Royal Air Force insignia, spotlighted in red.

Behind him, John Entwistle played bass in a patchwork jacket, all white hair and stoicism.

Guitarist Peter Townshend, looking East Endish in white shirt and black slacks and suspenders, stayed in a narrow zone, laid out especially to protect his fading hearing. For all of that, he managed several of the jump splits that have long been his trademark.

The set built in a long medley from the rock opera Tommy, putting the crowd on its feet and bringing them in on the chorus of Pinball Wizard.

It’s classics like that that bind people. Like the four kids who drove from Oklahoma City. At age 16, they are “longtime” fans. “That’s all we play,” said Shane Bowser.

And when, after 1 ½ hours on stage, The Who broke into Join Together, man, did people ever.

That kind of enthusiasm would have come at the climax of any other concert, but last night it was only the buildup to Won’t Get Fooled Again, and with 35,000 shouting along on this anthem of rebellion, there had to be more than one flashback to a time two decades ago.

The encore was a spirited four numbers, ending with Who Are You? Then Townshend stepped to the microphone and gave his farewell, “See you next time.” And The Who left the stage under cover of a one-minute fireworks display that dazzled the crowd and flooded the Cotton Bowl with choking yellow smoke.

The maybe-absolute-last-almost-certainly-forever Who concert had ended.

“We stopped doing this for seven years,” Daltrey had said in a June Newsday interview that referred to The Who’s 1983 breakup.

“And where I’m at, there’s nothing with The Who after this tour.”

So there it is.

Indeed, as they reach their mid-40s, Daltrey, Townshend and Entwistle seemed to have approached the tour as a logical, income-producing extension of a 25-year commercial enterprise. They have no new album to promote, and the $1 million they’re helping raise for a good charity leaves them with their virtue intact, so why not?

“As my manager said to me several times, it’s pointless getting biblical about the whole thing,” Townshend told Newsday.

“Because if you don't sell your name to the beer company, the hall does. I have no qualms about taking the money.”

This comfortable incarnation of The Who might be jarring to some who remember the stuttering, squabbling proto-punk authors of the Baby Boomers’ declaration of independence, My Generation.

Daltrey these days sounds almost like the Depression-era parents who, back then, snorted at The Who's early product.

“I talk to my kids about music,” he harrumphed in Newsday. “In my days, it was wonderful. It was real music. Not this crap you hear today.”

But The Who were always headed in that direction, come to think of it. Their ’60s music avoided the pompous preachiness then in vogue in favor of a bit of fun gently poked at conventions, their own included.

While Townshend’s guitar smashing was an early eyebrow-raiser, by the time they reached the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, Townshend looked pretty restrained next to Jimi Hendrix, who raped and burned his guitar on stage. And when the mood was poisonously bitter during the Chicago-7-to-Kent-State-massacre period, the jet-setting Rolling Stones called for violence in Street Fighting Man; the Beatles offered a few blissed-out platitudes in Revolution; but it was The Who who counseled hard-won wisdom in Won’t Get Fooled Again.

So anyway, that’s the cultural baggage that the fans brought with them into the Cotton Bowl to hear a live retrospective.

By 6 p.m., when the Fabulous Thunderbirds kicked off three hours of warm-up acts, the 100-plus-degree sun was stroking the crowd nicely, Miller Lite was turning to Miller steam and the crowd was dropping enough sweat to unclog the Trinity River.

The brewing company’s repeated warning about drinking and driving was probably wasted on the crowd; it was well-nigh impossible to stay drunk in that heat. An aspirin and salt tablet concession would have made a mint.

The crowd was, in short, ready for the kind of medium-rare exuberance for which Texas outdoor audiences are so justly renowned.

The Thunderbirds’ Jimmy Vaughan on guitar and Kim Wilson on harmonica were just the ticket, basting the stands with the mix of glandular blues and alternating current that keeps the Dallas-Austin-Houston axis on the map.

The Thunderbirds were nothing short of heroic, bluesing away to the half-empty stadium with the sun in their faces. They were dressed in black slacks and poolroom-sleaze sports shirts, salty drops gliding off well-oiled jelly rolls, drip-drip-dripping to the throb of the bass.

They signed off with Tuff Enuff, and about 500 people in the front rows stood up for a 30-second burst of cheering, then settled back for a long gasp and waited for Jimmy’s enfant terrible brother Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose band, Double Trouble, has averaged a Grammy nomination a year since the release of Texas Flood in 1983.

Stevie Ray came on as the sun passed behind the walls of the Cotton Bowl, and the crowd was getting cool and comfortable.

The police reported only three arrests — all alcohol-related — and the first-aid stations were empty, the medics standing in the corridors, listening to the music.

The highlights of Stevie Ray’s set were his renditions of Cold Shot and Crossfire.