First Roger Daltrey ran on, in black leather jacket and jeans.

Then came Pete Townshend, also in jeans and jacket, John Entwistle, natty in striped jacket, and then Kenny Jones.

And that was that.

The Who had arrived on stage at Maple Leaf Gardens last night as casually as a local band playing at the neighborhood pub. It was just that straight and to-the-point.

Now, to people unaccustomed to big league rock bands, this may seem to be the only reasonable approach to take. And, of course, it is. Unfortunately, most of these rock bands have collective egos the size of Manitoba and wish to appear on stage as if just descending from the heavens.

The Who's ego is in better shape than most.

Most human band

Of all the major '60s bands, this is the most human — at least, it understands best the human element of a rock concert. Last night wasn't the band at its absolute best — it was better than one show I saw in New York last fall, but not as rounded-out as one recently caught in Denver — but it was still one of the classiest concerts of recent years at the Gardens.

Sold out for weeks, it was a night where the blood and sweat behind the music could be heard as easily as the notes; a night when the music got into the bones, where it could be felt.

Before it started, discouragingly enough with the opening act, Blackfoot, everything seemed strangely subdued, for a rock show at least.

Backstage, singer Daltrey estimated that last night's — and tonight's show — represented the fifth time the band has been at the Gardens, since the mid-'60s when it opened a North American tour for Herman's Hermits.

Outside, scalpers scalped up to $60 a pair for good seats, the police frisked and searched for booze or drugs, and, for the most part, all of this was accepted in good grace. Was everyone trying to ignore the memory of the Cincinnati concert last December when 11 fans were killed trying to get to a Who concert? It seemed so. Although the police seemed to be more in evidence last night, the staff sergeant on hand insisted, tersely, that the staff of 40 off-duty police was "the same as it is for any rock concert."

In fact, security was everywhere and it only lapsed once. But that was enough. The band had just finished the overture to Tommy, with Townshend flailing out one final majestic chord, when a couple of fans rushed the stage. The guards, though, were elsewhere and suddenly, hundreds of fans rushed the stage. Some clambered up near the band's monitors and on occasion Daltrey would pass out paper cups of water to them.

The Gardens was stifling hot and this heat plus the crush of bodies and the band's use of a single red spotlight to cast an atmospheric glow over everything formed a picture of what the night was all about.

There is no Who look; no fashion style, no latter-day Mod mode. Nor is there really any Who mythology that lives on its own. In truth, Who albums (released infrequently to date) aren't played all that much on rock radio these days. And two members — Entwistle, Jones and semi-regular, keyboard player John Bundrick — are all but anonymous. Quite simply, The Who is a band that must be seen and heard live. It only truly becomes what it is, in concert.

On occasion, though, the band seemed to skim over its material, particularly at the beginning, until it found something interesting to do with Entwistle's blistering version of My Wife.

First time

For the most part, it seemed as if you were hearing new work for the first time. They paired two older pieces, My Generation followed directly by I Can See For Miles. The pacing for both was slightly easier going than in the original, but the effect added some new power. See Me, Feel Me, from Tommy, stuck closely to the original, but another piece, Pinball Wizard, took on an entirely new dimension, one created in part by new drummer Kenny Jones. If Jones can't be as deliberately anarchistic as his predecessor, the late Keith Moon, he can add a measure of finesse that broadens out the band's music. Jones has all the power needed, although unlike Moon, who focused it into one frontal attack, Jones distributes it evenly. His transition into the band seemed smooth and complete. But then again, this band survives making the difficult seem simple.

Lead singer Roger Daltrey loops his microphone cord in the air in last night's rock show

No hassles: Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey kept fans happy at sold-out show in the Gardens last night. Security was tight and there were no incidents recalling calamity in Cincinnati last December when 11 fans were killed trying to get into concert.