Rousing haven’t been a part of the Who’s repertoire for a decade. But the history of the band is rife with fist fights, wrecked hotel rooms and last year’s drug-related death of drummer Keith Moon.

In the beginning were the Detours, a scroungy London pub band that included bass player John Entwistle and singer Roger Daltrey. In 1963, Entwistle persuaded art student and rookie guitarist Peter Townshend to join. Drummer Keith Moon won a job when he ended his audition by maniacally destroying the band’s 20-year-old drum set.

After a brief turn as the High Numbers, the band was rechristened the Who. With mop-top hairdos, ruffled shirts and pop art touches like suits emblazoned with Union Jacks, they were determinedly Mod in the era of warfare between the dandified Mods and leather-jacketed Rockers.

Townshend became notorious for his leaps, splits and windmilling attacks on his guitar strings — before he took to breaking the instruments. Moon, perhaps the most energetic drummer in rock history, bashed at his drum set, breaking sticks and sending cymbals flying. The lithe, blond Daltrey stalked and pranced the stage, twirling his microphone by its cord. The emotionless, near-catatonia of Entwistle seemed a calculated contrast to the general frenzy.

But unlike latter-day flash-and-thunder bands like Kiss, there was musical taler in the Who’s madness. Townshend’s simple chord-heavy melodies and wry lyrics distin-

guished the band from the blues-based sounds of the more famous Beatles and Rolling Stones.

In 1965, the Who finally crossed the ocean with “I Can’t Explain,” a kinetic single that cracked American radio. But it was their 1965 “My Generation” album that established them as part of the “British invasion” of American pop. Songs defending the outrageous Mods — “The Kids Are Alright” and the title tune (“People try to put us down/Just because we get around. Things they do look awful cold/Hope I die before I get old …”) — became youth anthems on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Who were here, and they lasted longer than any of their fellow invaders, save the Rolling Stones.

By the Who’s first U.S. tour in 1967, Townshend had begun moving away from sound and fury. The band’s next albums were quieter, even lyrical. But it wasn’t until 1969 and the album “Tommy” that the Who became a supergroup. Influenced by Townshend’s growing interest in Eastern philosophy, “Tommy” was a “deaf, dumb and blind kid,” conceived in adultery, whose distillation of sensory inputs into a musical “vioration” makes him first a holy hero, and finally a disillusioned, rejected guru.

Simultaneously cosmic and sardonic, the double album featured a dozen first-rate songs, among them “Pinball Wizard,” “Christmas” and “I’m Free.”

The record was a smash, and led to the band performing the entire “rock opera” at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House — the first rock band ever to appear on that hallowed

stage. In 1975, the controversial Ken Russell directed the antic, excessive movie version. In all its recorded forms, “Tommy” wound up selling more than 12 million records.

“Tommy” established the Who’s energetic rock style, with Townshend becoming one of the genre’s most ambitious composers. Yet audiences wouldn’t let them forget their beginnings, calling for guitar-smashing encores. Townshend occasionally responded with anger.

Having discovered the power and publicity possibilities of tribal rock gatherings with a show-stopping appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it was natural for them to follow “Tommy” with an appearance at Woodstock in 1969, where they stole some of the thunder from those who went to the mass festival to forge a political counterculture.

Cut sermon short

When Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman clambered up on stage to preach the Gospel of Woodstock Nation; Townshend conked him on the head with his guitar, and the show went on. “I ‘ated it,” Townshend said later. “We gave one of the worst shows we’ve ever given,” Daltrey agreed.

The release of “Who’s Next” in 1971 saw the band changing. Now their energy was tempered with the disillusioned criticism of a “teenage wasteland” contained in the song “Baba O’Riley,” and they continued to put distance between themselves and the movements of the 1960s. Their disillusionment was summed up by one of their best-known songs — “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which closed out the “Who’s Next” album.

During the 1970s, all four musicians recorded solo albums, none of which matched their group effort. Roger Daltrey became an actor in the 1975 film version of “Tommy,” which he followed with “Lisztomania.”

But the Who weren’t finished with rock operas. In 1973, they recorded “Quadrophenia,” which has just been released as a movie. The film, in which the band’s members do not appear, will open in Philadelphia before Christmas. It is Townshend’s updating of the familiar Mods versus Rockers theme: Mod hero Jimmy Cooper experiences the power of belonging to a cultural movement, but eventually declares his individuality.

Increasingly, the band that once sang about dying before getting old was now struggling to answer the question, “Is There Life After 30?” After “Odds and Sods,” a 1974 greatest-hits sequel to “Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy” (1971), they explored the theme on “The Who By Numbers” (1975).

Survived crisis

The Who survived this midlife crisis. In 1975, when the Who billed itself as “the world’s greatest rock and roll band” for its English tour, the claim was, if debatable, certainly not laughable.

Yet, despite its success, the band continued to drift apart. Families, professional projects, personal disputes (Townshend versus Daltrey, Moon versus the Earth) encouraged separatism. But the lure of collective creation and big money brought them back together in 1978 to record “Who Are You.” Success followed. “We’re all very pleased,” Moon said. “We just learned how to be the Who again.”

The cover of “Who Are You” featured drummer Keith Moon seated in a chair bearing the inscription “Not to be taken away.” In September 1978, Moon, then 31, attended Paul McCartney’s annual London commemoration of the late Buddy Holly’s birthday. After announcing his engagement to a young Swedish model, Moon returned to his apartment and took what the coroner later described as a “vast overdose” of pills. The death was deemed accidental.

The band could have been shattered by Moon’s death. Instead, it rallied. A new drummer, Kenney Jones (formerly with the Faces), was recruited, and during 1979 fans and critics found the band freer and more effective than they’d been in years.

“Everybody, especially Townshend, puts them down as old men,” the Jefferson Starship’s Paul Kantner commented. “Along with Led Zeppelin, they’re the heavy-metal beginners, the wonders everybody tries to imitate but nobody has come close to touching.”