. The NME may have taunted him for this heresy, but that's just blinkered, childless youth for you. Why don't he just f-f-f-fade away? Because people still dig what he's got to s-s-s-say.