It’s hard to be objective about a rock film. Fan loyalty can so easily confound critical faculties. A Dylan devotee hails Don’t Look Back as the genre’s greatest. Fans of the Rolling Stones cite Gimme Shelter. Suggesting anything but the Led Zeppelin DVD to pious pupils of Page costs you an earful. Another generation with a different sensibility argues The Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense is the logical choice. The dispute could go on endlessly.

Put that bias behind the camera, however, and a great rock film might be in the making. Such is the case with The Kids Are Alright, Jeff Stein’s 1979 documentary about The Who, recently released as a two disc, Special Edition DVD. After their unhappy couple of recent years —John Entwistle’s death in a Las Vegas hotel, Pete Townshend’s arrest for viewing child pornography and his embarrassing excuse (research for his memoir)—The Who couldn’t ask for a better advocate than Stein’s film.

The Kids Are Alright isn’t the story of The Who; it is The Who. There’s no narrator, no interviews with nostalgic band members, weary and graying—the tired format of VH1’s “Behind the Music.” Stein’s film is a salvage project, a patchwork of rare television appearances, 8mm footage, early promos, seamlessly integrated and re-cut Woodstock images, and live performances the director captured in 1978. Thanks to digital restoration (painstakingly described in a tedious special feature), the footage looks better now than when Stein first uncovered it. What Stein and editor Ed Rothkowitz crafted from this imbroglio is a triumph of editing, in which we learn the band’s history by watching them make it.

A truncated version of The Kids Are Alright has long been available on VHS. The Special Edition restores the missing footage, including more than seven minutes of “A Quick One While He’s Away” from The Rolling Stones Rock’n’Roll Circus. There’s been a long-standing rumor that one reason the Stones withheld release of their film was because The Who’s monumental performance so overshadowed their own. This, along with the wealth of live material here, reaffirms The Who as rock’s most dynamic performers. Appropriately, the heart of The Kids Are Alright is live footage—from appearances on The Smothers Brothers’ Show and German TV where the band mimes to their early songs (a Sixties commonplace which The Who, Keith Moon in particular, seem to revel in), to a stunning “See Me, Feel Me” at Woodstock. There’s no shortage of The Who’s trademark theatricality, either—guitars are smashed, drum kits devastated, and smoking amplifiers toppled. The sound, remixed in Dolby 5.1, is brilliant: errors in tape speed have been corrected, most notably in early performances where Daltrey’s vocals suffered from chipmunk-ing.

Townshend, rock’s most articulate spokesperson, is the closest the film has to a narrator. In early interviews he comments on fans (“a large part of the audience is thick”), his band (“our group hasn’t got any quality, we’re just musical sensationalism”), The Beatles (“without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy”), and rock music in general (“a form of Pop art”). The film’s shuffled chronology allows the band’s history to comment on itself. When Stein cuts from a tour-ragged Pete discussing rock-as-art to a “Happy Jack” promo in which the band engages in Monkees-esque foolery, he develops a counterpoint between The Who’s occasional high seriousness and their ever-present sense of humor. In murky black-and-white footage from 1971, Pete expresses concern that the band is becoming a circus act, while Moon stands on his head next to him. Interspersed throughout the film, often punctuating live performances, are hilarious clips of a 1973 interview from the British show, Russell Harty Plus, which provide continuity in an otherwise manic film. The attempted interview devolves into madness as Moon undresses, tosses his socks at Harty while calmly intoning, “Carry on, Russell. Carry on.”

Although Stein intends The Kids Are Alright as a celebration, history doesn’t always let it play as one. Originally released the year after Keith Moon’s death, it sometimes feels like a raucous elegy. Moon owns the screen as much as anyone else, but the portrait we get is one of his wane—the one thing the film’s achronology can’t disrupt. Moon goes from the smooth-cheeked 18-year old to a bloated, middle-aged man who looks much older than his 32 years. He never lost his sense of humor, but his playing slipped, and, intentionally or not, The Kids Are Alright documents this slide, and the DVD special features highlight it even further. Choose the camera angle that stays on Moon at the Shepperton performance of “Baba O’Reilly.” Watch as he loses his place in the song, looks confusedly at his bandmates, changes too early, recovers, then misses the change when it finally arrives. Stein may have edited this out of the film, but he includes an atrocious rendition of “Barbara Ann”—sung by Moon—from rehearsals for Who Are You, the band’s final album before the drummer’s death.

Jeff Stein is an avowed fan of The Who. And the original footage he shot conveys the awe inspired by one’s musical heroes. In fact, it’s manipulated to do just that—slow-motion shots of Townshend sliding on his knees across the stage, a dramatic laser show during “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with Daltrey backlit, his silhouette looming like a curly-headed Olympian. Failing to fully uncover his own inflated image of the band in found footage (which by itself would make an outstanding film), Stein needed to create it himself. The Kids Are Alright is The Who as Stein wanted to see them, and wants us to remember them. It’s the adoring view from behind the blue eyes of a fan.