No. 211 – Young Man Blues

Performer: The Who

Songwriter: Mose Allison

Original Release: Live at Leeds

Year: 1970

Definitive Version: I suppose The Kids Are Alright, 1979. The version from Isle of Wight is in many ways better, but I prefer the TKAA version overall.

Soon after discovering The Who and this song, I got to visit The Who’s homeland. Uncle Jack worked for U.S. Steel and recently had been transferred to London. In August 1980, Jin and I went to England to visit Uncle Jack and his family for two weeks.

Scott was left behind, because it was thought that at 8, he was too young to get anything out of the trip, and it was too expensive to fly him over. In retrospect, Jin and I were too young to get as much as we could have out of the trip, although I probably got more out of it than she did from a cultural and historical standpoint. I saw so many things I’d never seen before that registered with me as being cool. For instance, it was the only time in my life I ever saw a Concorde, the now permanently grounded supersonic aircraft.

When we flew to London, we went without any parental supervision, which meant we were on our own. That was a little intimidating, considering I hadn’t flowen since my All-Star Game adventure in 1977. This time, I was in charge of Jin.

Fortunately, we didn’t have any problems going over. (Coming back was a different story, which I’ll save for another time.) What we did have, however, was a three-hour layover at JFK in New York, and it seemed longer than that, because there wasn’t anything for a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old to do … except eat.

Back then, of course, your dining choices at pretty much any airport were take it or leave it. We were flying Pan Am, and that terminal had a nice restaurant, so I decided to treat us to a fairly decent dinner. We sat by the windows, so we could watch the jets take off on a nearby runway while it started to get dark.

At one point, I noticed that no planes had gone by in a while, which was unusual considering the steady stream up to that time. I realized why when all of a sudden, the distinctive Concorde streaked past at twice the speed of the previous aircraft: They had to give it room to take off properly. Woah! Did you see that? Cool!

We didn’t take the Concorde over, of course, but our flight was the first time I ever was on a 747, which was cool enough, or at least so I thought until the actual flight. I’ve referred to this before, but this was the flight where if it were possible to literally die of boredom, I would have done so.

They showed a movie—another first-time experience—but that took up only about an hour and a half of the eight-hour flight. And it didn’t help that the movie, Fflolkes—called North Sea Hijack on this side of the pond—was pretty dull.

(As an aside, in looking up the proper spelling of the movie, I learned that Roger Moore played Ffolkes. Before then, I would have sworn it was Sean Connery. My brain must have processed the memory as “James Bond,” and I translated it as the wrong one.)

When the movie wasn’t one, we listened to piped-in music. Back then, the choices were along the lines of airport eateries—in other words, none. The music channel consisted of about a dozen songs played on an endless loop.

I might have mentioned that the songs included Bring on the Night, by George Benson; and Off the Wall, by Michael Jackson. I don’t remember the others, but I remember that I couldn’t turn off the radio fast enough if I ever heard either of those songs thereafter. The lesson learned: Take enough music to last the entire flight, and, oh yeah, something to do, so you don’t have to read the in-flight magazine, which doesn’t appeal to kids, 20 times. I never failed to do either since.

We survived our flight, but it wasn’t intact. Jin got sick on the plane (into the proper paper receptacle) and again later in Aunt Linda’s car (minus the receptacle, unfortunately). We both were pretty much at the end of our ropes when we got to their flat, so Aunt Linda put us to bed promptly.

Only a painfully few hours later, she was getting us back up again so we could go get a feel for where we were, exchange some dollars for pounds and get accosted by punks—actual spikey-hair, safety-pin-through-the-nose punks—before dinner time. The idea was that we’d be so tired by the normal bedtime that we’d have no trouble going bed and sleeping through the night. Then we’d be adjusted to the time change.

It worked, and the next day, our vacation really got started when we went to Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. It was the first time I’d ever been out of the United States, and the realization really hit me when I saw those landmarks. Wow. We’re really in England, aren’t we? Cool.