Once in a while, out of the crazy scramble of hundreds of top performers, a group may try to create a lasting work.

And when that group says, "We have always tried to push rock as far as it will go," it deserves some notice.

One such group is the Who, a four-man British band once best known as the most violent group in rock.

Their concerts usually ended with the ritualistic destruction of guitars, drum heads and sticks; and their fans were like bullfight aficionados lusting after the supreme moment.

The sound of an electronic guitar being smashed while still wired to its amplifier was supposed to be beyond the auditory experience of ordinary humans.

They were the nihilists, the anarchists of rock.

Their lead philosopher, writer and guitar buster, Peter Townshend, once thought, "the current big, imperishable, holy art is pop music, and the break-up routine really says something about it. The ideal, of course, would be for me to get killed in an airplane crash right after a stupendous performance."

That was in the mid '60s, however, and the Who quickly tired of destruc-

The Who opens tonight at Fillmore West, heading a bill that also includes Woody Herman’s Band and A. B. Skhy.

tiveness. Besides, the instruments cost a lot of money.

About two years ago they began to form a hazy idea which, hopefully, would be so audacious they would never engage in demolition again.

The Who, they figured, would create some sort of musical impression of man's physical experience, a musical trip into his senses, perhaps even an opera.

When the Who talked of it, the Beatles agreed not to work on their own operatic efforts until they had heard the Who's product.

The result, released recently, is called "Tommy." It is a 90-minute opera that unfortunately probably will never be performed in an opera house.

It is a pure rock creation, meaning you can dance, wriggle or fingersnap to each tune.

Yet it has such firm philosophic underpinnings that it is the deepest and most intellectual work attempted by a rock group. "Tommy" will create new trends.

Tommy is a child made traumatically deaf, dumb and blind after he sees his father kill his mother's lover.

The opera follows his life, through torture by Cousin Kevin ("How would you feel if I turned on the bath, ducked your head under and started to laugh?"), an attempted cure with LSD, a seduction by his Uncle Ernie (the song is titled "Fiddle About"), to some small fame as a "pinball wizard," scoring well because he plays by feel.

Tommy stares at a mirror and a doctor says he can see. His mother breaks the mirror in a rage and suddenly Tommy is cured. Overnight he becomes a religious sensation, people flock to him, Uncle Ernie capitalizes on his fame by opening Tommy's Holiday Camp, but Tommy tells the people there that, to follow his way, they must plug their ears and play pinball games.

The chorus refuses and wrecks the camp, leaving Tommy to sing:

"Listening to you I get the music.

Gazing at you I get the heat.

Following you I climb the mountain.

I get excitement at your feet!"

Because of the popularity of "Pinball Wizard" as a single record and the expected sales from "Tommy," the Who are now at the apex of their popularity.

Townshend likened the Who to a commando unit in which "one guy does the neckbreaking, another does the bayoneting, others do the kicking or the bridge-blowing.

"John Entwistle is the

Townshend described the opera as "about the life of a highly spiritually aware person. Tommy goes as high as he can go as a human being and becomes united with all the forces of God, the Creator, and the universal consciousness.

"People are flocking to him by the millions, but he knows that won't do any good if they are only out for a cheap trip to what they imagine is Heaven, Paradise or Salvation.

"The only way to attain that is by working for it as an individual. So the people reject him and leave him more or less deaf, dumb and blind, and as lonely as before."

"The opera," said Townshend, "is a mixture of reading Christianity and teaching of Meher Baba, the philosopher who died in February and whose books, like 'God Speaks,' are simple and straightforward and don't muck about with rules. I really haven't got a religion. Maybe, brotherhood. The only real religion is the one we've got laid out in front of us and that is our life and the thing is just to live that life."