Kyle Jones went to the Dec. 3 Who concert in Cincinnati. When he got home, he learned that two of his friends had died there.

But he drove from Middletown, Ohio, last night to see the Who perform in Lexington’s Rupp Arena.

He says he wasn’t afraid, “Because I felt that the one in Cincinnati showed everybody how to act at a concert.”

And maybe it did.

The 21,000-member crowd danced and shouted and hopped up and down in the aisles for the Who. It seemed a controlled change from the surging mass described by survivors of the Cincinnati concert just seven months ago.

None of the Who fans passing the turnstiles into Rupp last night seemed to expect anything to happen then — except music.

To an onlooker, fans seemed disconcertingly calm.

Cincinnati was “a freak accident. It shouldn’t have happened,” said Dale Wooldridge, 28, of Louisville.

“That (the 11 deaths and at least 20 injuries reported at Cincinnati) just happened ’cause they (concert officials) messed up,” said Kim Wilson, a 19-year-old from Middletown who told of seeing three dead teenagers at the Cincinnati concert.

“It won’t happen again. It was Cincinnati’s fault,” she said.

So, the Who played its music as the crowd listened. And all the officials waited, guarding against a violence that never came.

Ten Lexington fire officials, at least four undercover police narcotics officers and an estimated 150 off-duty police and private security officers watched for trouble, processed and controlled the crowd.

Every fan had to pass a ticket-taker on the way in, had bags searched by another security officer and was checked again as before being allowed to claim a seat.

Reporters from at least four other cities came to watch and listen.

Tom Minter, director of the Lexington Center, said he spoke with television reporters from Cincinnati, Dayton, Louisville and Indianapolis.

Paul Wertheimer, the man who wrote the Cincinnati task force study after the deaths there, also came to watch how Lexington dealt with the crowd.

“I think they did a good job,” he said, said later.

No serious injuries were reported by 11 p.m., when the concert was to end. Twenty people had been arrested — but mostly on drug possession charges, police and jail officials

The young Who fans who had said there was no need to worry proved to be right.

There were no long lines or wild scrambling as the 21,000 people filed

(Turn to 22,000, B-7)