BY SUE WHITE

News Staff Writer

PONTIAC — Roger Daltrey spun his microphone, Pete Townshend windmilled and a full Silverdome took it all in with obvious delight.

Who, you might ask? Right. By now, everyone’s heard of the famed reunion tour of the Who, organized to churn up a little revenue. Townshend’s hearing isn’t what it used to be, we were told, so he would take things a little easy this time out, passing on the juicier leads to a back-up guitarist.

In fact, it was said, all the guys were getting a little long in the tooth, so a full complement of back-up musicians would share the stage.

Gads, we could hardly wait — with promises like this, what pleasures lay in store? Popping dentures, maybe?

Backstage Tuesday night, the horn section warmed up for the night’s performance while Daltrey strolled around the truck deck.

John Entwistle joined him — the original bass player sported a full head of gray, but the spirit was still there.

Things were getting much more interesting.

The support band raced onstage and began the overture to “Tommy.” Kids who weren’t even born in the rock musical’s heyday went wild.

Another roar sounded when the trio of back-up singers worked their way into position, and then the roof blew — the Who, “as we impudently call ourselves,” Townshend wryly commented, was back in action.

Daltrey’s clear strong vocals pierced through the charged arena in the resonant “1921,” the passion and power intact. Again and again, he gave us goosebumps — “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Pinball Wizard” and especially in the “See me, feel me, touch me” chorus from the rock opera “Tommy.”

Entwistle soloed with “Trick of the Light” and “Boris the Spider,” and then stepped back into the shadows, a silent presence that paled in comparison to the band’s more aggressive veterans.

Townshend carried his end without reservation, jumping to each number feet first and stripping his knuckles bare before finally abandoning the stage.

In a nod to his solo success, Townshend stormed the stage with “Face the Face,” a spirited exchange with one of the female back-up singers. It was the guitarist at his wildest, though he never really lost steam for the entire three-hour affair.

Three hours. We haven’t seen stamina like this since the glory days of these same bands in the late 1970s. Trained as we are now to the shorter productions, it was with a satisfied but bittersweet feeling that we watched the band wind down its set after almost two hours onstage.

But the surprise was on us — after a 15-minute intermission, the Who would return, it was announced. What could it possibly add, we foolishly wondered. Plenty, we found out, and each one a classic.

“Magic Bus,” “Baba O’Reilly,” “My Generation,” each teased the crowd into a fervor with a few opening chords and then blasted it with a sledgehammer performance.

Music was served up with an innovative light display — strobes, tight beams and pulsing color washes — and an artsy video approach on huge screens hung on either side of the stage.

But the mood could change just as quickly from an obscene production to a simple union of acoustic guitars, pure and folk-like and a visible rebuttal to the rumors of animosity between Daltrey and Townshend.

And still the magic didn’t end. Daltrey pulled out “Love Reign O’er Me,” another passionate display of pure vocal power. The trio lit into “Sister Disco” — and the last vestiges of “aged rockers” fell away.

By “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” the capacity audience was offering its own back-up, singing along with amazing accuracy. Softly sung but multiplied by thousands of voices, the songs eerily echoed through the arena, creating a mood that few can achieve in a cavern like the Silverdome.

True, the horn section was a distraction, though with so many numbers coming from the orchestrates accompanied “Tommy,” we could understand its necessity. More often than not, though, it was an intrusion, rudely jarring us out of our reverie.

Another favorite, “You Better You Bet,” suffered some kind of low-end overload, though it could have been a sign of the songwriting times rather than any current-day problem. And then we missed “The Kids Are Alright” altogether, strange since the concert T-shirts all proclaimed this the Kids are Alright tour.

By the time the band hit its three-song encore, we had long forgotten the glitches. A bluesy cover of Jimi Hendrix’ “Hey Joe,” a Townshend/Daltrey duo of Townshend’s “Dig” and a sizzling “Summertime Blues” proved a perfect close. Nearly midnight, it was time to go home.

But we won’t get fooled again — we know Who you are and no one there will forget for a long time.