The Who eager to rock G.R. Tuesday

By John Sinkevics

Gazette News Service

GRAND RAPIDS — Set aside conventional wisdom when assessing the motives, the attitude, the vitality of a 42-year-old rock band that recently released its first studio album in two dozen years amid its first world tour in two decades.

Anyone assuming, for instance, that The Who’s Pete Townshend might be reluctant at age 61 to plunge back into performing for huge arena crowds mostly interested in the band’s oldies would be wrong.

“The only doubt was whether we would get to complete an album,” the guitarist insisted in an extensive e-mail interview with The Grand Rapids Press. “I made it a condition of its release that we did our first world tour behind it, and had Roger (Daltrey) been cautious about committing, I may not have completed it at all.

“We have a great opportunity to get this record over to a large international audience, and let’s face it, in the current climate of low album sales, the record needs all the touring help we can give it.”

So, with songs from their new album, “Endless Wire,” in their nightly set list, Townshend and singer Daltrey — the surviving original members of the legendary British group that lost maniacal drummer Keith Moon in 1978 and bassist John Entwistle in 2002 — have rattled North American stages impressively since mid-September. They will make a stop Tuesday in Grand Rapids’ Van Andel Arena. The band last played the arena on a U.S. tour in August 2002.

“We’ve played as many as 11 new songs in our two-hour

Concert The Who — 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Van Andel Arena, 130 W. Fulton St., Grand Rapids. $25-$204. 373-7000.

show,” Townshend said. “Audiences are supportive, but sometimes there is a hiatus of energy as they take in unfamiliar material. Many of our crowd will be hoping for an old personal favorite, and we have to try to offer as much familiar material as we can. In any case, I really love playing the classics.”

That means fans can expect the roar of “Pinball Wizard” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from a band that features drummer Zak Starkey, bassist Pino Palladino and guitarist Simon Townshend (Pete’s brother). Keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick was replaced on tour recently by Brian Kehew, but may return.

And as wild, raucous and grueling as Who tours might have been in the 1960s and 1970s, the New Millennium version of the band gets kindler, gentler treatment — welcomed as rock royalty rather than as rebellious scoundrels.

“It gets easier,” Townshend said. “The world is more amenable to treating rock stars like human beings these days. Some of our bad behavior as young men was a response to the way we were treated, not the challenge to authority and order as it was seen by the press.

“We travel and hotel elegantly today. Our fans treat us like precious friends, not chattel. Performing … is intriguing to me rather than exciting. I am always surprised by how it

can be so different from show to show. An example might be our performance (during the New York City 9/11 concert). The excitement didn’t really hit me until the show was over. … It wasn’t something to jump up and down about, but it was deeply moving and fulfilling.”

As fulfilling perhaps as the band’s return to the recording studio, a much-anticipated, internally debated and stop-and-start affair that wraps up some songs Townshend began to write in the 1970s with brand new material.

The album — which has earned solid reviews — includes the mini-opera, “Wire and Glass,” based on an online Townshend novella, “The Boy Who Heard Music.”

“For a while during 2005, Roger and I were thinking of giving up The Who ‘brand’ and just doing charity shows, being old buddies and taking up golf,” Townshend said. “But I never quite let go of the hope that my novella — though flawed, rambling, fantastical and, I have to admit it, my old ‘Lifehouse’ idea somewhat rehashed — might provide inspiration for some new songs.

“Suddenly, when I had completed the serialization of (the novella) on a blog in February this year, the lyrics came to me in a block. Once I had those lyrics … I called Roger and told him we were back in business. The greatest challenge was resisting overproducing this record. I wanted it to be as simple as it could be.”

Townshend also wanted it to resound with the vocal power only Daltrey could provide.

“What he does works to transform what I write into the kind of rock music people understand as ‘Who’ music,” Townshend said.