“I Can’t Explain” was the show-opener Sunday at the Wells Fargo Center for the nostalgic The Who Hits 50! tour. The band will repeat the show at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City on Friday and again at the Wells Fargo on Nov. 4.

Later in 1965, in “My Generation,” whose rumbling bass (now played by Pino Palladino, in place of John Entwistle, who died in 2002) and talking drums (Zak Starkey, instead of Keith Moon, who OD’d in 1976) still make you get up out of your chair, Townshend wrote the “I hope I die before I get old” line that would follow him around for decades.

Early on in the two-hour show, which found Roger Daltrey, 71, in strong enough voice, Townshend, 69, spoke to the way his songs have aged along with the audience that’s remained loyal to the band.

“This song has changed,” he said before “The Kids Are Alright.” “When I wrote it, it was about us. And then it started to be about our kids, and our grandchildren, and other people’s grandchildren.”

The core four were backed up by four other musicians, including Pete’s brother Simon on guitar and multi-instrumentalist music director Frank Simes, who played banjo on “Squeeze Box.” The set list included a number of mid-’60s Mod singles early (“The Seeker,” “I Can See for Miles”) and closed with the double-shot finale from 1971’s Who’s Next of “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” in which, yes, Daltrey’s final bellow of “Yeah!” after one of the most iconic instrumental breaks in classic rock was sufficiently climactic.

In its middle stretches, the set dragged a bit. With only two songs represented — “I’m One,” sung by Townshend on acoustic guitar, and “Love Reign O’er Me” — the 1973 masterpiece Quadrophenia (an album the band played in full on its 2012 stop here) was given short shrift.

I was happy to hear, lurching along episodically, like a charmingly amateurish grade-school play, the 1966 mini-rock-opera A Quick One, While He’s Away, which was the bridge to the full-blown Tommy. The Tommy medley itself, however, was pretty darn majestic, from “Amazing Journey” and “Sparks,” one of several impressive Townshend guitar showcases, to the still-transcendent communal experience of “See Me, Feel Me.”

The elephant in the room at any Who concert is the issue of the songs deeply cherished by fans that Townshend has sold to innumerable TV shows and commercials. He addressed it in impromptu comments before “Eminence Front,” joking that he had allowed use only for positive “ecological” causes (lots of car commercials, ha ha) and told people who didn’t like it what they could do.

But then, ever the self-contradictory, complicated soul, he acknowledged his hypocrisy, talking about how much he loved Lead Belly and Jimmy Reed when he was “young and screwed up looking for something to hang on to.” And if those folk and blues artists had sold their songs, “I wouldn’t have liked it, either. So I understand.”

Newly inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Joan Jett opened the show with her band the Blackhearts. Before exiting with a banner behind her that identified her as Philadelphia-born — she came into the world at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood and lived in Upper Darby before spending most of her childhood in Rockville, Md. — she made the most of her 38 minutes.

The femme-rock pioneer — in all black from head to toe — went back to her beginnings with the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb,” and included a number of songs that dealt with issues of sex and identity from her most recent, appropriately titled album, Unvarnished. She also did her trademark versions of songs by Bruce Springsteen (“Light of Day”) and Tommy James & the Shondells (“Crimson & Clover”), and got the sold-out audience, which arrived early to see her hit the stage at 7:30 p.m., up on its feet with her own dependably rousing “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.”