Looking back at a lifetime of Who shows

A month after 9/11, superstars gathered for the Concert for New York at Madison Square Garden. David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, and Eric Clapton performed at the stirring event, but the act that stole the show was the Who. The band played "Won't Get Fooled Again," and the crowd rose to its feet with one steady, deafening roar.

"We questioned whether or not we should do that song, but then we said, 'Let's show them what the Who is all about,' " singer Roger Daltrey later told this writer. "The whole night meant a lot to me personally. I was born during World War II when London was being bombed."

The night was further proof that every Who appearance has moments that touch listeners, no matter who they are. The Who has done that for me since I first saw them at Boston Garden in 1979. No, I didn't see them at the Boston Tea Party club in the '60s. Nor did I catch the Garden show in 1975 when drummer Keith Moon famously passed out drunk. ("Mr. Moon has the flu," a doctor said, tongue in cheek, to another reporter as he emerged from Moon's dressing room.) But I've caught just about every local Who show since, as well as concerts in New York, including the band's first US show with Moon's replacement, Kenney Jones, at Madison Square Garden, and the group's first American date in seven years at the Glens Falls Civic Center in 1989.

I'm hooked.

From Daltrey's stentorian bellow to Pete Townshend's slashing, windmill motions on guitar, I can't get enough. I love the band's new album, "Endless Wire" (its first studio disc in 24 years), and eagerly await its show at the new Garden tomorrow night. Although Daltrey told me a few years ago "We're at the pinnacle of our decline," the evidence is to the contrary. The band still rocks with conviction.

And to say it rocks loudly is an understatement. As Townshend once said, "I don't know if rock 'n' roll would have survived heckling without being loud. One way of dealing with heckling is blasting your way through it." The Who was a former winner for rock volume in the Guinness Book of Records. Although Townshend has had problems with his hearing -- he mostly played acoustic guitar on the "Quadrophenia" tour at the Worcester Centrum in 1996 -- he's back on electric guitar again and not bashful about it.

When I first caught the band at the Garden in '79, it was a volatile show. Tensions were running high because only 13 days earlier, a tragedy had occurred before a Who show in Cincinnati. Eleven youths had died in a stampede to get through the doors. (The Who sent flowers to each of the funerals.) Security guards blanketed the Garden. Also, a firecracker sailed out of the balcony and landed at Townshend's feet, causing him to scream, "We don't need that at concerts anymore! You've got the wrong cult!" And when a canteen was hurled onstage, Daltrey told the crowd, "I thought it was a grenade."

Exhausted, the Who broke up after its first "farewell" tour in 1982 but regrouped in 1989, partly for financial reasons, Townshend admitted. "It was a question of financial conscience," he said during a Manhattan hotel interview that year. "It was seeing these people that I really loved and respected heading for arguments with the tax man," he said, referring to Daltrey and founding bassist John Entwistle.

That '89 reunion was highlighted by two fabulous nights at Sullivan Stadium in Foxborough, complete with a band of 15 musicians onstage. The Who opened with its rock opera, "Tommy," and climaxed with an encore of "Twist and Shout." Again, it was loud -- so loud that stadium officials fielded some irate calls from nearby residents and asked the band at intermission to turn down the volume. But it was a triumphant night. "I never thought I'd be here," Townshend told the crowd.

In 2002, the Who played the Tweeter Center, right after Entwistle died. Traces of cocaine had been found in his system. An emotional Townshend said onstage, "We're pretty sure he was enjoying himself. But it's not to be recommended." And when Daltrey sang the epic line "Hope I die before I get old" in the anthem "My Generation," he rolled his eyes in anguish.

The group has surmounted turbulence and still soldiers on. As Entwistle once said of the members' solo projects, "We all know they'll never match anything we did with the Who."

Steve Morse was a Globe rock critic from 1975 to 2005. He can be reached at spmorse@gmail.com.