UNIVERSAL CITY — “We’re all wasted!”

The roar from the Universal Amphitheatre audience was more reflex than rebellion but it left no doubt that the Who can still rock ’n’ roll after 25 years.

Lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend and bass player John Entwistle — all in their mid-40s — performed their 20-year-old rock opera “Tommy,” a second set and two encores with only a few signs of age and the effects of a 7-year retirement.

Daltrey swung his microphone around like a lasso, and Townshend showed he could still hop about.

But Townshend wore a bandage on his hand to prevent harm from his famous windmill slashes and — in a concession to his damaged hearing — played an acoustic instrument while tour guitarist Steve Bolton handled most electric chores. Townshend also set his instruments down, rather than demolish them as he used to do.

Going strong in second half

Daltrey, in the first half of the show, was occasionally short on vocal power, but by the second half was going strong.

The audience for the benefit concert, which reportedly commanded ticket prices up to $1,000, showed a lot more age and wealth than usually found at a rock concert.

“It’s a very heavy (expensive) ticket,” explained concertgoer Timothy Leary, the former ’60s LSD advocate. “These are ’60s kids, now they’re in their 30s.”

There were plenty of signs of age among the Who’s following: plenty of gray or bald spots; an apparently embarrassed wife pulling her dancing husband down into his seat; a worried father rushing to a phone to check up on a child left at home; the crowd’s tendency to stay off its feet.

Advice to audience

“Enjoy yourselves,” Daltrey finally said. “Seats are made for standing on.”

The Who formed in London in 1964 and was enormously popular through the 1970s with such hits as “My Generation,” “Magic Bus,” “I Can See for Miles,” “Baba O’Riley” and the “Tommy” tunes “Pinball Wizard,” “I’m Free” and “See Me, Feel Me.”

Leary said he could remember seeing the Who when their backstage perquisites were “a bucket of beer and a bottle of scotch.” Now, he added, “there’s 95 studio limousines at the door.”

The Who’s original drummer, Keith Moon, died in 1978. The band continued on until calling it quits in 1982.

The 25-city reunion tour began in June in Glen Falls, N.Y., and ends Sept. 3 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

Elton John helps out

“Tommy,” a slightly fuzzy story of a “deaf, dumb and blind kid” who becomes a fantastic pinball player, was performed with the help of Elton John, reprising his 1975 movie role as the Pinball Wizard, Patti LaBelle as the Acid Queen, Phil Collins as Uncle Ernie, Steve Winwood as the Hawker and Billy Idol as Cousin Kevin.

Proceeds benefited a number of children’s programs.

The band avoided a nostalgic cast to the show but there was a moment of sentimentality. In introducing tour drummer Simon Phillips, Townshend said he felt Moon’s presence and that the band long ago “gave up trying to replace him.”

The band may look different, Townshend told the crowd, but “we have the unmitigated cheek, the unprecedented gall to call it — the Who!”