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Longtime fans weren't exactly chomping at the bit to see the band again. Townshend's proclamations that the event would be a new kind of "arena rock theater" sounded specious and overblown; too much emphasis on bells and whistles was a sure sign that the band couldn't cut it on its own.

Still, 1973's "Quadrophenia" is the rare — perhaps the only — "rock opera" that worked as well conceptually as it did musically. The story of an English teenager's struggle to find his identity in the early 1960s, the album was the kind of anthemic, far-reaching music that the Who at its best could still make feel like rock and roll.

Amazingly, the band, in its current incarnation, is able to pull it off on the current tour, which stopped in Milwaukee last month, for two simple but interconnected reasons. In Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr's son, the band has finally found a drummer with the right balance of chaos and order to fill Keith Moon's shoes. Perhaps because of this injection of new blood, the rest of the band appeared committed to the music — and to rock 'n' roll, period — in a way it hasn't for more than a decade. Instead of merely retreading old hits, the presentation of "Quadrophenia" in its entirety — replete with video segments and actors whose parts were woven seamlessly into the story — gave the band a focus and a vision it has been missing since Moon died in 1978.

Townshend's guitar work was absolutely blistering, whether acoustic or electric, and John Entwistle offered up an instrumental break during "5:15" that remarkably proved that "bass solo" and "yawn" don't necessarily need to go in the same sentence. Roger Daltrey's voice and stage moves were a tad rusty, but that was a minor flaw in an otherwise life-affirming rock show.

By the time they got to their encore of a half-dozen FM radio classics, even war horses like "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Who Are You?" sounded fresh. The band proved that the music doesn't have to be new to be meaningful, nor do you have to be 20 to rock out.