John Entwhistle, Roger Daltrey and Peter Townshend of The Who. (Globe Photo by Jack Connolly)

Peter Townshend stopped bounding in place Monday night long enough to confide to the 15,500 at The Who concert at Boston Garden: "If you had seen us 10 hours ago, you would have thought this gig (bleep) impossible."

What he was referring to in rudimentary Anglo-Saxon was, of course, his group's seven-hour residency in the Whoosegow Monday as guests of the Montreal City Jail. The confinement of The Who (Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwhistle and Keith Moon) plus 32 assorted friends and neighbors of the British rock group came about as the consequence of what Peter admitted was a cognac-soaked rash of destruction visited upon Montreal's Hotel Bonaventura Sunday night after a concert in The Forum.

The gendarmerie had bagged the rich rockers after a color TV, assorted windows and other hotel fixtures had been damaged. The Who and friends were released at 1 Monday afternoon and, it appears, the famous foursome has ceased rooting for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. Their bondage, however brief, merely added to a growing catalogue of nostalgia.

"Bleep those bleeping bleeps!" was yet another orchid of remembrance for Montreal's finest, this time courtesy of Roger Daltrey. It is unclear whether the group's wrath was caused by being locked up or frustration at being restrained from demolishing the entire hotel. For a while, during the late afternoon on Monday, apprehension was expressed lest The Who bash at the Garden evolve into late-late show similar to the Rolling Stones concert of a couple of summers ago. They, too, had been scooped, this time by the Warwick, R.I., authorities for assault on a cameraman.

As for the concert, it was hardly an aesthetic tour de force, although you could not determine it by the thundering salvos of applause. As a happening, it was a ten-strike. How can anybody seriously attempt to equate

ERNIE SANTOSUOSSO

noble Boston Garden with Symphony Hall as a concert site? Athletically, the show was as successful as the Celtics, the Bruins or the Whalers because few can leap as high and as often as Townshend; and Daltrey must have jogged 20 leagues back and forth over the stage.

In totality, it was a two-hour, 18-selection show, preceded by a new group, Lynyrd Skynyrd, celebrated chiefly for the absence of vowels in its name. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" was the lone non-Who creation. The book featured the oldies, "My Wife" and "My Generation" and a rundown of The Who's new MCA album, "Quadrophenia." When the special four-channel setup was operative, the effect was numbing, though intriguing, for I chose to stand within six feet of the right rear speaker. The taped sounds of the pounding surf on "I Am the Sea" were so realistic I wished I had brought my suit.

Again, when the sounds of the rush-hour crowd rumbled from the rear speakers on "5:15," I felt nearly constrained to reach for the subway token. These quadrophonic effects substantially enhanced the drama of the performance, "Sea and Sand" and, especially, the climactically exploding "Love Reign O'er Me" delivered majestically. Following "Quadrophenia," "Tommy" replaced Jimmy with replays of "Pinball Wizard" and "See Me, Feel Me." Then The Who rapidly exited, trailing their "bleeps" into a raw December night.