Day 310. Hope I die before I get old. (6/11/13)

It's weird. I've just stumbled across The Who 'Live In Texas 1975' on Sky Arts (a channel that's worth parting with my monthly fee for on its own. Give me that and Sky Atlantic and I need very little else in life); a gig that's billed in the little blue info box as being 'at the peak of their success. Electrifying concert, shortly before the demise of exuberant drummer Keith Moon.'

Apart from the obvious fact that 'exuberant' comes nowhere near encompassing the mania of Moony, I'm having all of that; it's a hell of a gig. I've missed the first 105 minutes and come in as a muscular 'Join Together' mutated into something that I didn't recognise but proved to be equally majestic, all Townshend whirl winding arms and scissor kicks, Daltrey prowling the stage suede jacketed and loose permed as he seemed to permanently be from 68 to somewhere near 1980, microphone swinging in lethal parabolas.

 I'm getting the same thing that I always get when I watch old footage of music or football, that I get when I watch anything that comes from the generation slightly older than mine; it doesn't matter when it was filmed or how old the subject was at the time - these people are adults, they're grown ups, they are quite clearly much older than me.

1975. Townshend was 30, Daltrey 31, Moon 29 and dead at 32 though his lifestyle meant that he looked much older. I'm old enough to be the father of everybody on that stage but something in me is still convinced, in defiance of all rational thought, that I'm younger than them, convinced that these are proper adults and that I'm still not. Convinced that they know more about the world than I do. And trust me, I know enough about the band's respective life stories to know beyond a doubt that they aren't, that they don't.

So what is it? Is it that you mentally stick at the age that you were when you discover a band? That you are younger than them at that time so you always believe that you are still younger? Can't be, I'm still convinced that Johnny Marr is more of a grown up than me and I know for certain that he's a week younger. And always will be.

It's not just musicians though. I watched Jan Molby's entire Liverpool career, start to finish. He's clearly much older than I am, isn't he? No, he's got three months on me.

Is it fame then? Are we convinced that the famous know more than us, have more life skills than us, have experienced more?

Or is it just me?

Is it just that I'm the only one who feels this way? Is it just that I've never quite managed to grow up?

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