The Who Returns

Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend are to release this week their first album in 24 years. Called ‘The Endless Wire’, it contains 10 new tracks that range from ‘rock opera’ to accoustic. The NY Times says:

The album announces that one of the greatest rock bands of all time is back in business as something more than a touring heritage act. The release also puts the spotlight back on the notoriously spiky partnership that helped bring it into being.

Mr. Daltrey, 62, and Mr. Townshend, 61, are the two surviving members of the founding lineup, after the deaths of their incendiary drummer, Keith Moon, in 1978 and Mr. Entwistle in 2002. And though they seem lately to have attained an uneasy peace in their relationship, it was clear in separate interviews — Mr. Daltrey in a friend’s apartment high above Central Park and Mr. Townshend over the phone from a tour stop in Vancouver — that this hasn’t stopped them from taking the occasional swipe at each other.

…For Mr. Daltrey, “Endless Wire” closes a door for the band that was left open after the death of the high-flying Mr. Moon (about whom he is developing a film project, with Mike Myers committed to the role). “We were ill equipped to deal with Keith’s problems at the time,” he said. “If we’d known then what we know now about rehabilitation, we wouldn’t have lost him. So it always felt that if that had really been the end, it wouldn’t have been right. With this album, now there can be an ending. I don’t want it to be, but it can be, and I’m at peace with that.”

Mr. Townshend, characteristically, disagreed with that assessment. “It doesn’t feel like closure; it feels completely new,” he said. “Closure implies that we couldn’t do it again, couldn’t do another album with the same quality and dignity.

“This album isn’t some sort of Who miracle. It’s just two guys who’ve come together to do something creative. It just happens to be under a very powerful brand name.”

Endless Wire On Amazon

The Who On iTunes