SAN DIEGO — It’s all behind me, I should have known it. — the Who, “The Song is Over” (1971)

The song may finally be over. But are the Who?

The pioneering English rock band’s frequently stirring Wednesday night concert at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert was billed as the concluding performance on its “The Song Is Over — North American Farewell Tour.”

Not coincidentally, the second-to-last number in the Who’s 22-song performance was the intensely melancholic ballad, “The Song Is Over.” It came nearly two hours into a set that mixed potent renditions of such classics as “My Generation,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Love, Reign O’er Me” with similarly memorable versions of such lesser-heard gems as “Long Live Rock,” “Another Tricky Day” and the concert-concluding “Tea & Theatre.”

Yet, while this legendary band’s two surviving members — guitarist-singer Pete Townshend, 80, and lead singer Roger Daltrey, 81 — have vowed their touring days as the Who are now behind them, well, who really knows?

This, after all, is the same group whose first farewell trek took place in (ahem!) 1982, followed by more than a few subsequent tours. Or, as lead singer Daltrey candidly put it in a 2002 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: “They’re all reunions! We said we were going to stop touring, and we did, for seven years. Prior to that, we were touring all the time. Then we had a reunion, and then we didn’t tour again for, gosh, seven more years. But we enjoy the right to change our minds ….”

Which is exactly what he and Townshend did by performing in Palm Desert on Wednesday. The show was announced less than three weeks ago — five months after the Who’s North American farewell tour dates were unveiled — and was held three days after the Sept. 28 Las Vegas date that was originally scheduled to conclude this farewell trek.

Accordingly, Townshend left some wiggle room Wednesday after he and Daltrey concluded their performance by duetting on “Tea & Theatre,” a song whose lyrics include such telling lines as: “A great dream derailed” and “We did it all, didn’t we?”

After playfully likening the prospect of more touring to “flogging a dead horse,” Townshend then told the cheering crowd of 7,000: “What we’ll get up to next, I don’t know. We will do stuff together… in bits and pieces. But for this kind of thing, it’s goodbye.”

It’s unclear if Townshend and Daltrey knew that Paul McCartney opened his latest tour on Monday night at the same Palm Desert arena that hosted the Who’s farewell-tour-concluding concert two days later. But both performances were triumphant displays of skill, vision and tenacity by legendary artists who — their advancing years be damned — still know how to enthrall listeners with the incandescent power of their songs.

Townshend was all of 18 when he wrote The Who’s “I Can’t Explain,” which opened Wednesday’s show, and barely 20 when he wrote “Substitute” and "My Generation,” the evening’s second and 11th selections, respectively.

Their messages of youthful frustrations, aspirations and defiance resonate just as strongly now as these songs did when they were first heard 60 or so years ago. And the Who’s performances of them in Palm Desert underscored how extremely well-crafted and durable they remain today.

Ditto Wednesday’s spirited renditions of “I Can See For Miles,” “The Real Me” and “Baba O’Riley,” which featured Katie Jacoby, 35, expertly delivering the violin solo first performed by East of Eden’s Dave Arbus on the 1971 recording of “Baba.”

Offstage, Townshend and Daltrey’s relationship has been fractious as often as not, with the guitarist declaring last year he had little desire to tour again with the Who, and Daltrey responding that “every dog has its day.”

Factor in Daltrey being nearly completely deaf — he wears hearing aids in both ears and has learned to lip-read — and Townshend’s recent knee transplant, and the reasons for a potential Who retirement make sense. That is, at least they did until the two reunited on stage and let the music take over.

When Townshend poked fun at his knee surgery midway through Wednesday’s concert by dancing an energetic jig, Daltrey enthusiastically joined in. And when it came time for Daltrey to deliver his much-anticipated epic scream near the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” he delivered the goods, just as he and Townshend did throughout their very well-paced show. (Daltrey did not do the scream when the Who performed half-heartedly at SDSU’s Viejas Arena in 2019.)

Backed by an extremely polished one-woman, five-man band, neither Townshend nor Daltrey sounded even remotely eager to put the Who to rest. From start to finish, they performed with palpable conviction and impressive skill, injecting each song with passion and a sense of poignancy that reflected the triumphs and tragedies of a band that saw its two other core members, drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle, die in 1978 and 2002, respectively.

The Who soldiered on after both their deaths, touring with a succession of lineups. Earlier this year, Daltrey fired Zak Starkey, who had very ably manned the Who’s drum chair since 1996, and replaced him with Scott Devours, a member of Daltrey’s solo band since 2009. The Who’s longest-serving member, apart from its two co-founders, is guitarist-singer Simon Townshend, Pete’s younger brother. He came on board in 2002 and is also a member of Daltrey’s band.

But the essence of the Who — or the Two, as some fans have referred to the band since Entwistle’s death — is Daltrey and Pete Townshend. And they played so well together on Wednesday, and with such purpose and vitality, it’s difficult to believe their song is truly over.

That sentiment is shared by Bill McComas, a Maryland attorney. He eagerly attended Wednesday’s Palm Desert concert after going to three East Coast dates on the Who’s “The Song Is Over — North American Farewell Tour.”

“I’ve been telling everybody that it’s a 45-year farewell tour and I saw them at the beginning of it — and now at the end,” McComas, 59, said. “And if there’s more to it, I’m definitely gong to go see it. So, in two or three years, I hope to see them again.”

He’s not alone.

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