THE Who’s Who?

Legendary guitarist muses about his life and legacy.

By Mike Osegueda

The Fresno Bee

Who? Of all the questions Pete Townshend gets, that’s probably not one of them.

As the guitarist for legendary rock band The Who, Townshend is a music icon.

Along with the band’s last surviving original member, vocalist Roger Daltrey, Townshend is taking The Who back on the road again this week, launching a new leg of the band’s nearly year-long, jet-setting world tour.

In advance of Sunday night’s performance at the Save Mart Center, Townshend participated in an e-mail question-and-answer session with The Bee.

Question: At this point, what keeps you guys touring? Hunger? A love for traveling? Money? Knowing there are cities like Fresno you’ve never played?

Answer: Money does have something to do with it, perhaps not for the reasons most people would imagine. I have never amassed money. I live well and so do all my dependents and a number of lovable freeloaders.

I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be a Paul Allen or David Geffen with multiple billions of dollars and to love music. I’d want to sign and fly every good band that came along. Both these guys are people I know and like, but they must live in stratified air to some extent.

So I suppose I must have a hunger to stay connected to people at street level. A lot of my spare cash goes on what others might describe as charity, but it feels more like an engagement with real life to me because I usually try to do things that give me an actual personal role.

When you’ve performed a song so many times — as you guys have with many of your hits — how do you keep it fresh and not get bored with it?

It’s not about us, it’s about the audience. It’s not that we feed on their energy, at least I don’t; it is more about feeling that we have a function — all of us gather on stage and in the crowd to connect, to align, to focus and to celebrate our survival and our hope for the future.

If this ever got boring I would have to stop, and that has happened to me in the past. At the moment, I am having fun on stage with The Who for the first time.

See WHO, Page E2

If you go What: The Who in concert with Rose Hill Drive When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday Where: Save Mart Center Cost: $53.75-$203.75 Details: (559) 347-3400 or www.ticketmaster.com

Pete Townshend, left, and Roger Daltrey continue to reinvent the sound of The Who.

SPECIAL TO THE BEE