THERE’S no Substitute for a real slice of legendary rock and roll. The London boys who roared and power chorded their way into the affections of millions of music fans around the world, THE WHO are back for one final live hurrah in Belfast tonight.

Tungsten-tonsilled vocalist Roger Daltrey; creative powerhouse and main songwriter Pete Townshend; lightning-fingered bassist John Entwistle and Animal of The Muppets’ spiritual dad, Keith Moon are up there alongside THE BEATLES and THE ROLLING STONES as rock gods.

They first blazed their way out of the Mod scene in the mid-Sixties with debut hit I Can’t Explain. A series of era-defining hits followed including My Generation, Substitute, Pinball Wizard and Won’t Get Fooled Again.

Remarkably for a band with sales of more than 100 million, The Who never notched up a UK Number One single and only one album chart topper Who’s Next in 1971.

But as a template for a multitude of other high voltage rock bands, there has been few stronger role models — with JIMI HENDRIX, THE SEX PISTOLS, THE JAM, GREEN DAY and OASIS all acknowledging their debt of gratitude.

Townshend’s windmill guitar chord-playing and Daltrey’s lion-haired, bare-chested, microphone-throwing acrobatics all influenced successive generations of bands.

Just last week, that umbilical cord between The Who’s rousing Sixties rock and the Nineties Britpop movement was underlined when Daltrey joined ex-Oasis frontman LIAM GALLAGHER to perform My Generation on Chris Evans revived TFI TV.

INFLUENTIAL: The Who in their heyday

Sadly drummer Keith Moon — who had a penchant for blowing up hotel toilets with cherry bombs and sticks of dynamite — died of an alcohol withdrawal drug overdose in 1978.

Bassist Entwistle passed away after a cocaine-induced heart attack while in bed with a stripper-groupie in a Las Vegas hotel at the age of 57. Surviving members, Townshend has come through a variety of drug problems and nervous breakdowns and Daltrey faced a cancer scare.

Remarkably though, both men, who are now in their seventies, perform The Who’s songs of teenage anger, frustration and rebellion with an added passion, fuelled by what they have learnt in their lives.

The band last performed an entire show of songs from their 1973 concept album Quadrophenia at Belfast’s Odyssey