As always, the ‘oo are on top of everything.
Despite their angst-laden lyric “hope I die before I get old,” old-man Pete Townshend has announced The Who’s intention to launch a world tour starting near Christmas-time. The tour would begin in the U.K., and reach North America by 2015.
In an interview with Billboard.com, Townshend says, “I’m not crazy about going on the road, but I’m in good shape, and once I start doing it — and I’m still very good at it — I’ll take some pleasure from it.”
The band is also planning a live release from their recent Quadrophenia tour, and Townshend is interested in working on a new album. According to the interview, “I’m trying to [look] through my 20,000 hours of complete and utter disorganized music [to find possible songs]. I’ll be pulling some songs out of ‘Floss’ [his long-overdue solo project] to give to Roger [Daltrey] to see if we’ve got enough to make an album. It might be a big waste of time, but I’m hoping there will be an album.”
The Who have not released new material since 2006’s Endless Wire. However, Townshend does have a new song that will appear in the April 20th episode of The Americans on FX.
Townshend realizes that, at age 69, a 50th anniversary tour won’t nearly have the energy of a old-time Who concert. But the windmill guitarist knows he has some juice left in the tank, and a tour would be appreciated by fans worldwide. So why not?
-David Melamed (@DMelamz)