The Who prove they’re still all right

The band shows it hasn’t lost much to age with a stellar performance of “Quadrophenia”

By John Foyston

of The Oregonian staff

A plague of dinosaurs haunts the land — veteran rock bands intent on strip-mining the last few million bucks out of loyal fans, bands touring on faded memories of glory past, bands cynically reassembled for reasons more to do with marketing than art.

Happily, the Who isn’t one of those.

They proved that with an energetic set of more than two hours Sunday night at the Rose Garden Arena — the Who are no longer kids (the three original members are all past 50 now), but they’re way more than all right. The show was the first stop on a U.S. tour, and about 9,000 enthusiastic fans got a chance to hear one of the first-ever live performances of Pete Townshend’s 1973 epic “Quadrophenia” in its entirety.

The band tried to pull off “Quadrophenia” live in the mid-’70s, but had to use unreliable taped backing tracks to augment the basic quartet in recreating the symphonic majesty of Townshend’s piece. The technology of the time simply wasn’t up to the task.

This time out, Townshend used extra musicians as well as audio and visual wizardry to take his masterwork to the fans. Fourteen musicians joined Townshend, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle onstage — two keyboardists, a five-piece horn section, two singers, a percussionist, Zak Starkey on drums, Simon Townshend on guitar, Gary Glitter as the Godfather and Billy Idol as the Ace Face.

It took the best efforts of all, plus a huge projection screen that flashed between-song narrations by the protagonist, the Mod Kid and close-ups of the players during the songs. Those shots revealed some anxiety Sunday night — darting eyes, Starkey silently counting off cues, Glitter grimacing as he stretched for a high note, and a couple of Daltrey’s trademark microphone tosses looking like industrial accidents in the making.

The band flew into Portland just a few days ago and holed up in the Rose Garden to pull the show together. And it was a substantial undertaking — 90 straight minutes of music, video, staging and lighting cues hinging on the finest timing. Mostly, it came off very well indeed.

Sure, there was an annoying buzz as Townshend fingerpicked and sang the gorgeous opening to “I’m One,” and Daltrey seemed tight at the beginning of the evening. But by midpoint, that massive band was sufficiently on top of it that “Is It in My Head?” featured an onscreen film clip of the Mod Kid singing the chorus in — mostly — perfect sync with the live music.

The best surprise was how the live performance opened up the music. From “I Am the Sea” to the majestic “Love Reign O’er Me,”

“Quadrophenia” contains some of the best Who music. The band went on to play other favorites after a long, loud encore, including an acoustic version of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with just Daltrey and Townshend that proved a great song doesn’t need a stack of Hiwatt amps to put it across.

The full band came back on for “Behind Blue Eyes,” a “Boris the Spider” that reminded us that Entwistle is still one of the greatest rock bass players and “Substitute,” which confirmed that a band is never old if it’s got something to say.

Roger Daltrey shows vintage form Sunday night as the Who kick off the U.S. tour of “Quadrophenia” at the Rose Garden. The huge screen behind Daltrey is a focal point of the stage show.

BRENT WOJAHN/The Oregonian