VH1 Rock Honors isn't a show, it's a time machine -- a sometimes cheesy, often cheery eternal paradise for the stars of yesteryear and young whippersnappers who might benefit by rubbing noses with them. I'll be watching this Thursday, when last Saturday's Los Angeles concert starring (and quasi-documentary worshipping) The Who is broadcast.

The whippersnappers doing tribute to surviving Who guys Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey aren't all that young, actually. Foo Fighters' bearded majordomo Dave Grohl looks more like Dan Fogelberg than the fresh-faced Nirvana drum-whomper and high-harmony crooner that he was. There is a poignant irony in this young fogey performing "Young Man Blues," even though reviewers gave him raves.

It was about 17 years ago that Eddie Vedder went surfing and dreamed up the magniloquent rock-operatic lyrics that made him uncomfortably famous, along with the guitar debating society that was Pearl Jam. 17 years ago, Vedder was obsessed with The Who's Quadrophenia, which was 17 years old at that point. Now he's old and independent, doing solo shows, scoring Into the Wild for his pal Sean Penn -- and singing "Love, Reign O'er Me" from Quadrophenia with Pearl Jam (plus an orchestra) for its author on VH1.

It seems like yesterday that he was Eddie, debutant star, shimmying up the Space Needle to unscrew a light bulb and playfully send it to a Rolling Stone reporter, and telling me backstage, right after he'd surfed the entire audience at his first concert filmed for MTV at Seattle's Moore Theater, how wonderful it was to feel the varying strengths in each fan's arms as they passed him around, the women's arms weaker, the strong guys saving him from falling, everybody celebrating the blissful communion of their g-g-generation. As fame became less blissful, Eddie's idol Pete Townshend, I'm told, phoned and comforted him by saying, "You are one of the fortunate ones."

Now he's grownup -- his bandmates call him "Ed" -- and he's repaying Pete's kindness by doing this show.

Scads of stars from Slash to the Clash popped up at the concert or on film, and will probably be seen on the show. Clowns did their part to lighten the festivities. Jack Black performed "Squeeze Box," which is just the jokey, smutty little tune he should do. Adam Sandler did whatever mysterious thing makes people like him, and The Office's Rainn Wilson donned Elton John's giant boots from Ken Russell's hypertrophic Tommy movie, to introduce the Flaming Lips' reprise of that seminal rock opera.

Like some reviewers of the stage show, I predict that Sean Penn's veiled putdown of "certain music channels" that "sell out" will not make the broadcast. But it would be cool if VH1 let him say it on air.

VH1 had its first hits when it began to air rock's dirty laundry in Behind the Music shows. I'll bet that this show's tributes to The Who's fallen comrades Keith Moon and John Entwistle will put a bit of sanitizing bleach on the band's dirty laundry, and I think that's a mistake. The way to respect the past is to honor its darkness as well. Besides, Keith Moon's darkness was so festive it lit up a room, occasionally blowing the room up in the process. He notoriously put explosives on his drum kit and deafened Townshend.

Another time, I'm told, Moon panicked when he couldn't figure out the double-lock on his hotel room door -- he thought he was locked in. So it seemed sensible to him to open the window, scuttle along the thin ledge far above Central Park, and pound on Ringo Starr's nearby window for help. Ringo opened it and almost sent him plunging to the street before yanking him in to safety.

What a stylish death that would've been! It's right up there with the other three great '60s hippie deaths that almost were. John Lennon accidentally took LSD he mistook for aspirin and nearly stepped right off the roof of Abbey Road during a Sgt Pepper session; Ken Kesey nearly fell off a cliff when he blew hashish smoke in a mouse's face and the mouse reared up, startling him; and everybody in the main mud pit at Woodstock nearly got electrocuted by bad, wet wiring.

I'm glad they all survived for a while, and that Ringo is sober, and lives to see his son Zak Starkey play drums for The Who. But rock is all about excess, and VH1 is all about continuity and upbeat, up-with-people sentiment. I'm not knocking it. I just hope they'll be more open to the anarchic side. Pearl Jam guys once played under the name "Lords of the Wasteland." Mudhoney razzed them for this pomposity by playing a show as the "Wasted Landlords." I vote for the Wasted Landlords.

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