The Who is a group that was nurtured on gimmickery. I remember five years ago Brian Jones calling me up on the trans-Atlantic to play me the Who's first record from London. "That's not atmospheric interference you hear," he said. "That's the guitar player banging his guitar on the amp."

How far has the Who progressed since then? Their latest achievement has been to become the first rock group ever to play on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, an event which turned to be as transparent as all the fancy, tie-dyed silken see-throughs it attracted.

To see through one see-through is not to see through them all. Tommy is no more an opera than Albert Goldman is Renata Tebaldi, and to place the Who at the Met was less a contribution to music than to showmanship. In the end, it's the music that must stand on...