In many ways the Who should, by rights, be much higher up on my Top 15 list, but the vagaries of trying to rank the impact that individual concerts had on me cheats this group, who are so often referred to by equivocating millions as “possibly the greatest live band ever”. The original quartet — Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and the late, much missed Keith Moon (died 1978) and John Entwistle (died 2002) — were without question, in fact, the greatest live rock band ever … until Springsteen and the E Street Band came along.

The Rolling Stones are “known” as the world’s greatest rock’n'roll band, but they get away with that mostly on the magnitude of their tours’ pomp and circumstance, and they’re far higher up my list because their 1972 show was such a massive dual assault of frenzy and majesty. Peter Gabriel’s Genesis, even higher on my list, can’t truthfully be ranked a “mere” rock band.

I saw the Who perform live three times, always headlining their Toronto shows, twice at the Gardens and once at CNE Stadium, and was never less than bowled over. It’s easy, however, to pick the best of the three shows: It was the first time, mostly because it was the first time, but also thanks in large part to the amazing opening act, Toots & the Maytals.

By the time of that concert, December 11, 1975, the Who had been banging away at their beloved but spousally abused instruments for 11 years. They came loaded with legend: the power-trio mods of “I Can’t Explain”, the rock-opera angels of “Tommy”, the stage arsonists of Monterey Pop, the atonal acid demons of Woodstock. Life-affirming anthems poured off Townshend like sweat.

In 1967 they had duelled with and lost to Hendrix at Monterey in the showmanship sweepstakes, but made up for it by going straight on to television for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”, where they caused poor old Bette Davis to faint and embedded Pete with a shard of cymbal shrapnel by setting too high the explosive charge that destroyed Keith Moon’s drum kit.

Moon the Loon, rock’s notorious Party Central even in the golden age of libidinal excess, probably never did drive that Lincoln Continental into a Holiday Inn swimming pool, earning the band a lifetime ban from Holiday Inns worldwide, though Daltrey swore he saw the $50,000 bill for damages. More likely the tab was for the other, miscellaneous injuries inflicted on the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan, where Keith celebrated his 21st birthday with Herman’s Hermits, then touring with the Who. A food fight and Moon breaking a tooth when he fell on his face trying to chase a Hermit who’d pulled down his trousers escalated into a vending machine-tipping, fire-extinguisher-car-dousing rampage.

In the event, the more important truth was that Keith Moon was the best drummer in the business. He’d shown me this on “Live at Leeds”, the Who’s still-unbeaten 1970 master class in how to record a live album. With a complexity I hadn’t known possible — born of dual Premier drumsets lashed together (double-bass ostinato, eighth-note flams, leaning on the crash cymbal and loads of fills and accents) — Moon sounded like a colony of angry giant ants that had formed a marching band, and quickly chased Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham out of first place in my mind’s pantheon of percussionists.

The fact was that, before “Live at Leeds”, I really hadn’t paid much attention to the Who. Earlier singles like “I Can’t Explain”, “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”, “I Can See for Miles” and “Magic Bus” just seemed airy and silly to me, and the importance of “My Generation” hadn’t yet struck home. I didn’t appreciate the 1969 album “Tommy” until years later when Ken Russell turned it into one of my all-time favourite movies.

“Leeds” made me a Who fan, and then came “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Quadrophenia”, so that by the time the Toronto date was announced I was primed and maniacal, albeit unamused by that year’s big hit “Squeeze Box”, a daft song that, nevertheless, I knew 90% of the audience would be waiting to hear.

It came fifth in the setlist, after “I Can’t Explain”, “Substitute”, “My Wife” and the immortal “Baba O’Riley”. Squeezing dispensed with, the band got back in focus with the wonderful “Behind Blue Eyes”, then did “Dreaming from the Waist”, Entwistle’s “Boris the Spider”, “Magic Bus” and then a full third of “Tommy”: “Amazing Journey”, “Sparks”, “The Acid Queen”, “Fiddle About”, “Pinball Wizard”, “I’m Free”, “Tommy’s Holiday Camp” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

Then we got “Summertime Blues”, “My Generation”, “Join Together”, “Spoonful”, “Roadrunner”, “My Generation Blues” and, ahhh, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

All that and the Maytals too. At that point I was still trying to figure out reggae, having come at it backwards through Clapton’s stupid version of “I Shot the Sheriff”. I’d heard Marley at last and, now, with Toots Hibbert, here was some real ska and rock steady. By now a confirmed Who addict, I quickly set a course for Jamaica too.

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Keith Moon was still happily in the saddle and still not yet putting on the pounds when the Who locomotive roared into the Gardens again 10 months later, on October 21, 1976. One seemingly reliable German website claims this was “Keith’s final official show with the Who”, but doesn’t seem to explain anywhere what that means. Certainly I’ve found nothing about him becoming “unofficial” while the band continued touring with him for the next two years before he choked to death after swallowing too many pills, ironically to help him stop drinking.

I’ll take their word for it, though, along with the setlist they provide, and much to my surprise (since I wasn’t fussy about memorising such things at the time), I discover that they played exactly the same show as the previous December!

Well, who was going to complain? It was another grandiose exhibition of instrumental prowess — Townshend’s fingernail-shredding windmill power strokes and chipping solos matched bar for bar by Moon’s pyrotechnic drumcraft and John Entwistle’s intricately woven bass web — with Daltrey determined to lasso the front row with his microphone cord. Amazing stuff, classic rockmanship being created before our very eyes.

No baseball today at CNE Stadium: Can you see the real me waving?

Gravity had shifted considerably by the time the Who jam-packed CNE Stadium on July 16, 1980. Moon was RIP, “replaced” — hardly the word for it — by Kenney Jones, formerly of the Small Faces. John Bundrick was adding a wash of keyboards, and there had been that nasty incident the previous winter when 11 fans were crushed to death in the pursuit of seats at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum. Not for the living to worry: Daltry could still sing with aplomb, “Hope I die before I get old.”

Once the Wilson sisters did their girls-can-rock-too ’80s shtick with Heart, the Who rumbled straight into the heart of timelessness. “My Generation” came two-thirds the way through a set that began, once again, with “Substitute”, “I Can’t Explain”, “Baba O’Riley” and “My Wife”. “Sister Disco” was a new addition, as were “Music Must Change”, “Drowned”, “Who Are You” and “5.15″.

Then we were treated to “Behind Blue Eyes”, “Pinball Wizard”, “See Me Feel Me”, “Long Live Rock”, “Naked Eye”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, “Summertime Blues”, a terrific closing medley of “Twist And Shout”, “Dancing in the Streets” and “Dance It Away” and a heart-stopping encore in “The Real Me”.

If Music Must Change, Pete Townshend still had a lot of exploring to do to find the real Pete Townshend, with and without his guru Meher Baba. Things got so hard for the songwriter that, upon the release of “It’s Hard” in 1982 he had some good news and some bad news: he was an alcoholic (though reformed), and the Who were going to do one final tour.

You shouldn’t believe phrases like “final tour” in show business. We won’t get fooled again, Peter. The Who are still on the road today, 25 years after that pledge and 24 years after Pete said he was quitting the band. They still have Rabbit Bundrick and for a while now Pino Palladino trying to fill in for the coke-killed Entwistle, Simon Townshend helping his brother shoulder some of the guitar baggage and Ringo’s kid Zak Starkey seeking his own place beneath the Moon. Long may they continue speaking for my generation, even if they do stutter.

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* See #15: Crosby, Stills Nash & Young
* COMING SOON: The Compleat Dorseyland Concert Directory