LONDON—The Who on the road in America again, 18 years after their "farewell" tour? "It's a long story and not a particularly nice one," says Pete Townshend. That's because it concerns the financial embarrassment of rock immortals.
Last year, singer Roger Daltrey told Townshend that, candidly, he and bassist John Entwistle could both do with the kind of cash infusion that only a new Who enterprise would generate for them.
"I wasn't particularly sympathetic," Townshend admits, adding harrumphy observations about his colleagues' living in "mansions about 40 times the size of my house." (More respectfully, he also refers to Entwistle's costly determination to stay on the road with his own hobby group, giving "magnificent bass player performances" on the American club circuit.)
Even so, Townshend studied the angles of mutual benefit. He was already committed to play two benefits for an orphanage in Chicago last November. If the Who took the concerts on instead, he would consider where else the reunion might take them. Daltrey and Entwistle agreed, and, as Townshend puts it, the gods smiled.
Set to raise $2 million In Chicago, and more by playing the annual Bridge School benefit in the Bay Area, they got an offer of $2 million on their own account to add a live online concert in Las Vegas. What's more, they played impressively and reveled in one another's company like the best of old times.
"I enjoyed the shows," says Townshend. "I enjoyed the fact that Roger and I have a more honest relationship now, although there's always been a lot of love between us and he's a great ally.
"But it's been very—the psychological word is 'codependent,' I suppose. I've needed to have him at arm's length in order to feel that I've had any control over my life, and he's needed to feel frustrated that I won't do what he wants me to do. Another thing is the Who are so loud I worry about going deaf—John uses hearing aids in both ears now. But I'm really looking forward to being with my muckers again this summer."
(Neither Daltrey nor Entwistle responded to requests for comment on Townshend's account.)
He thinks the tour could even lead to that album of new Who songs they have been pussyfooting around since they officially, though not quite finally, broke up in 1982.
"Roger sat in a press conference recently and said, 'I've written a couple of songs and I'm going to throw them in the pot,'" says Townshend with practiced abrasiveness. "But I immediately found myself going into deep cynicism thinking, 'Couple of songs, yeah. I used to submit 30 for an album and he'd reject [expletive] half of them.' "
The 20 U.S. dates, a teaming with the Jimmy Page-Black Crowes alliance, include a show at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on Aug. 16.
Meanwhile, the Who are doing an Internet-only release of a live album from last fall's gigs, "The Blues to the Bush," available from Musicmaker.com as a download or customized CD.
Townshend says he still likes to be "cutting-edge." Which is fair enough, because the other project he will synergetically publicize on the tour is sometimes portrayed as having envisioned the Internet a quarter-century before it became reality.
Please see Townshend, Page 58
GRAHAM BARCLAY / For The Times
Townshend: "The creative process requires that you should be, not bad in a rock 'n' roll cliché way, but disturbed in a way."
