DALLAS — The Who may have reached its recording peak a decade ago, but the legendary British rock 'n' roll band is on top of its game when it comes to live performances.

The foursome of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Kenny Jones made that emphatically clear Saturday. Their Cotton Bowl concert was a gem. It would be hard to imagine a rock 'n' roll show more powerful than the one the Who reeled off before some 57,000 fans.

It was a marvelous display of music under some not-so-marvelous conditions. The day was cold, dark and dismal throughout the opening sets by Steel Breeze and Billy Squier.

The Who members did have to contend with temperatures in the low 40s when they took the stage after dark, but they delivered a red-hot two hours' worth of their classic music.

Saturday's concert was part of what the band is calling its "farewell tour," and if these veteran rockers indeed are calling a halt to touring, they're going out at their performing peak.

The Who stretched the boundaries of rock with a long string of memorable songs, and it was the fiery, emotional versions of those past winners that highlighted this concert. Soaring versions of classics like Won't Get Fooled Again, See Me Feel Me, Love Reign O'er Me, Baba O'Riley and Who Are You were knockouts. But even the new material from the band's current album, It's Hard, sounded great thanks to the intensity with which it was delivered.

The band performed on a massive stage flanked and covered by 40-foot-high letters that were outlined in lights spelling out "WHO." Above the crossbar of the "H" was a

Star-Telegram/JERRY HOEFER THE WHO'S STARS… Roger Daltrey, left, and Pete Townshend

giant screen that flashed closeups of band members in action to the crowd. Showco of Dallas provided the 110,000-watt sound system.

Daltrey and Townshend, both 37, struck their traditonal concert poses. Daltrey strutted around the stage, ran in place and did his share of microphone slinging while Townshend leaped into the air and played guitar with his sweeping windmill-style strokes. Townshend, the man who wrote most of the Who's material, also surprised the crowd by dancing during Magic Bus.

One of the night's most emotional moments came during Won't Get Fooled Again when pictures of the Who through the years were flashed on the overhead screen. When Moon's likeness appeared in a series of shots, the crowd responded with a big ovation.

Two decades of rock history were unfolded for the enthusiastic audience as the Who presented music from every phase of its career. They dipped back to their mid-1960s beginnings for a series of Mod-era singles, stopped in the psychedelic era for I Can See For Miles, played selections from the landmark Tommy and Quadrophenia rock operas, featured classic material from Who's Next and also offered more recent music from Who Are You.

At the end of the show, Townshend took off his guitar, raised it in the air and then smashed it into on the ground. Then he used what was left to bash a microphone. It seemed the perfect symbolic finish to a great night of music — and perhaps a great career.