Security was abundant, fans orderly as they poured into the St. Paul Civic Center to see the Who.

More than 16,000 fans responded to the classic sounds of the Who in St. Paul last Friday night.

Seeing the Who live in concert last Friday at the St. Paul Civic Center was somewhat like touring the Louvre in Paris. After years of experiencing the Who’s artistry vicariously, there they were, live and on stage, demonstrating the vigor and creativity that got them into rock’s pantheon.

It was the second of two sold-out shows at the Civic Center, both playing to about 16,000 ecstatic fans who weren’t thinking about the tragedy last November in Cincinnati, or the fact that these concerts were being closely scrutinized by worried adults and an eager news media.

This was the Who on stage, a band whose name can be mentioned in the same breath with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Just seeing them for the first time would have been enough, but the group returned the $12.50 ticket price in effort and execution alone. As a four-piece band that’s responsible for some of rock and roll’s greatest triumphs, each member has come to stand for something distinctive and unique.

Guitarist-songwriter Pete Townshend is perhaps the most brilliant mind in rock and roll. He’s the only man who’s been totally successful at forging a union between punk rock’s wild nihilism (he wrote rock’s most oft-quoted line, “Hope I die before I get old”) and the show business side of music which must be cultivated to appeal to a mass audience. His songs are commercial and artistic, and he’s never made a false step on that thin tightrope.

Lead vocalist Roger Daltry is the group’s pretty boy, but he’s never been guilty of preening or strutting in place of singing. His role has been to express Townshend’s lyrics accurately and emotionally, and work up a concert crowd with his sheer exhuberance.

Bassist John Entwhistle, “the Ox,” is one of rock and roll’s premiere musicians and genuinely dignified figures. He has written few songs for the Who, but they have been fine songs, and his background singing has always allowed the group to do music that would be beyond the capabilities of most hard rock bands.

Drummer Kenny Jones is a recent replacement for Keith Moon, the late clown, and also the finest, most passionate drummer rock and roll ever produced. Jones is in an unenviable situation, but his credentials, as drummer with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood in the Faces, are certainly in order.

Nitelife

Everyone with an interest in rock and roll recognizes these characterizations. On stage the Who not only live up to them, but surpass them.

Townshend has taken a renewed interest in the music of the streets. It was called “mod” when he began to play in the early ’60s, and “punk” was a mid-’70s distortion of the same thing. He’s cut his hair very short and is now clean shaven for the first time in years. Dressed in black pants and sport coat, he jumped, whirled and danced around the stage like a 19-year-old, playing more notes while standing on less than two feet than any guitarist I’ve ever seen. His energy is astonishing for a man who’s already given so much. At the end of their show Friday, the rest of the band linked arms in a bow, but Townshend couldn’t stop hopping and bouncing on the stage. He looked like he was ready to start all over again.

Daltry’s hair is also extremely short, and his tendency to whip his microphone around by the cord, flip it high in the air and reel it back in hasn’t diminished. He provided the only link to the Who’s instrument-smashing days. At the end of the final encore, he whipped his mike high in the air and slung it into Jones’ bass drum on the final beat.

Entwhistle is short on theatrics, but I watched him play more than any of the other band members, because his fingers are in constant, blurred movement on the neck of his bass. The run he played on the studio version of “My Generation” has been copied and repeated for 15 years, but in St. Paul he filled it with so many extra notes the original seemed inadequate by comparison.

Jones wasn’t particularly conspicuous, the most he can hope for as Moon’s replacement, because Moon’s playing added so much color and character to Townshend’s compositions. I don’t recall missing a Moon drum riff, and I also don’t recall Jones trying to copy him.

They played all their major numbers, including an exciting choice of openers from their past, “Substitute” and “I Can’t Explain.” There were a couple of moments where the difficult harmony singing seemed a bit strained, as on “Who Are You” and “I Can See For Miles,” but Daltry’s lead