Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe , Oct. 24 (UPI) -- The general consensus among those who watched the Concert for New York was that The Who stole the show. It was remarkable to see the stripped-down band playing to its strengths without the assistance of the large band that usually accompanies their live performances these days. The band's sound is that of its players, particularly Pete Townshend's guitar and John Entwistle's bass, and when they lay it out at its bare bones it remains the most powerful sound in rock. Advertisement The group played "Who Are You," "Baba O'Riley," "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," proving that context fits meaning to great songwriting. Watching the uniformed firefighters and police holding up pictures of comrades who fell on Sept. 11 while "Behind Blue Eyes" played was an astonishing experience, and the image of the twin towers being celebrated by "Won't Get Fooled Again" is one of the most potent political gestures I have ever seen come off a rock stage. And I have seen a lot of them. Advertisement Coincidentally, MCA records has just released, for the first time, the complete version of the definitive live Who recording, "Live At Leeds." When "Live At Leeds" was first released in 1970, one of its main objectives was to de-emphasize the role that the rock opera "Tommy" played in the band's identity. The mostly-acoustic rock opera had established The Who as one of rock's elite groups when it came out the year before, and while the work was the apotheosis of the band's songwriting strengths it distracted attention from its status as the best live rock group in the business. The original "Live At Leeds," recorded at Leeds University in England before a particularly vibrant crowd and packaged as a facsimile of the live bootleg albums that proliferated at the time, documented the group's stage strengths, gave them their most representative hit, the exhilarating runthrough of Eddie Cochrane's "Summertime Blues," and bought time for principal songwriter Townshend to work on a "Tommy" followup, the grandiose LifeHouse project, which eventually emerged in 1971 as "Who's Next." A subsequent mid-1990s reissue, fleshing the album out from six tracks to a double CD, prompted the observation that the greatest rock concert in history just got better. What superlatives remain, then, to describe a final version of "Live At Leeds" that includes the entire event, including a complete version of the live "Tommy?" Advertisement The studio version of "Tommy," an impressive demonstration of rock's ability to stretch into a long form theatrical event without diluting its strengths, became a blueprint for the complete realization of the band's abilities in live performance. The live "Tommy" was a revelation of an astonishing hour's worth of exposition that was united by the leitmotifs of its musical structure rather than its purposefully vague spiritual narrative. Townshend's dynamic range as a guitarist and songwriter, already prefigured in cameo form on "Happy Jack" and "Tattoo" and in the suite-length mini-opera "A Quick One While He's Away" (all of which are included in the concert) reaches its fullest flower in the live "Tommy," framed by the lengthy instrumental sections in "Overture" and "We're Not Gonna Take It." This is guitar-based hard rock exposition at its most ambitious, soloing in service of an extended song structure while engaged in a continuous dialogue with Keith Moon's outstanding drum inventions. Lead singer Roger Daltrey also reached his moment of self actualization in the live version of "Tommy," completing his transformation from the pilled-up white R&B singer he started out as into a sure-voiced rocker who could assume the complexity of the Tommy character, a spiritual seeker turned tyrannical cult leader who is finally overthrown by his own followers at the end of this epic story. Advertisement Holding all of this together is one of the most influential bassists in rock history, John Entwistle. A prodigious and implacable musical presence, Entwistle's massive, bristling tone actually defines the band's live sound, accounting for much of the presence erroneously attributed to Townshend's guitar. Entwistle at once provided virtuoso melodic technique and a rhythmic center that allowed Moon's drums to work as a continuous solo voice in the arrangement rather than simply keep time. This isn't the first live version of "Tommy" issued -- there's one from the Isle of Whyte festival -- but it's the definitive one, taken from one of the band's most inspired gigs and performed when these individuals were at the absolute physical peak of the considerable power this music requires to play. When historians and future rock fans look for an accurate representation of live rock at its best this is the touchstone they will refer to.