THE ROCK VETS WELCOME HOME THE VIETNAM VETS

Monday’s “Welcome Home” benefit concert at the Forum, which raised money for Vietnam veterans, was a little like the war itself: It was extensively covered by TV cameras and it seemed to drag on forever.

The unwieldy, sprawling affair featured about two dozen musical performances and just as many speeches--the music courtesy of folks like Neil Young and Stevie Wonder, the talk from folks like Jon Voight and Whoopi Goldberg.

Equal parts nostalgia, political activism, celebration and rock ‘n’ rolling, the show had produced a reasonable amount of top-notch music by the time it ended a couple of hours behind schedule and well past midnight.

Nothing was as gripping as Bruce Springsteen’s singing an impassioned “Who’ll Stop the Rain” to wheelchair-bound vets at a Sports Arena show nearly five years ago, but it’s nearly impossible to hit that kind of peak when you barely have time to play a couple of hits before moving on.

Most of the performers were veterans of the rock wars and survivors of the activist ‘60s. That sometimes made the show seem like a procession of has-beens, but it also made you realize that the songs of the Vietnam era have become golden oldies while the vets waited for their due. While “Welcome Home” was the name of the show, “This is long overdue” was the subtitle.

At first, though, the evening looked like a K-Tel collection of Golden Oldies From Close Friends of the Artists Who Made Them Famous. Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger played “The Unknown Soldier” and “Roadhouse Blues” while actor-singer Steven Bauer seemed to be auditioning for “The Jim Morrison Story.”

Ex-Byrd Chris Hillman performed “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” and a group called Buffalo Springfield Revisited performed Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul” and Stephen Stills’ “For What It’s Worth,” even though the band didn’t include Stills or Young.

Eventually, the producers threw out the speeches and trimmed many sets to one song. It saved time, but it was frustrating to watch things like the Buddy Miles Express vamp interminably and then see Nils Lofgren forced to relinquish the stage right after playing an exquisite version of one of his loveliest early songs.

Some performers managed to bridge the gap between decades: Richie Havens transformed Bob Dylan’s recent “License to Kill,” just as he used to do with Dylan’s older songs, while Herbie Hancock and Wynton Marsalis floated through a playful, ethereal “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” And a pair of reliable superstars delivered: Stevie Wonder’s “Front Line” was the toughest Vietnam song of the night, while Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” became a chilling ode to Vietnam’s casualties.

Things frittered out after Young--who in the world decided to end the show with REO’s Kevin Cronin?--but the tone of the evening remained generous, celebrative and supportive of the men and women who saw the unpopularity of the war rub off on them.

The single most moving moment, in fact, came when comedian Fred Travalena asked the veterans in the half-filled arena to stand. As inspiring as it was to watch them rise, receive the wild applause and spontaneously embrace other vets sitting nearby, it was equally sobering to realize that their camaraderie was won at a price the rest of us didn’t have to pay.