Pete Townshend has been discussing the likelihood of The Who making another album – and he seems the more enthusiastic between him and Roger Daltrey.
With Townshend now 79 and Daltrey having turned 80 this year, the pair are coming to the end of their illustrious careers. The pair are the only surviving members of The Who’s classic lineup, and the only two currently in the band.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Townshend said: “I don’t know what’s gonna happen with The Who. I’m hoping Roger [Daltrey] and I can find some common ground and find some way to work again, possibly without an orchestra, because I think we’ve done that. But also, there’s this sense that we’re in the last tour period of our career. Are we just hoping to do what Bob Dylan does and just keep going?”
He explained that he’s “encouraged” by Daltrey’s solo tour, and likes the idea of them putting a small band together. But, he says, “Roger and I don’t converse. We don’t talk. So, it might be difficult to land on something that we both share an interest in. But it’s there for the taking, I think.”
The Daily Beast asked Townshend if he’d like to get Daltrey into the studio to make an album and promote it with a tour, but he said he wasn’t going to “bully” his bandmate into it. “I don’t want to have the job that I used to have around the time of ‘Quadrophenia’, which is bullying everybody in The Who to do exactly what I want to do,” he said. “It was no fun. And at the end of that, Roger knocked me out. I asked for it, but he knocked me out. Anyway, I’m hopeful. I’m certainly not saying that we won’t do anything, but Roger and I do have a bit of a river to cross. And once we cross that river, we’ll see what happens.”
This isn’t the first time in recent weeks that Townshend has discussed the possibility of new The Who music or live dates. In June, he told NME that he was “pretty sure” there would be more Who shows, and that “The story of the end of The Who is gonna be when either Roger or I drop dead or can’t function anymore on the stage.”
But a new album? “If there was a need or a place for a Who album, could I write the songs for it within six weeks? Of course I fucking could, it’s a piece of cake,” he said. “The problem is I don’t think Roger wants to do it again. For me it would be a joy because I love writing songs, I love writing to a brief, I love having a commission, I love having a deadline and I love the feedback.”
In March, meanwhile, Daltrey said that he’s “on [his] way out” and that he “has to be realistic”.
And, when NME asked Daltrey about the possibility of a new album last year, he laughed: “What’s the point? What’s the point of records? We released an album four years ago [2019’s ‘WHO’], and it did nothing. It’s a great album too, but there isn’t the interest out there for new music these days. People want to hear the old music. I don’t know why, but that’s the fact.”
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