Looking Back at a Lifetime of Who Shows

By Steve Morse

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

A month after 9/11, superstars gathered for the Concert for New York at Madison Square Garden. David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, and Eric Clapton performed at the stirring event, but the act that stole the show was the Who. The band played “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and the crowd rose to its feet with one steady, deafening roar.

“We questioned whether or not we should do that song, but then we said, ‘Let’s show them what the Who is all about,’ ” singer Roger Daltrey later told this writer. “The whole night meant a lot to me personally. I was born during World War II when London was being bombed.”

The night was further proof that every Who appearance has moments that touch listeners, no matter who they are. The Who has done that for me since I first saw them at Boston Garden in 1979. No, I didn’t see them at the Boston Tea Party club in the ’60s. Nor did I catch the Garden show in 1975 when drummer Keith Moon famously passed out drunk. (“Mr. Moon has the flu,” a doctor said, tongue in cheek, to another reporter as he emerged from Moon’s dressing room.) But I’ve caught just about every local Who show since, as well as concerts in New York, including the band’s first US show with Moon’s replacement, Kenney Jones, at Madison Square Garden, and the group’s first American date in seven years at the Glens Falls Civic Center in 1989.

I’m hooked.

From Daltrey’s stentorian bellow to Pete Townshend’s slashing, windmill motions on guitar, I can’t get enough. I love the band’s new album, “Endless Wire” (its first studio disc in 24 years), and eagerly await its show at the new Garden tomorrow night. Although Daltrey told me a few years ago “We’re at the pinnacle of our decline,” the