You Know Who

Associated Press Roger Daltrey, left, and Pete Townshend will play The Gorge Saturday.

The Who are back on the road and working on a new album of new and live material

By Heather Lalley

Staff writer

Sometimes the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. A singer. A guitarist. A bass player. A drummer. The basic band setup.

But in the hands of Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and the late Keith Moon, that lineup grew into one of rock music's most important — and explosive — bands.

Long before groups like Korn were splitting eardrums and a decade before Kiss perfected its stage antics, The Who was breaking decibel meters, smashing guitars and setting things on fire.

It's been 35 years since The Who released its first album, "My Generation." The record features the anthem of the same name, which

PREVIEW The Who When, where: Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at The Gorge. Tickets: $53.85-$137.85, available through Ticketmaster (509-735-0500 or www.ticketmaster.com).

includes the line "hope I die before I get old." Two reunion tours later, the middle-aged rockers have been repeatedly reminded of that line.

"Perhaps if I had died before I got old, I might have been forgotten," Townshend has said. "You tend to hope you'll become James Dean or Jimi Hendrix, but a lot of dead people aren't remembered at all. So I haven't been able to achieve that one great ambition I had when I was 19. But I've tried to compensate by actually making myself happy."

The Who has perhaps become best known for its ambitious rock operas, "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia." The latter translated into one of the biggest stadium shows ever, pioneering the use of lasers at rock concerts and requiring a reported 72 speakers and 14 tons of equipment. In 1976, the "Guinness Book of Records" called the show the loudest rock concert ever.

Moon, meanwhile, gained notoriety away from the drum kit. He drove his car into a Holiday Inn swimming pool, accidentally killed a chauffeur in a car accident, and trashed more than his share of hotel rooms.

And in 1978, he choked on his own vomit after overdosing on a drug he was taking to combat alcoholism.

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