Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (above) in 1989. Below, band members Townshend, Keith Moon, Daltrey and John Entwhistle in 1968.

WHO & WHY

17 years after their last Montreal show, 15 years after calling it quits, the Who are back. How come?

MARK LEPAGE Gazette Rock Critic

They did not die, but they did get old, so mortality has worked its ironic tricks on the surviving members of the Who. Life’s compromises have been dealt out and played, and it is an amiable Roger Daltrey who chats from his Sussex home about the Quadrophenia tour coming to the Molson Centre on Monday.

The Who have not played here since 1980, and Daltrey is surprised they were here that recently. “I didn’t think we went back after we were in jail,” he says with the first of the interview’s numerous explosive guffaws.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, officer. The Who had a hotel-room party in Montreal in 1973. “It was one of those rooms with two beds and a television … but it ended up with nothing,” although it comes out as nuff-ing.

Several retirements later, the Who no longer strike fear in the hearts of night managers and hoteliers. One presumes they are perfect gentlemen, befitting their status (wealthy rock stars) and age (your mum or dad … definitely your dad). The announcement of their tour instead tolled the bell of terror, or regret in those fans who would rather leave history alone. The Who: Why? Why another version of My Regeneration?

In 1997, the band is staging a “theatrical” rendering of the Mod rock opera, complete with actors and five-piece horn section. Somebody always dies in opera, but in this case a legend is at knifepoint.

Crucial questions are raised. Can this be a dignified enterprise, and does dignity matter? Are a fan’s memories more valuable than a musician’s raison d’être? Should the Who be waxed for the museum because their peak stage performances (the bristling, brawny Live at Leeds album, ’70) demolished the mid-’60s standards of ensemble-rock playing?