Pete sat down with Matt Everitt at his studio in Richmond to chat about the new Tommy box set, a 50th Anniversary tour with The Who in 2015, and his upcoming solo project. The interview aired on BBC Radio 6 this morning, and is available online for 7 days on the BBC website.
UPDATE: The full interview is now up on youtube.
Pete was also featured in a 2 part interview on In The Studio with Redbeard, which is available on their website (part 1 and part 2).
Here is an excerpt from the BBC interview.
Matt Everitt: “Are you going to tour next year? Are you going to do something for the 50th anniversary?”
Pete Townshend: “Not next year. I think it will be 2015, and I think it will be BIG, only from my point of view. Roger will be 70, I will be damned close, I will be 70 in May in 2015. I don't want to have the possibility of having to tour hanging over me, so my notion is to tour to make people happy, make myself happy, and just sort of get that behind me. And then to maybe downsize in my life, and try and work out what it is I want to do as a musician, a composer, a writer, whatever. The 50th anniversary is something to celebrate, but today we can make a record and nobody would be interested in it. As a solo artist I think I can make a record that is exactly the kind of record that can serve what it is that I feel that I need to do. I feel that under the Who banner, Roger and I have great difficulty. I'm not saying we are at odds, I'm not saying we are at war, I'm not saying we don't know what to do, I'm just saying that it's difficult. It always has been difficult, and it's no less difficult today. I think it's more difficult today because we might be thinking or telling ourselves, this is the last record we are ever, ever gonna make together that anyone is going to take any notice of really, because it's our 50th anniversary. So, there are two ways to go about it. There's the Roger Daltrey method which is 'Pete, lets just stop worrying about it and lets go into the studio with a good bunch of great guys and lets just knock out some songs and see how it comes out.' Or there's my side of it which is, this is an opportunity to make a record that might be a bit smart, a bit clever, a bit exciting, a bit dangerous. It might be the best record we ever make. So there are those two sides of it. That's our difficulty. Once Roger and I sat in a room and tried to write a song together at my studio by the river, and after 2 hours sitting on stools we both held guitars, we realized that we had just been talking. And I said to him, 'we are not really going to write a song are we?' and he said 'no, I don't think we are.' <laughs>”
The Tommy Super Deluxe box set is available now from Amazon and the usual retail outlets.
