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CONCERT REVIEW

Rock Like It Oughtt Be

The Who’s ‘Quadrophenia’ gets a muscular & powerful performance that proves it’s not kid stuff

By JIM FARBER

Daily News Staff Writer

LOTS OF THINGS COULD’VE gone wrong with the opening-night revival of the Who’s other rock opera, “Quadrophenia.” Roger Daltrey’s famously ragged live voice could’ve flagged. The army of slick musicians hired to flesh out the sound could’ve cost the music some soul. And the work itself might’ve collapsed under the weight of all the nostalgia surrounding it.

But nothing remotely like that happened.

Instead, Tuesday’s remounting of this 1973 classic at The Garden which overtakes the hall for a sold-out show tonight, then three more on July 20-22 — turned out to be one of the most electrifying performances this critic has experienced, a spectacular take on one of rock’s most virile works.

No Who work is more deserving of a comeback than “Quadrophenia.” For one thing, it has been underexposed, having been performed from start to finish just once since ’73 (at last month’s Prince’s Trust benefit show in London). “Quad” also invites reappraisal by taking nostalgia as its central theme. And since the work’s perspective was never young, it’s ideal for older folks to return to.

Composed by Pete Townshend at age 28, the album represented the artist’s first attempt to analyze his youth from a more mature perspective — looking back in ardor at his initiation into pop culture at age 19 via the Mod revolution of 1964-65.

To help evoke that heady period, the production packed three giant video screens with images of Mod totems — cool parkas, zippy scooters, speedy amphetamines — all images lifted directly from the 1979 movie version of the “opera.” The film’s star, Phil Daniels, also showed up to offer bits of indecipherable cockney “narration.”

Of course, plot never figured heavily in “Quadrophenia.” Thankfully, Daniels’ pithy comments didn’t halt the music’s momentum.

And what momentum. On album, “Quad” begins on a high note and keeps spiraling upwards. Live, even this pieced-together band, led by musicians in their 50s, re-created enough of the original’s muscularity and charge to send chills up the spine.

Daltrey, bronzed and buff at 52, belted the grand majority of the gutsiest notes. And while guest drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo) couldn’t hope to match the voracious tub-work of the late Keith Moon, his double bass drums came as close as possible.

[Photo: Pete Townshend playing guitar]

Townshend, 51, offered none of his valiant windmill power chords (confining his playing to acoustic guitars). But the hired axemen mimicked him admirably. Bassist John Entwistle did his part, offering a spidery solo on “5:15.”

Some guest singers fleshed out the production. Billy Idol as Ace the Face idealized the character’s studied cool and hollow core. (He’s a Mod icon by day, humiliated bellow by night.) Gary Glitter looked more like Divine than “the punk,” but he howled out his part with campy panache.

To make the two-hour evening even more special, Townshend and Daltrey offered four intense acoustic encores — “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Magic Bus” and, from the “Odds & Sods” collection, “Naked Eye.”

Yet, the evening’s triumph lay in the endurance of the band’s myth and in the newfound power of “Quadrophenia.” After seven years apart, it was simply great to see the surviving remnants of the band reunite. Their advanced ages only deepened the resonance of the work. Here, “Quadrophenia” wound up saluting more than just the lost, anxious days of youth. It addressed the timeless desire to belong, to feel part of something larger. With that much meaning behind it, “Quadrophenia” soared beyond this single great performance to reassert itself as one of rock’s sacred works.

[Photo caption] JOHN ROCA DAILY NEWS POWER DUO: Roger Daltrey (above) and Pete Townshend (left) in rare performance of “Quadrophenia” at Madison Square Garden