Image: Mufc13, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s doesn’t appear very likely that we’ll ever see The Who touring again on this side of The Pond. In a recent chat with USA Today, talking up the band’s live album The Who With Orchestra: Live At Wembley, Roger Daltrey pretty much put paid to that idea.
According to Rog, the last time they toured North America, there was just too much economic uncertainty: “I don’t know if we’ll ever come back to tour America. There is only one tour we could do, an orchestrated Quadrophenia to round out the catalog,” he said. “But that’s one tall order to sing that piece of music, as I’ll be 80 next year. I never say never, but at the moment it’s very doubtful.
“Touring has become very difficult since COVID. We cannot get insured and most of the big bands doing arena shows, by the time they do their first show and rehearsals and get the staging and crew together, all the buses and hotels, you’re upwards $600,000 to a million in the hole. To earn that back, if you’re doing a 12-show run, you don’t start to earn it back until the seventh or eighth show. That’s just how the business works. The trouble now is if you get COVID after the first show, you’ve lost that money.”
Elsewhere in WhoVille, Pete Townshend recently dropped his first solo tune in thirty years.
Love, Dr. Scott James
