The Who‘s Pete Townshend recently told U.K. magazine Uncut that he’d amassed ideas for a lot of fresh songs that potentially could be part of a follow-up to the band’s 2019 studio album WHO, but in a new Rolling Stone interview, Townshend backtracks on his remarks.
“I’m not working on the next Who record,” he tells Rolling Stone, explaining that since his Uncut interview, he read that singer Roger Daltrey had expressed to the press that he wasn’t enthusiastic about a new Who album, which has made him question whether to move forward with the project.
“I think [Roger and I] really need to have another proper conversation,” Pete notes. “Until we have that conversation, I don’t think there’s any real prospect of a Who album developing.”
Townshend adds, “I need to know that I’m facilitating Roger’s needs as a singer. There’s only two of us now. And these days, he insists on having music to sing [that] he believes in, completely and utterly…Unless he can inhabit the story of the song, he can’t do a good job. And so it means that I have to, in a sense, work as a tailor.”
Pete reveals that he does “have a number of ideas,” noting that he’s been “working on a variety of things” during the last year, including music for a project based on his 2019 novel The Age of Anxiety.
Meanwhile, the latest in a series of free three-song digital EPs featuring advance tracks from the upcoming deluxe reissue of The Who Sell Out was released today. The tracks are combined multiple outtakes of “Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand,” an early take of the rarity “Melancholia” and an early version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
The reissue will be released on April 23.
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