The Who may have named what they are claiming is their final North American tour “The Song Is Over,” but according to co-founder and guitarist Pete Townshend, the road will go on for him once the final strains of “Baba O’Riley” ring out at the band’s final gig on Sept. 28 in Las Vegas.
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Speaking to AARP magazine, Townshend, 80, said he plans to embark on what he referred to as “one-man” solo outings after he and singer Roger Daltrey finish their current run of shows. “We reserve the right to pop up again,” Townshend said of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band that announced its first final tour in 1982. “But I think one thing is very clear: that at our age, we will not.” Townshend is not retiring, though, saying that he’s planning to finish his long-gestating solo album The Age of Anxiety, which he’s been working on since 2007, and possibly taking that show on the road.
“I’ve got songs in all kinds of development, 140 tracks ready to go,” he said. “On The Age of Anxiety, [based on his 2019 first novel], I’ve got 26 songs. It’s not not autobiographical, but the scope of my own mental journey through addiction and recovery has led me to a place where I feel that I can write a character, a genuine, realistic character — youngish, who, rather than be depressed, has an acuity, a kind of instant, psychic feeling, and he decides that he wants to really dig in to make his audience as happy as they possibly can be.”
He described the main character as a good-looking harmonica player who plays small clubs with his “very, very popular” band, but is beginning to sense an anxiety from some of the “young mums” in the crowd who are “escaping something.” Townshend hopes the album can start a conversation about depression and the struggle for artists to manage their sometimes selfish, self-obsessed inclinations.
Despite suffering from tinnitus, Townshend said his brain is “sharp as a razor,” he’s feeling “very, very creative” and generally healthy, speculating that he’s got maybe “another five years” in show business left in him. The guitarist plans to experiment touring his solo material by going out on the road for some one-man shows, while keeping open the possibility that he and Who singer Roger Daltrey might work together again some day.
“Roger and I certainly [will] work together for charity and possibly for special projects,” he predicted of the vocalist with whom he admitted he doesn’t communicate with “very well.” Regardless, he added, “together we represent all aspects of The Who legacy. You know, I’m the songwriter and creator, but Roger’s been the driving force, meaning keeping The Who band and his brand on track. Even with his solo work, we’ll continue to work together, even if we rarely socialize.”
Townshend also addressed the viral freakout over the Who’s firing (and re-hiring, then re-firing) of longtime drummer Zak Starkey earlier this year, explaining that Daltrey was peeved that Starkey “jumped straight into Instagram and started to mouth off and defend his position in a cheeky, chatty manner, which belies the seriousness of what actually happened.”
To hear the guitarist tell it, Daltrey had asked the band to rehearse the tour’s title track, the 1971 Who’s Next ballad “The Song Is Over” in a shortened version for the outing and halfway through a performance of it at the Royal Albert Hall in London in March the singer “got completely lost. He stopped, he complained, spoke to his own sound engineer, and started to rage. It looked like he was raging at Zak, but that’s not the case. It became a story among fans, and it looked like Roger made a mistake, but something technical went wrong. [Zak’s] handling of it, was, I suppose, light-hearted, but you know Roger.”
The next stop on the Who tour is Thursday night (Aug. 21) at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
