Pete Townshend addresses the future of The Who

Pete Townshend speaks onstage during The 77th Annual Tony Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on June 16, 2024 in New York City — Pete Townshend onstage at The 77th Annual Tony Awards in June 2024 (Image credit: Theo Wargo via Getty Images)

Pete Townshend has addressed the future of The Who in a new interview. Talking to The Daily Beast to mark the release of his 14-CD set Live In Concert 1985-2001, Townshend appears hopeful that there may be more to come from the band, who formed 60 years ago, but there's a catch.

"I don’t know what’s gonna happen with The Who," says Townshend. "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?

"I’m encouraged by seeing what Roger’s doing in his solo tour. It seems to me that if we put a small band together and just decided to throw shit at the wall, it might be great. But 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."

Later in the interview, Townshend reveals that he won't attempt to cajole Roger Daltrey back into the studio.

"I’m not gonna try to bully Roger to do anything," he says. "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.

"It worked, yeah. But 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."

Elsewhere in the interview, Townshend discusses the new box set, questions the "cookie cutter" approach to songwriting taken by Bruce Springsteen and AC/DC, and reveals that he was never entirely comfortable as a solo performer.

Live In Concert 1985-2001 is out now.

Artists

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.