- calendar_today August 5, 2025
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Veteran Who guitarist Pete Townshend is back on the road again. This time, he’s rolling out on 17 dates across North America, and he’s doing it with Roger Daltrey.
At 80, touring as work is both lonely and, as Townshend expressed in an interview, “quite a privilege.” So, he continues to do so with a bittersweet gratitude that, at the moment, he can perform at all, even as the future of The Who, the group Daltrey and Townshend co-founded and for which Townshend writes its songs, remains in question.
“Life on tour can be lonely,” Townshend explained. “I think, ‘Well, this is my job, I’m happy to have the work, but I prefer to be doing something else.’ Then I think, ‘Well, I’m 80 years old. Why shouldn’t I revel in it? Why shouldn’t I celebrate?”
Townshend has been with the Who for 66 years now. With the benefit of some time and perspective, and as much as touring can still be tiring, he’s learned to appreciate what the band has become, even if it’s not a band anymore. “It’s not just four people on a stage,” he told the interviewer. “It’s a brand rather than a band. Roger and I have a duty to the music and the history, the Who [still] sells records – the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something more, really: the art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”
Townshend was referring to his former bandmates Keith Moon (drums) and John Entwistle (bass), both of whom passed away in the late 1970s. While Moon and Entwistle are no longer here, Daltrey and Townshend are, and they feel the tug of the music while they also consider their mortality. “It does whet an appetite to think about how we should bow out in our personal lives – what we do with our families and our friends and everything else at this age,” Townshend added. “We’re lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to playing. Roger likes to throw wild cards out sometimes in the set, and we have learned and rehearsed a few songs that we don’t always play.”
Townshend continues to look forward to the experience of the Who on the road and the performance, but he’s also aware, even after all this time, that he and Daltrey have a lot to celebrate, even as the idea of touring in the future might be daunting. He’s still excited to test out new material and prep for the run, knowing that, even after so long, the Who’s sets may still be surprising.
Roger Daltrey: The Band’s Retirement Comes as Who Hits ‘Endgame’
If for Townshend the road remains bittersweet, that is also the case for Roger Daltrey. This spring, Daltrey joined Townshend at the Teenage Cancer Trust charity event in London, and while on stage, he made a series of admissions about his health.
“Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” Daltrey said, using the name of the character at the center of the Who’s epochal rock opera Tommy. Quoting the lyric, he continued, “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid.”
It was a funny moment, a rare chance to hear the band’s frontman discuss his physical well-being. He expanded on the point recently in an interview with The Times, talking more specifically about what the end of this tour means, using words that may have felt final to many Who fans. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” Daltrey said. “It’s grueling.”
His words were a reflection on the fact that at 80, The Who still plays often, and that such a pace, though thrilling at one time, is now more difficult. “In the days when I was singing Who songs for three hours a night, six nights a week, I was working harder than most footballers,” Daltrey recalled.
As for the idea of, perhaps, doing one-off concerts going forward, Daltrey had no real prediction or confidence. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he said.
In the end, despite all this, and for fans, while this may well be the last Who tour, Daltrey remains confident that he can still belt out those hits. “My voice is still as good as ever,” he said.
As North America is about to see the Who perform live, it’s as much a closing as it is a celebration of decades of history, and it is, at the end of the day, also a chance to be grateful, alive, and lucky.
