TV Reviews : ‘Tommy,’ on Fox Tonight, Takes Us Back to the ‘60s

Short-memoried sorts who associate the music of the late ‘60s exclusively with peace and love would do well to tune in tonight to Fox’s airing of the Who’s recent star-studded revival of the sprawling rock opera “Tommy,” complete with leather-clad Billy Idol spouting foul language as the sadistic Cousin Kevin and a berobed Phil Collins, hand in pocket, intimating nasty things as the child molester Uncle Ernie. Sounds almost as offensive as an episode of “Married . . . With Children,” doesn’t it?

This two-hour show (at 8 p.m. on Channels 11 and 6) contains the hour-long whole of “Tommy,” as performed by the Who and celebrity guests last month at the Universal Amphitheatre, plus five additional numbers culled from the band’s subsequent greatest-hits set that night. Viewers who watched the live pay-per-view broadcast that same evening got to see more of the overall show, sans commercials, but they didn’t get to see editing and camera work quite this good. This new edit assures that the camera is on drummer Simon Phillips when he is executing his perfect, to-the-Moon tom-tom fills, or on guitarist Pete Townshend for the trademark leaps and windmills.

Except for Collins’ and Idol’s fascinatingly tasteless turns, it’s a very untheatrical, straightforward rendering of the piece.

The expanded backup band, with horns and singers and keyboards and an extra lead guitarist, sounds terrific, for those who don’t mind seeing the Who go out with some musicianly dignity and not as a parodical shadow of its formerly raw self.