AMES, IA. — The Who shot up Iowa with a vein full of rock ’n’ roll — the hard stuff — at Hilton Coliseum here Tuesday night.

An estimated 14,000 enthusiastic fans revelled in it and stayed on their feet for the entire 110-minute show.

The crack British rock quartet delivered some monstrous full bore rock, and made a few mistakes. There were several miscues, mostly involving the group losing the beat for a moment now and then. And the sound system, nicely hung overhead to avoid blocking the view, whistled jarring feedback on and off for much of the night.

Nobody cared. It was the good stuff they had come for, and it was there in spades.

Powerhouse Rock

No band can really rock out as The Who can. Some fans would argue, in fact, that this group invented powerhouse rock ’n’ roll back in 1965. It certainly played as if it had.

Singer Roger Daltrey’s voice rent the hall and charged its atmosphere. Guitarist Pete Townshend’s licks, runs and windmill power chords found the primal rock consciousness in the many fans and drew them together in a joyous expression of raw feeling.

Bassist John Entwhistle poured the rock solid foundation it all needed, as well as pulled off several stunning bass leads. Drummer Kenny Jones, replacing the late Keith Moon, smashed along behind and beneath it all providing — for the most part — an adequate steadiness, though without any of Moon’s old flashiness.

A trio of brass wind players and a keyboardist — none of them identified by name — rounded out the group.

There was a particular irony here Tuesday. Daltrey and Townshend, the band’s “front” men, looked as if they could have rolled in from anywhere to play with a show at some back street bar. Each had short hair and wore a jacket and blue jeans, giving them the look of today’s New Wave rockers.

Long Ago

The irony is that’s how they looked 15 years ago when they kicked off the musical style that nowadays is considered fresh and modern.

The Who did one of its more piercing numbers early in the set, a piece lately rediscovered by some Iowa radio stations: “Baba O’Reilly.” Daltrey chilled the crowd when he declared: “Out here in the fields, I’ve found something real. I get my back into my living.” Townshend stepped to the microphone and instructed listeners: “Don’t cry, don’t close your eyes. It’s only teen-age wasteland.”

The sentiment hit its mark; the exhuberant crowd roared acknowledgement with one voice.

Townshend’s singing sounded strained for a moment, but he quickly recovered and it never happened again.

Entwhistle’s bass was nearly perfect — solid without any muddiness or roar — as he underpinned “Behind Blue Eyes.” It is another of Townshend’s many pithy, insightful and crisp comments on society. Daltrey sang: “No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man, the sad man, behind blue eyes. … My dreams, they aren’t as empty as my conscience seems to be.”

The piece simply cooked.

The horns figured nicely into “Who Are You,” a seemingly appropriate question for an aging rock star to be asking. As Entwhistle, Townshend and the keyboardist layered their harmonies — “Who are you? Who, who? Who, who?” — over Daltrey’s lead vocals, the brass punched its own voicing of that same phrase, filling the arena with the question.

To bring it home firmer, Daltrey, looking tanned and much more like a beach bum than a rock star — ran in place as if he were pursued on pursuing. The feeling of restlessness faintly dripped from both the tune and its lyrics.