At home in Detroit: Lead guitarist Peter Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey of The Who.

These Pounding Rockers Were Subtle as Well

By William S. Welt

Free Press Staff Writer

In what must be judged one of the premiere rock concerts of an exceptionally good year, The Who enthralled a sell-out audience of some 12,000 persons in Cobo Arena Friday night with a brilliant performance of old hits and a stunning new rock opera.

The unique ability of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon and John Entwistle, to combine sound musicianship with a seemingly endless capacity to chart new directions in rock music has kept them fresh for a full decade.

LEAD SINGER. Daltrey's gritty voice is strong as ever and he still struts and twirls his microphone like the kid he was when he began.

Townshend, lead guitarist and principal composer of the group, adds his measure of stage flash with his trade mark high leaps and the full-circle sweep of his strumming arm. Drummer Moon and bassist Entwistle hold it all together solidly.

"If we've ever had home in the U.S.A., it's Detroit," Daltrey told an adoring audience; it was here that The Who, playing the Grande Ballroom and begging their early recordings onto local radio station playlists, first got an American following.

They opened with fine old Who standards, "Summertime Blues" "My Wife" and "My Generation," then did their new thing, "Quadrophenia," a loosely structured rock opera of sorts.

With Daltrey doing the singing and narrating and Townshend shuffling along as Jimmy, the quadrophenic (it means a personality split into four parts, like the band itself), they worked through component "Quadrophenia" songs that surrealistically represented adolescence with, in Townshend's words, all its "bloody frustrations."

Stylistically, "Quadrophenia" is the most complex rock music now being performed; its subtle shadings demand careful listening, and that's just what the Cobo crowd gave it, sitting quietly for more than an hour during this segment of the concert.

The sound was perfect 6 48 separate stage speakers that were very, very loud but still crisp, supplemented by still others out in the crowd producing a quadrophonic effect. And no, they did not smash their instruments as they once did.