Who Mines Former Magic

Doug Pullen The Flint Journal

AUBURN HILLS — "If we sound a bit unrehearsed, it's because we are," Who singer Roger Daltrey apologized. "We wanted to discover these songs back again onstage, rather than over-rehearse them. So you make mistakes. Sometimes with mistakes comes magic. Sometimes not."

Sometimes you get a drastically revised "Magic Bus," the performance of which at The Palace Tuesday night was indicative of what The Who, circa 2000, are capable in their 50s. Once a trippy, percussive piece of rock theater about frustration and desire, the modern Who transformed the 1968 classic into a funked up, ad-libbed guitar blowout that celebrated the basic human need for fulfillment. "We all need it," declared Daltrey during the mid-song bartering session he conducts with guitarist Pete Townshend.

Meet the new Who, not quite the same as the old Who.

Nearly 22 years after the death of drummer Keith Moon, a departure that many Who fans recognize as the group's creative demise, the surviving members of the archetypal British rock band are back to reclaim their legacy. The Who tried to make a go of it after Moon's death, but replacement Kenny Jones wasn't up to par and the Moonless Who usually embarassed themselves.

There was that miserable farewell tour in 1982, and the deplorable 25th anniversary tour in 1989 in which an expanded Who trundled out the hits like museum pieces while the recalcitrant Townshend, claiming tinnitus, sapped the show of any real fire by hiding behind an acoustic guitar most of the night.

The '90s found Townshend, who tried so hard to distance himself from the band, interpreting its legacy in different ways. He took the rock opera "Tommy" to Broadway (winning Tony Awards in the process), then reconvened the expanded Who to resurrect their underappreciated 1973 conceptual opus, "Quadrophenia."

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By the time that tour came around the second time in the summer of 1997, Townshend was much more at ease being the Who's visionary again. In Keith Moon disciple Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr's son, the band found a drummer with the right kind of explosiveness to fill the considerable void Moon left behind.

Fast forward to 1999, when Townshend, Daltrey and bassist John Entwistle regrouped as a quintet, with Starkey and longtime keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick, for a series of charity shows that resulted in the recent live album, "The Blues to the Bush/1999." Now the Who is back with a mission.

They're playing the hits – like a truncated "Pinball Wizard," and an expansive, improvised "My Generation" – and a few misses, including the transitional late '60s cast off "I Don't Know Myself" and "Let's See Action," a clumsy call to arms held over from Townshend's fabled (and until recently unreleased) "Lighthouse" project.

They reworked some songs, turning the breezy "The Kids Are Alright" into a light, melodic, semi-acoustic celebration of youth, complete with microphone-twirling Daltrey strumming an acoustic guitar. Others, like an explosive "Won't Get Fooled Again" and the quietly pretty "Getting in Tune," were left to stand on their already considerable merits.

The band was in good spirits throughout the 2-hour, 15-minute, 19-song performance, joking, laughing, smiling (Townshend pointed a digital camera on the crowd several times) and reminiscing about Detroit.

Townshend is the key to this and any Who undertakings, and he was in a jovial mood Tuesday. His guitar playing was all business, but like the Townshend of old, the one who didn't shun the great work he created, Townshend attacked material as old as "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and "The Real Me" with an improvisational flair suggesting he hasn't found every nook and cranny in these songs just yet.

There were mistakes Tuesday night to be sure, but there was magic, too. With any luck, that magic will translate into a new studio album and the rebirth of a band that gave so much to the rock 'n' roll its members loved. Let's hope they don't die before they get old. ■