By: David Schultz

With nothing left to prove, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, the two surviving members of The Who could easily ride out their career resting on their laurels as one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Since their first farewell tour in 1982, The Who have showed impeccable timing in parsing out their reunion performances, mixing benefit sets at Live Aid, Live 8 and The Concert For New York City with tours in which they played Quadrophenia in its entirety or simply scratched people's collective itch to hear "Behind Blue Eyes," "Baba O'Riley" and "Pinball Wizard" one more time.

Shortly after John Entwistle's death on the eve of a world tour, Townshend and Daltrey completed the dates and intimated, as they have many times before, that they were unlikely to tour again in the absence of anything new to perform. Well, more than two decades since the release of It's Hard, their last studio album, there will be a new Who release. With new material to debut, Townshend and Daltrey are taking to the road once more as The Who, enticing fans to listen to the new by offering a few of the old. Their recently commenced North American tour came through New York City last week with a pair of shows at Madison Square Garden. Anyone wondering if The Who have slowed down in their old age, (Daltrey is 62, Townshend 61) can rest easy. Townshend still windmills with a fury and although he seems to have a little more difficulty keeping it under control, Daltrey continues to be a microphone-swinging fiend.

Even though Keith Moon and John Entwistle have passed away, Townshend and Daltrey touring as The Who doesn't ring false. Standing well out in front of a backing band consisting of Beatle descendant Zak Starkey, bassist Pino Palladino and Pete's brother Simon, Townshend and Daltrey churned out the songs upon which The Who's indomitable reputation has been built. Even though all of the jokes about The Who hoping to die before they got old have been told, it's fortunate that they never heeded their own advice. The two are a bit older, Townshend occasionally put on a set of headphones and Daltrey doesn't belt out the songs exactly like he used to, but no less entertaining. With the exception of Quadrophenia, The Who reached back into their estimable catalogue, hitting every major period: they covered their early days with "I Can't Explain," "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and "My Generation," featuring Palladino getting his one moment to step forward; the conceptual era seventies with an extended encore of selections from Tommy and with "You Better, You Bet" and "Eminence Front" they hit their post-Moon period. Even though they have always had a predilection for a good synthesizer break, The Who never had a keyboard player as an official member of the band. Though entertaining, the prominence of the keyboard riffs on late-era songs like "Eminence Front" and "Who Are You," played this night by John "Rabbit" Bundrick, brought the reflective thought that The Who fortunately said farewell before the seemingly inevitable creation of a mid-to-late eighties synthesizer heavy "masterpiece" that would have hung on The Who's neck like an albatross.

Townshend and Daltrey's The Endless Wire, the first Who album in more than two decades comes out next month. While it's definitely refreshing that a classic rock dinosaur is offering more than high-priced nostalgia, peppering the show with new material does remove the most dependable component of any Who concert: familiarity. Far from sub par, the best way to describe Townshend and Daltrey's new Who material is that, unlike the rest of the show, the audience hasn't had three to four decades to absorb them into their interior rock circuitry. Even without Entwhistle or Moon, The Endless Wire material retains its unmistakable Who sound: "Black Widow Eyes" and "Mike Post Theme" have Townshend's distinctive guitar and Daltrey's trademarked howl and the mini-opera "Wire And Glass" recalls previous mini-suites like "A Quick One." Rather than soften the marketplace by playing unfamiliar tunes for an audience near guaranteed to buy the album anyway, a better idea would have been to tour after the album's release, building anticipation for their live performance of new material.

As opposed to their past tours, The Who aren't releasing the crowd onto the streets with a final Townshend guitar blitz. After completing "Listening To You," the backing band left the stage, Townshend retrieved an acoustic guitar, Daltrey picked up a coffee mug and the two closed the show with a new song, the sedate yet charming "Tea And Theater." The new boss may still be the old boss: they just work a little differently these days.

Labels: Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, The Who