Published: Saturday, September 16, 2006
The Who returns for new tour
Pete Townshend couldn't see the point of touring — and then he found inspiration.
By DAN DELUCA
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
If Betty Townshend hadn't broken her hip, The Who would not have recorded "Endless Wire," its first album of new material in 24 years.
And Betty's son, Pete, and his sole surviving original bandmate, Roger Daltrey, wouldn't be leading The Who — or "The Two," as fans have cheekily dubbed them — on their just-launched North American tour.
Of course, just by giving birth to the now 61-year-old Pete, Betty Townshend can be credited as the source of one of the most brilliant résumés in popular music. It embraces gems from "I Can't Explain" to "Quadrophenia" to "Hope I die before I get old" — the iconic lyric from a band that went on to hold seemingly endless reunions after claiming to call it quits in the early '80s.
In the case of "Endless Wire" (out Oct. 31) and the half-a-Who's 2006 return to the stage, Pete's mum had a direct causal relationship.
What happened
Let Pete explain.
"Around January of this year, my manager was pressing me for a decision as to whether The Who were going to tour in 2006," a talkative Townshend says by phone last week after a rehearsal in New York.
"I said I wasn't ready. I didn't want to tour unless I had new music. I couldn't really see the point of taking the old circus around the world," says the guitarist and charter member of the British rock aristocracy. "I just felt there was a kind of pointlessness to it."
Not that Townshend hadn't been busy. A self-described "Internet nut," he had just finished publishing a novella in blog form called "The Boy Who Heard Music" — it's at www.petetownshend.co.uk — that grew out of the aborted '70s project "Lifehouse."
Then Betty Townshend broke her hip. "She's had an alcohol problem all her life, and she suddenly started to drink around Christmastime," Pete says. His mother is in her mid-80s, and lives on the street in west London's Acton section where Pete grew up.
"We all thought she would ... wither away, and maybe go nuts and die. But she didn't. She rallied. She got herself together, healed up, and continued to cause lots of trouble."
And that was just the inspiration her son needed. "I kind of dusted myself down and thought: Well, if she can [expletive] do it, I can do it."
Got to work
So he "knocked out a bunch of songs" based on "The Boy Who Heard Music," which concerns a fictional band a generation younger than The Who. Then he phoned his manager and told him it was a go for the tour.
Now, he's back alongside Daltrey, who was a sheet-metal worker when he first joined together with Townshend, an art school student, to make music more than four decades ago.
Their tour comes four years after bassist John Entwistle followed drummer Keith Moon to an early grave. Their European shows in the summer drew raves, with a band that includes drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) and bassist Pino Palladino, plus longtime Who helpmates John "Rabbit" Bundrick on keyboards and Townshend's multi-instrumentalist brother, Simon.
Daltrey, always game for regrouping The Who, sounded pumped up for the task in a press conference, saying, "Pete's music, for me, is still a driving force in my life." He said the "Endless Wire" songs have "the Townshend magic."
Realization
After Entwistle's death from a cocaine-induced heart attack in 2002, Townshend says, he and Daltrey realized "how much we care about each other, though we're not always in accord.
"I've always known that Roger is a fantastic interpreter of my work," he goes on. "He brings a rich theatrical passion to it, which I can't pull off, and also a very powerful masculinity which I don't have. But I have to say that I've always secretly felt that I do it better."
Now, though, he realizes that "together there's a mechanism that generates euphoric chemistry and ... is really quite extraordinary."
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Pete Townshend couldn't see the point of touring — and then he found inspiration.
By DAN DELUCA
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
If Betty Townshend hadn't broken her hip, The Who would not have recorded "Endless Wire," its first album of new material in 24 years.
And Betty's son, Pete, and his sole surviving original bandmate, Roger Daltrey, wouldn't be leading The Who — or "The Two," as fans have cheekily dubbed them — on their just-launched North American tour.
Of course, just by giving birth to the now 61-year-old Pete, Betty Townshend can be credited as the source of one of the most brilliant résumés in popular music. It embraces gems from "I Can't Explain" to "Quadrophenia" to "Hope I die before I get old" — the iconic lyric from a band that went on to hold seemingly endless reunions after claiming to call it quits in the early '80s.
In the case of "Endless Wire" (out Oct. 31) and the half-a-Who's 2006 return to the stage, Pete's mum had a direct causal relationship.
What happened
Let Pete explain.
"Around January of this year, my manager was pressing me for a decision as to whether The Who were going to tour in 2006," a talkative Townshend says by phone last week after a rehearsal in New York.
"I said I wasn't ready. I didn't want to tour unless I had new music. I couldn't really see the point of taking the old circus around the world," says the guitarist and charter member of the British rock aristocracy. "I just felt there was a kind of pointlessness to it."
Not that Townshend hadn't been busy. A self-described "Internet nut," he had just finished publishing a novella in blog form called "The Boy Who Heard Music" — it's at www.petetownshend.co.uk — that grew out of the aborted '70s project "Lifehouse."
Then Betty Townshend broke her hip. "She's had an alcohol problem all her life, and she suddenly started to drink around Christmastime," Pete says. His mother is in her mid-80s, and lives on the street in west London's Acton section where Pete grew up.
"We all thought she would ... wither away, and maybe go nuts and die. But she didn't. She rallied. She got herself together, healed up, and continued to cause lots of trouble."
And that was just the inspiration her son needed. "I kind of dusted myself down and thought: Well, if she can [expletive] do it, I can do it."
Got to work
So he "knocked out a bunch of songs" based on "The Boy Who Heard Music," which concerns a fictional band a generation younger than The Who. Then he phoned his manager and told him it was a go for the tour.
Now, he's back alongside Daltrey, who was a sheet-metal worker when he first joined together with Townshend, an art school student, to make music more than four decades ago.
Their tour comes four years after bassist John Entwistle followed drummer Keith Moon to an early grave. Their European shows in the summer drew raves, with a band that includes drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) and bassist Pino Palladino, plus longtime Who helpmates John "Rabbit" Bundrick on keyboards and Townshend's multi-instrumentalist brother, Simon.
Daltrey, always game for regrouping The Who, sounded pumped up for the task in a press conference, saying, "Pete's music, for me, is still a driving force in my life." He said the "Endless Wire" songs have "the Townshend magic."
Realization
After Entwistle's death from a cocaine-induced heart attack in 2002, Townshend says, he and Daltrey realized "how much we care about each other, though we're not always in accord.
"I've always known that Roger is a fantastic interpreter of my work," he goes on. "He brings a rich theatrical passion to it, which I can't pull off, and also a very powerful masculinity which I don't have. But I have to say that I've always secretly felt that I do it better."
Now, though, he realizes that "together there's a mechanism that generates euphoric chemistry and ... is really quite extraordinary."
Saturday, September 16, 2006
and then he found inspiration.
By DAN DELUCA
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
If Betty Townshend hadn't broken her hip, The Who...
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