Watching The Who’s recent half-time performance at the Super Bowl made me miss John Entwistle and Keith Moon all the more.

As great a songwriter and guitarist as Pete Townshend (still) is, there is no way to replace the irreplaceable. Entwistle was a bass player who didn’t play his instrument like a bass player: he played his instrument like a lead guitar. And he was also a top-notch song writer, and in most other bands would have been the main songwriter (something George Harrison must have identified with).

Keith Moon wasn’t just a great drummer: he was a force of nature. The four members of the (original) Who were more than the sum of their parts, and together they qualified as one of the foundations of British Invasion.

But the Super Bowl half-time performance, locked into a brief 12-minute countdown, wasn’t helped by the edited versions of the short selection of songs. It was also interesting to notice that 3 of those songs they played also appear as T.V. theme songs on the network that carried the game.

Still it was nice to see Pete and Roger dancing around the stage, not singing “I hope I die before I get old” from their early hit My Generation…another one of those songs they didn’t play.