There is fascination and endearment, sitting here staring at my stereo, as Elton and Bernie, Pete and Rog, Meat and Jim all wax rhapsodic over those days. Irritation and offense have fled; our sensibilities have all evolved in tandem over the years. No more antics, no more rebel yell. In their place there is sadness, and a kind of unfocused tenderness. Why? I guess because they're all around 60 now, and they'd look really stupid otherwise.

A satisfying fatigue settles in after back-to-back passes of "The Captain and the Kid," "Endless Wire" and "Bat Out of Hell III." With customary intrusiveness, Meat breaks the silence, typically drawing attention to himself: "Everything I've ever dreamed of / Has begun to fade to black / Oh I don't know where I am or lost love / Or where to go now to get it back."

I tell him I have a hard time feeling sorry for him, with Bat I and Bat II having sold more than 40 million copies between them, and III sure to sell 10 times what Elton and The Who's albums are going to do combined, for no better reason than that it says 'Bat Out of Hell' on the cover. "It doesn't matter what they're thinking of me," Jim jumps in, "It's always so cold and I'm too young to be old / The Future Ain't What It Used to Be ... "

Okay, they've got me there, and there are nods all around the room. What, exactly, did I expect? What did they expect? It occurs to me that these are the most dramatic, theatrical personalities (excepting only Freddie and his mates, and possibly Bowie) in all of rock history. The Pop Liberace, the father of the rock opera, and the Pavarotti of Metal, all in residence. They were about the spectacle, the rising of the curtain, creatures of the stage. They expected ... well, they expected a stage.

They're still here. They're still huge. It's the stage that shrank.

Bernie offers a thought. "We've been living in a tinderbox," he says, "And two sparks together can set the whole thing off / Rubbing up together around the clock / Lately we've been getting more roll than rock ... " Ya think?

The irony of Elton and Bernie's album as direct sequel to "Captain Fantastic" is not lost. That one was about promise pursued; this one isn't promise fulfilled, but it is certainly promise honored , if that distinction can be made. Fulfillment is asymptotic; but a quick survey of their peer group, and the stark contrast between these guys and all the rest, brings 'honor' out in full bloom. The emotional integrity and fealty to the craft in Elton's document, and even Meat's (at 59, the guy can still bend steel with his bare voice and sound like a little girl, in the same song) leave us no deficit of honor. They're killin' us with it.

And most especially Pete and Roger, who speak not only for themselves but for those not in the room. "Endless Wire" is a sparse meditation, almost down to wafer-and-cup: nine songs up front and a 'mini-opera' in back (based on his blog novella The Boy Who Heard Music), their first album in 24 years and an absolute watershed that can speak for everyone, as they always have, even the ghosts.

... and it's Pete that finally brings an unashamed tear to my eye at his mini-opera's close, in "Tea and Theatre," with an emotional economy and precision that Jim couldn't manage in 500 study halls. His brilliance extends, as always, beneath the surface, evoking the spectres of his missing mates by laying down a drum machine, underscoring the tune's Moon-lessness, beneath Roger's haunted vocal:

I feel humbled as I sit here among them, aching to say the right thing. Thank you, I want to blubber, as all the unsaid stuff just lingers. Need a vast arena? Here's my living room. Need a cheering throng? Here I am. Because of you, for all the voice you gave me, I am legion. I contain multitudes ...