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Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have been on the road together for decades, and the pair are back out again this fall with a 17-date North American tour. At age 80, the former Who guitarist has reflected on the trials and tribulations of touring life, describing the occasional loneliness of his current life on the road. But for all of his weariness, Townshend has a renewed sense of gratitude to be alive and playing music, both he and Daltrey said, even as they consider what’s next for The Who.

“It can be lonely,” Townshend said in a new interview with The Times. “I’ve thought, ‘Well, this is my job. I’m happy to have the work, but I prefer to be doing something else.’ Then I think, ‘Well, I’m 80 years old. Why shouldn’t I revel in it? Why shouldn’t I celebrate?”

Townshend is on the road to perform what he described in a 2023 Rolling Stone interview as his “heavy-metal fairytales.” As he and Daltrey reflected on their time in music and with The Who in particular, though, the guitarist also expressed a sense of the toll that touring had taken on him as he aged. The band, he said, has become something bigger than itself. “It’s a brand rather than a band,” he told The Times. “Roger and I have a duty to the music and the history. The Who [still] sells records, the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires, thank God. But, really, the art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

Townshend was referring to late Who drummer Keith Moon and late bassist John Entwistle, who both died in the mid-1970s. The Moon and Entwistle families have benefited from the band’s continued success, but the weight of the Who’s past also raises questions about the band’s current place in life for Townshend, too. “It does whet an appetite to think about how we should bow out in our personal lives,” he added. “What we do with our families and our friends and everything else at this age. We’re lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to playing. Roger likes to throw wild cards out sometimes in the set, and we have learned and rehearsed a few songs that we don’t always play.”

After 50-plus years in music, the possibility of surprise songs and the newness of rehearsals can help Townshend get through even when touring starts to seem rote. That will be key as he and Daltrey embark on this final tour.

Roger Daltrey Talks About the Tour and Moving Forward

The Who’s frontman, Roger Daltrey, who will be performing with Townshend on the new tour, has said a lot recently about the tour, his future, and what comes next for the band. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he said at the start of a recent interview in The Times. “It’s grueling.”

Daltrey is just as candid and reflective as his bandmate. When they were playing together in London in March for the Teenage Cancer Trust benefit, Daltrey was quick to tell fans about his health. “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” he said onstage, referring to the title character from The Who’s 1969 rock opera of the same name. He finished with a laugh, a nod to one of the album’s most famous lines: “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid.”

Speaking to The Times earlier this month, Daltrey was even more frank about the end of touring and his plans with The Who. There was a finality to his remarks for fans of a band that they have spent decades following. “We’re not finished, but that’s it as far as we’re concerned as far as touring is concerned,” he said. “It’s a very sad day because it’s the end of a dream.”

The wear and tear of performing The Who’s catalog as a full band was constant as the group made music for audiences, but during the band’s prime era, it had become a grueling schedule. “In the days when I was singing Who songs for three hours a night, six nights a week, I was working harder than most footballers,” Daltrey told The Times. The strain of that routine at 80 years old has become hard to come by for Daltrey.

One-off concerts, Daltrey is not sure. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he added. Daltrey is leaving the door open, but the question also encapsulates a larger point of what The Who is: institution, nostalgia, and a work in progress.

While Daltrey is being honest and direct, he has said that he still feels as if his voice is at the top of its game. “My voice is still as good as ever,” Daltrey said. As the band nears the end of its touring life, he is also trying to enjoy the time with his bandmate and the Who. “Right now I want to feel every bit of that love,” he said, “want to let myself feel that.”