Robert Plant knows the pain of losing a bandmate, of saying goodbye to a legendary musician.

So news of The Who bassist John Entwistle’s death on June 27 hit Led Zeppelin’s former lead singer hard, especially because Plant was to open for The Who on the band’s North American tour.

“It’s just such a waste; it’s such a sad thing,” Plant said in a recent interview with The Press, citing the deaths of Entwistle earlier this summer, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham in 1980 and The Who drummer Keith Moon in 1978.

“We miss John. As a guy, he was very funny, very deadpan. He could have been a comedian as much as a musician, and he contributed to the sound of The Who. That sound was huge.”

So huge, in fact, many fans questioned whether the legendary British rock band should go ahead with its U.S. tour.

But after canceling the first couple of dates, guitarist Pete Townshend, singer Roger Daltrey, drummer Zak Starkey and keyboard player John “Rabbit” Bundrick pressed ahead with the bulk of the tour that stops Tuesday at Grand Rapids’ Van Andel Arena. They enlisted the services of longtime session bass player Pino Palladino to replace Entwistle.

“I made it clear we do not expect him (Palladino) to attempt to emulate, parody or copy John Entwistle in any way,” Townshend wrote on his Web site. “Pino is a master in his own way, but the one request I made was that ... he play as loud as he can bear!”

From all indications, Palladino has blended in well with the rest of the gang, including the “playing loud” bit. Newspaper reviews of recent concerts have been almost universally kind to the band, extolling the talents of the fill-in bassist and praising the often-grumpy Townshend’s blistering guitar work.

“The teen-age uncertainty that fueled The Who’s early songs is still in the music, still talking back to authority figures,” New York Times reviewer Jon Pareles wrote after a concert at Madison Square Garden. “But so, now, is an adult consciousness of mortality, of the permanence of friendship and music. With an audience that was both uncertain about the band’s future and willing to give it a chance, Mr. Townshend loudly renewed that covenant.”

Of course, Townshend also has made it clear he isn’t particularly concerned about what fans or critics think about his motivation for embarking on another tour, the latest in a long string of The Who’s reunion and “farewell” expeditions.

He recently told Rolling Stone magazine in a bombastic interview that, while he’s “quite inclined”