Pete Townshend gamely vies to build on, not just lean on, Who’s legacy

By Joel Selvin

Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

With half the original members dead and a two-hour show based substantially on the band’s first new album in 24 years, the Who can be forgiven for not getting the stage up on casters and moving it around the floor Wednesday at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, as the Rolling Stones did Monday in Oakland.

But by the time the group brought the performance to a close with a still-rousing “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and a 20-minute “Tommy” medley encore, the capacity crowd was on its feet yelling for more. Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and company responded with “Tea and Theatre,” a quiet little etude from the new album.

With high-tech giant widescreen video projection behind the band, the hired hands stationed at the back on risers and a keyboard player hidden behind amplifiers, the surviving members of the British rock landmark, ageless vocalist Daltrey and gutsy guitarist Townshend held down center stage by themselves: Who II.

The Who, at its best, was always a delicate mix of combustible elements. Even before drummer Keith Moon died in 1978, the original quartet could never count on all of these volatile parts running in sync. Anyone who attended the band’s 1973 performance at the Cow Palace — where Moon passed out twice and the band finished the set with a volunteer drummer who climbed out of the crowd — knows that.

But at its best, none was ever better. Anyone who was at the 1969 Fillmore West performance of “Tommy” or the 1971 San Francisco Civic Auditorium show after “Who’s Next” knows that.

More than four years after the death of bassist John Entwistle on the eve of a U.S. tour, the Who return with “Endless Wire,” a new record that is dense and oblique. Although they sprinkled Who concert staples through the show, the program concentrated on material from the new album that kept the audience in their seats.

The songs from “Endless Wire” were so listless and obscure they made something like “You Better You Bet” sound like a classic. Since when was “Eminence Front” a towering peak in the Who repertoire?

Drummer Zak Starkey made it possible at all. The son of Ringo Starr was hand-trained by Moon, who gave young Starkey a replica of his own drum kit for the kid’s first set. Starkey,