Music Review

EAST RUTHERFORD — The kids were out in numbers for the Who last night. Milling around Giants Stadium you could spot recent Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead T-shirts, even a Live Aid shirt. All the big-time stadium tours seemed to have constituents here.

And this was a big-time stadium event to match any of them: The Who, one of rock's greatest bands, reuniting for the first time in seven years to celebrate its 25th anniversary, with three of four original members and a dozen backup musicians.

What usually happens in these kinds of events is a big-time classic rock band plays all the big-time hits you've been hearing on the radio for the past couple decades, the band does a perfectly competent job of it, and everyone goes home happy.

There's no reason to believe they didn't go home happy last night, or that they won't after the Who's remaining shows here tonight, Sunday and Monday. In the 3½-hour show, the band played 41 songs — more than any band in recent memory has jammed into a concert — including a big chunk of a rock opera, hits, obscurities, solo songs and covers.

But there was little compelling about any of it. Some songs — "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," among them — have been so overplayed that it's hard to stifle a yawn when they come on the radio or get played in concert. And with the 15-piece band doing virtual note-for-note interpretations of the original recordings, they came off more like La Bamba's Big Band playing rock 'n' roll hits than like rock legends strutting their best stuff.

And the three members of the band — Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle — interacted so rarely it was almost like watching three solo musicians sharing a stage. Each took the spotlight for long periods, and only a couple tunes came across as bona fide band pieces. It was easy to believe the old stories about friction in this band.

The best moments of the show came when the Who tried something radically different, like when the ex-young-punks tried to be warm, for example. Townshend, who played acoustic guitar most of the night because of a hearing disorder but still did windmills with his right arm, led a beautiful acoustic guitar and saxophone rendition of the English Beat's "Save it for Later," and he and Daltrey sang together on the Who obscurity, "Mary Anne With the Shaky Hands."

There were too few of those moments, and too many cliches. The band members didn't smash all their instruments like they used to, but Daltrey did a job on a tambourine early on, for no apparent reason.