WHO Continued from Page E1

At the very least, Daltrey lays to rest the predictable assumption that band members are touring because they handled their fortunes the way they handled hotels.

"We don't need the money. The show costs us about $550,000 a week." With tickets at $65, $49.50, and $35.50, it is still assumed they will end in the black.

To Daltrey and, one presumes, Townshend and Entwistle, the issue is not "should we" or "how dare we" but "how do we?" No small rationalization has empowered the singer who declared his band "boring old geezers" 15 years ago, when they first packed it in.

"I don't understand this criticism of old bands," Daltrey says now. "My idol when I was 17 or 18 was Sonny Boy Williamson, and the man was 65 years old."

Daltrey is 53. Sonny Boy Williamson, needless to say, never wore a Jesus fringed jacket or played arenas, although a detailed study of his hotel comportment is not available. How much of a ruse is this?

"It's never been our intention to end up as a greatest-hits band. Pete and I feel very strongly that we've got no problems playing music together, just that it be something different."

The facts are straightforward. Townshend called Daltrey last May and proposed performing Quadrophenia for the Prince's Trust charity in Hyde Park. "I was a little reluctant to do it at first. I thought 'Ang about, I don't mind going on one night playing for a charity, that's fine…'

Predictably, Townshend wanted more. After 150,000 fans showed up in Hyde Park, Townshend suggested mounting a theatrical tour and sent Daltrey a script. "I was impressed with how much work he'd done with it, but I couldn't see where the Who fit in."

The Quadrophenia album was only toured once, briefly, on its release in 1973. Daltrey talks about the "bigheadedness" of the old days, when the band's hubris led them to record Quadrophenia in their own studio, resulting in a "thin-sounding" record.

"Live, it gains a majesty that it never had on record."

His majesty was performed in Madison Square Garden for a week this year, "and it was beyond our wildest dreams. We didn't know if we'd have an audience to come and see one of our, kind of" — and he stumbles — "it's not an obscure album, but it's not exactly a pop album, is it?"

If not, it demands "a new form of arena theatre. I know Pete's ambition is to write for the theatre. My ambition is to make sure he writes rock'n'roll."

Difficult not to like Rog, the original rock yob, a working-class millionaire facing down (or rather, up) the nose of Townshend's artsy pretensions. He remembers his interviewer's name, and when he eventually signs off it's with a matey "Be lucky." He even risks the dread Shakespeare comparison (Jimmy the Mod as an amphetamined Hamlet?) and escapes with his life.

He helped Townshend rewrite the script and conceive of a show matching visuals with rock playing. PJ Proby would enact the Godfather, Ben Walters would be Ace Face while an expanded Who (Simon Townshend on guitar) re-created the tumult of the album. All of this was shadowed by Townshend's Broadway redesign of Tommy, with the happy ending.

"Umm … I thought it was … I thought it compromised. They should have adapted Broadway to rock'n'roll. For something that was so avant-garde when it first hit the streets, it got turned into this big blancmange."

He dreads being implicated in the gassy "middle-class-classical" of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

"The arty-farty side of it I can't stand. I find it's a lot of people who know more and more about less and less."

This is an unsigned band now, its record contract long since lapsed. Surely they won't only play Quadrophenia?

"No, no, no, we do some of the old songs, but we do them differently."

A 45-minute second set includes an acoustic Won't Get Fooled Again and a synthless Who Are You. "Once you take all that off, you suddenly realize it's basically a blues song."

And the deafness issue: "We were all a bit worried about our hearing. We were brought up in the days when whatever the sound the audience heard, you had to create onstage. We didn't even have monitors. Now sound onstage can be kept to a manageable blare."

If this is making allowances for age, the hiring of drummer Zack Starkey, Ringo's kid, is accompanied by pure revisionism.

Keith Moon's first replacement, Kenny Jones, "was … is now regarded as a "mistake. He never knitted John's busy bass playing with Pete's very busy acoustic playing."

The mythic pronouncements of yore ("Every fool given the license to open his mouth") are replaced by the new relaxation of fiftysomethings. He jokes that if he and Townshend hang on long enough "we might get married."

Of the new bands, he likes Oasis, Supergrass, Foo Fighters. "The only thing I have a problem with is techno. Once it starts sounding like Minnie Mouse … I tried all the drugs and it still sounds crap." If anything, the Who are convinced their audience won't need the drugs to come to the opposite conclusion.

*: What: The Who. Where: Molson Centre. When: Monday. How: Tickets cost $65, $49.50 and $35.50, on sale now. Drivin' and Cryin' opens. For tickets, call 790-1245.

Daltrey in Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens in 1973: the original rock yob.