Pete Townshend Suggests The Who Recording Era Is Over

Pete Townshend isn’t sure if there’ll be another album by The Who because of the “old fashioned way that they work”.

Townshend has admitted he’s got some doubts about whether or not the iconic ‘My Generation’ group will ever got together to work on a follow-up to 2019 LP ‘Who’.

He told Guitar Player magazine: “As far as a new record, it does take quite a lot of time to put together the 20 or 30 songs that are needed for both Roger [Daltrey] and I and any producer that we might be working with to cherry-pick the ones that fit the times.

“Because you write the songs, and then two years later you’re putting them all out, and you just hope that you’re going to hit the mood of the moment.

“A lot of artists now are writing songs at home, recording them at home and putting them out within weeks.

“But our process is the old-fashioned way, and it does take a lot of time. So I don’t know, but I am optimistic. And I’m certainly full of ideas.”

And Pete admitted he and Roger have slightly different stances on pushing boundaries at this stage of their career.

He explained: “I think Roger doesn’t want to be selling ideas that are either vague or evolving, that are unfinished.

“But I’m still at a place now where I want to be gambling and taking chances as a studio composer and writer.”

Another potential stumbling block is the idea of hitting the road, with Pete suggesting he may not want to “tour the way we have been touring in recent years”.

He added: “t could be tricky. And I think it’s partly because we’re getting older, and partly because this lockdown has left us flailing quite a bit.

“I think Roger just wants to get out and use his voice. And so it feels to me like what he’ll want to do is play catch-up with touring, which is very much what we did after I took a great long sabbatical from The Who from the end of ’82 right through to ’96, pretty much.

“But I don’t know the extent to which I will be willing to tour the way we have been touring in recent years, although I have been finding it easy and I’ve been finding it interesting.”