The Who\u2019s days of going on the road are numbered.<\/a><\/p>\nAfter 58 years since first touring America, one of the greatest \u2013 and loudest bands in rock history \u2013 has announced its farewell US tour, aptly titled, The Song Is Over, this summer. \u201cWhether it\u2019s the end of The Who\u2026?\u201d Townsend muses, before adding, \u201cIt\u2019s certainly the end of touring in America. I asked Roger if it\u2019s the end of touring Europe, and he said. \u2018We\u2019ll have to wait and see\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to My Cultural Life on Radio 4, Townshend reflects on the dark times in his life that created his wild man of rock persona, trashing guitars on stage and wrecking hotel rooms, but says even at 80, he has an edge.<\/p>\n
![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_The-Who-announcement.jpg\")
Pete Townshend drapes a flag of the United States over his shoulders at the Iconic Images Gallery in London during a special announcement about The Who(Image: PA)<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a diamond with a flaw. I am a dangerous f***er,\u201d he reveals. \u201cI was a proponent of rock and roll as a philosophy. But when I started exploring my inner darkness on stage, my stage persona \u2013 smashing guitars and turning it all up \u2013 I was very detached and I didn\u2019t enjoy doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also acknowledges now that after years of a long-running feud with his 81-year-old bandmate Roger Daltry, the balance of power between them has shifted. \u201cRoger has said in the past that we would go on touring until we drop dead \u2013 but the needle has shifted,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was always me who said that, \u2018I reserve the right to stop,\u2019 and I have stopped twice \u2013 once for 11 years when I worked with Faber and Faber as a book editor.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I always thought I was holding the cards \u2013 but I think Roger holds the cards now.” Although Daltry founded the band in 1964 when the pair met at Ealing Art College, Townsend wrote the rock group\u2019s huge teenage anthems including My Generation, Substitute and I Can See For Miles.<\/p>\n
He admits his co-founder thinks he\u2019s pretentious when he says The Who was an art project for him as much as a pop band. \u201cWhat was difficult was the other three members didn\u2019t (feel that way),\u201d says the father-of-three. \u201cIf Roger and I were sitting together and I was doing an interview now about My Cultural Life, he would spend most of his time laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_Pete-Townshend.jpg\")
Pete performing live on stage in 1974(Image: Redferns)<\/p>\n
While Townsend planned to be an artist, it was Daltry who asked him to join The Detours \u2013 which became The Who. \u201cRoger sees it as his band to this day \u2013 he started it. He had been expelled and came back and asked me to be in his band.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s true, and I\u2019m grateful, but for me, the beginning of my life as a musician and an artist was when I wrote the first song I Can\u2019t Explain.\u201d While the band played pubs and weddings, Townsend kept his hobby a secret.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t serious about being in a band,\u201d he admits. \u201cRoger was lead guitarist \u2013 but he wasn\u2019t a particularly good player. I was gawky and had a big nose and just strummed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we had a good looking lead singer who the girls liked and we became quite successful. \u201d The young, confused Townsend was so sure he didn\u2019t want to be in a band, he even forecast its demise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote myself a manifesto \u2013 \u2018The Who are a band who are chopping away at their own legs\u2019. Then one day I\u2019m driving home in my mum\u2019s yellow van and heard my song, I Can\u2019t Explain, come on the radio, and I thought, \u201cMy manifesto! I don\u2019t want to be in a rock band. No \u2013 this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. But wow \u2013 people are listening to this\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
By now Daltry was lead vocalist and the line-up included drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle, and along with guitarist Townsend, released their 1969 rock opera album Tommy to huge critical and commercial acclaim. But a decade later, in true rock and roll style, Keith Moon died, aged 31, in 1978 from an accidental overdose of the prescription drug Hemineverin, prescribed to combat alcoholism.<\/p>\n
Then in 2002, bass player John Entwistle\u2019s dodgy ticker gave out after the 57-year-old took cocaine in a Las Vegas hotel room. \u201cThe Who is a clumsy machine because we\u2019ve been missing two members for a long time,\u201d says Townshend. \u201c(Roger and I) are very dependent on each other. We\u2019re getting old and we have different needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if Roger wanted to perform MY music, if I can put it as bluntly as this, I would be honoured. It\u2019s not about there being an argument between \u2013 we\u2019re just accepting our current situation.<\/p>\n
And he adds, \u201cWe\u2019ve never agreed on very much, but that\u2019s not to suggest there\u2019s a war on, because there isn\u2019t.\u201d Age has finally mellowed the old enmity between him and Daltry, but Townshend says the abuse he suffered as a child created a dark side to his personality.<\/p>\n
He was officially cautioned for accessing a website containing images of child abuse in 1999, which he explained was for his autobiography. Born into a musical family right at the end of the war, Townsend first went out on the road with his musician parents aged just 13 months old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were in very popular swing dance bands,\u201d he recalls. \u201cMy first memories are passing out beer bottles to band players on the tour bus.<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_Tommy-Press-Conference.jpg\")
(Top row, L-R) Bassist John Entwistle, drummer Keith Moon and guitarist Pete Townshend of the rock and roll band “The Who”(Image: Michael Ochs Archives)<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen The Who first started touring in the UK, I knew my way to all of the gigs because I’d done it so many times with my dad.\u201d But his happy childhood came to a sudden end when his mother went on tour and sent him to live with his grandmother in Margate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy my mother sent me to my grandmother who had abandoned her when she was seven, I don’t know, but I left my friends and school behind in Acton,\u201d he says sadly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just horrible and I don’t remember a lot of it \u2013 I kind of black it out. She was nuts and abusive and cruel and surrounded by extremely pervy men all the time who interfered with me. It was a really shitty time and in the end somebody reported my grandmother for abusive behaviour.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents saved me \u2013 they got back together and eventually I had two brothers,\u201d he says about returning to his home in Acton, West London. \u201cAs far as I was concerned, that was when my childhood began.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite his father being a musician, Townshend says he didn\u2019t encourage his son to join a band at school. \u201cMy father didn\u2019t think I had any musicality,\u201d he admits. \u201cMy mum was very encouraging. When our band started, she lugged our kit around, helped us get gigs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rock legend has been open about his lifelong battle with depression and substance abuse, but he has been sober for 40 years now. \u201cI sometimes wonder if my parents knew I was damaged \u2013 I\u2019ve done all of the things that people do who have fallen into addiction and bad behaviour,\u201d he speculates.<\/p>\n
And explains how his 1965 hit My Generation was about him pushing back against his dad. \u201cI drew the line with My Generation,\u201d he explains. \u201cDad\u2019s music was his generation \u2013 love and romance after the war. We didn\u2019t have that reason for being \u2013 we needed to reinvent ourselves. Rock and roll was our generation. I was overthrowing my dad\u2019s big band generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Who created some of the most powerful moments in rock and roll history especially when they performed at Woodstock in 1969 \u2013 and the hair-raising refrain of Tommy\u2019s Feel Me See Me Touch Me played out across the half a million festival goers as the sun rose in the sky.<\/p>\n
They went on to sell-out stadiums around the world<\/a>, but Townshend felt that by the late 1970s, they\u2019d begun to lose themselves. \u201cThe band had turned into a prog rock outfit. I felt we have to reconnect with our roots \u2013 and I wrote Quadrophenia about the Marquee and Shepherd\u2019s Bush \u2013 where we\u2019d grown up.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_Teenage-Cancer-Trust-Gigs-2025-London.jpg\")
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey on stage at the Royal Albert Hall(Image: PA)<\/p>\n
Again, Townshend’s creative philosophy behind the 1979 rock concept album which tells the story of a young mod Jimmy set in 1965 was lost on his bandmates. \u201cThe other guys didn\u2019t identify themselves with Jimmy at all. They didn\u2019t care about the manifesto that was buried in the middle of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the first album Townshend had total control over, but tensions between him and Daltry boiled over. \u201cIt led to the only incident in which Roger and I have actually had a physical fight,\u201d he admits. \u201cI’d been working all night on stage tapes and was late for rehearsal and we had an argument and I behaved badly and he knocked me out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I finished it, I thought, \u2018Wow, you know, they’ve let me do this\u2019.\u201d Like Tommy, Quadrophenia was adapted for film, and recently has been staged as a mod ballet. Townshend adds, \u201cJimmy being vulnerable expressed the universality of what teen boys seem to go through. So it has new relevance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 80-year-old has as much creative energy today as he did 60 years ago, but he says it\u2019s time to do new things. \u201cI\u2019m proud The Who have been able to create a form of music that lasted, and I\u2019m not disowning my past, but I’m driven by the need to be creative. The idea that I could retire and go sailing and stop writing feels like a waste of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI might have five, or 10 or 15 years if I\u2019m really lucky at being able to work with music and art. Nothing is off the map now \u2013 I might even do some dancing when I get my other knee done!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Who guitarist Pete Townshend, the mastermind behind anthems My Generation and Substitute, shows no signs of slowing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[9769,44394,77,56868,21860,2603,218,269,14569,14566,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-140406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-alcoholism","9":"tag-cocaine","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-john-entwistle","12":"tag-keith-moon","13":"tag-love","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-music","16":"tag-pete-townshend","17":"tag-the-who","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114589068529100937","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_The-Who-Announce-Farewell-Tour-Of-The-US.jpg\")
Pete Townshend has hinted that The Who isn’t finished with touring Europe(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n