Pete Townshend has brought his fantastic new production of Quadrophenia, a Rock Ballet to America, which premiered at the New York City Center on November 14, and ran for four performances to packed audiences and critical praise.
To help promote the New York premiere, Pete went on a few popular TV and radio programs to talk about the new Quadrophenia ballet in the week leading up to the shows.
As always, Pete’s conversations were highly entertaining and interesting to listen to, and covered a wide range of topics, including his thoughts on future creative work.
Here are a few videos and excerpts from those interviews.
Morning Joe - November 12, 2025
Pete Townshend and Rachel Fuller chatted with host Joe Scarborough on the Morning Joe program on MSNBC.
Here are a few excerpts from Pete and Rachel's conversation on Morning Joe.
Pete: "The orchestration [for the Quadrophenia ballet] is so faithful to the original album. The original album had pretensions to orchestrations. I had synthesizers to copy strings and woodwinds and choral sounds. John Entwistle, was trained as a young man as a brass player. He was in something we have in the UK called the boys brigade, and he used to march with a cornet and his trumpet. On the Quadrophenia album he orchestrated all of the brass and we recorded it for real. I dealt with the strings with a synthesizer. But lots of it, I was trying to create an orchestral pallet. So when Rachel turned it into real orchestra, it just blew me away. It was like a closing of a circle for me really."
Rachel: "When Pete asked if I’d orchestrate it, I was happy to do it. I didn’t know the album very well, but Pete gave me all the original master recordings so I could isolate Keith Moon and John Entwistle and Roger’s vocals and Pete on guitar. I really just did a transcription from those master recordings to symphony orchestra."
Pete: "I went to a lot of ballets when I was young. The Who’s manager Kit Lambert’s father was Constant Lambert, who actually founded the Festival Ballet at Covent Garden in the UK. We got free tickets to go and see ballet, so I went a lot when I was young. I love ballet, and I have friends who are in ballet, so I understood it. But I have to say it was just really hearing Rachel’s orchestrations, that were done really just to put in a box, to put in an archive and so that when I was dead and gone somebody might find it and play it in public, and it just sounded like a ballet score, it sounded like Stravinsky to me, if that’s not being pretentious. It just sounded rhythmic and powerful, and would be great to dance to."
Rachel: "Dance as a medium is a completely new way to tell this story. It’s not a classical ballet, although there are classical elements in the choreography. We worked with this amazing choreographer, Paul Roberts, who was trained in both classical and modern dance. So it was trying to tell a clear narrative that people could understand and identify with, but using only movement. Pete, at the very first workshop, came to see what was happening, and described it as poetry."
Late Show with Stephen Colbert - November 12, 2025
Pete appeared for the first time on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS. Here's the extended interview with extra bits that were cut from the broadcast.
Pete discussed Quadrophenia with Stephen Colbert, and what he has been up to lately with his unreleased music.
Pete: "I don’t reimagine Quadrophenia, it comes around. This sounds a bit pretentious, but then I am pretentious. It’s like Romeo and Juliet. It’s a perennial story, it’s just a story about a young guy who falls in love with a girl. And in Quadrophenia, you have this kid who can’t get the girl. He’s got a couple of friends, but he feels disconnected. He feels that he doesn’t belong. He goes to a psychotherapist, he goes to a preacher, he talks to his mom, he talks to his dad, he talks to the Ace Face, the king mod who’s the head of the gang, and nothing works for him. And he ends up on a rock by the sea, praying. That’s where the song Love Reign O’er Me comes from, and Love Reign O’er Me is one of the best things I have ever written."
Pete: “I’ve got about 350, 450 pieces of [unheard recorded] music. A lot of it is probably terrible. I’ve managed to wade through about half of it. I don’t know what to do with it. I’m also quite interested in AI. I’m quite interested in getting some of my old songs that didn’t quite work because I didn’t quite get them right first time round, and put them up on Suno or some AI music machine and seeing what it can make of it. There might be some hits!”
Pete also sat in with Louis Cato and the Late Show band, before his interview with Colbert. They performed the Late Show theme song, Drowned, 5:15, and Let My Love Open the Door during the commercial breaks.
iHeartRadio ICONS Q&A with Jim Kerr - November 13, 2025
Pete did a Q&A with iHeartRadio's Jim Kerr on an hour long live broadcast from the iHeartRadio studio, which is located next to the New York City Center theatre where the Quadrophenia ballet was staged.
Pete's long conversation with Jim Kerr covered a wide range of topics, including Quadrophenia, his thoughts on bringing Lifehouse to the Sphere, his recent creative work and painting, and the possibility of more Who shows.
Pete: "What’s interesting about Quadrophenia the ballet is that it’s a hybrid really. We are used to seeing in theatre musicals and Broadway musicals, we’re used to seeing kids dance, and when people train to be actors in musicals, they have to learn to dance. But most of these kids are trained in ballet, so the kind of things they do are Romeo and Juliet and stuff like that. This was a different journey for them. The three principle boys, Paris, Dan and Seirian, were at the very first workshop. They put together this first little bit with sadly our choreographer Paul Roberts. Sweet, sweet, fantastic talented guy. He got cancer before the show finished in London and died. We wanted to bring him here to New York, but unfortunately we will have to bring him in spirit, and we miss him terribly. He and this group of three boys created this fantastic poetic action right at the beginning of the piece, and it’s lasted. It is what made me feel that this would work. There’s a new poetry in there, and it’s rock and roll for sure. You know, this is about mods and rockers, the rockers don’t get much of a look in, it’s mainly about mod kids. You know ’62, ’64, that kind of period when we were all struggling to find who we were."
Pete: "[Audiences at the ballet] will hear the story in the way I intended. The thing about making a subtle heartbreaking album with a band like The Who was tricky. Because we were at the height of our bombast, incredible recording skills, great musicianship. John Entwistle’s horn playing on the album was just spectacular, my synthesizer playing was just spectacular, Rogers voice was just superb, particularly on Love Reign O’er Me. Though that stuff told the story, people in a sense had to look at the album sleeve and read the story that I’d written on the album jacket to get the story. This one you get the story. And also you get a chance to interpolate and inject your own stuff. That’s what good art is about. This is a really artistic production. As well as being fantastic fun, it’s great to watch, it’s beautiful. The audiences in the UK went nuts for it, so I’m hoping the same thing will happen here."
Pete: "Jeff Krelitz (who is the guy who put the Lifehouse comic together) and I just had coffee this afternoon, and he reminded me that I also sort of invented the Sphere. Because the Lifehouse closes with this huge concert, and if you go to the Sphere, watch out because in Lifehouse the audience gets so high they disappear. I’ve not been, I’ve not seen [the Sphere in Las Vegas]. I’m very excited by it. The people who run it wanted it to be a place where bands would play. The guy that built it is the guy that runs the Madison Square Garden, and he’s a big music fan, and a rock band fan, and he wanted it to be about music with fantastic visuals. Since then it has become a medium where there’s some storytelling. So maybe Lifehouse might be great for the Sphere. I don’t know, but we shall see."
Pete: "I do what I do because I love being creative, more than I do performing. I’m happier being creative. I’m happier being in my studio writing songs. I’m trying to get back into painting pictures, because as a kid I went to art school. So many musicians do paint, Joni Mitchell, Chrissie Hynde, Bob Dylan, loads of people paint. So I’m making art of all kinds."
Pete: "[The Who] didn’t say Farewell, we did a Farewell tour. Elton John did 330 shows, we did 22. We’ve got a few left. If you want them, we are ready."
Pete also brought along his J200 acoustic guitar and performed a bunch of songs during the iHeartRadio broadcast. His set included Let My Love Open the Door, Pinball Wizard, I'm One, Drowned, Behind Blue Eyes, Let's See Action, We Won't Get Fooled Again, Magic Bus. A clip of Drowned was also played from the ballet.
Q104.3 radio interview with Jim Kerr - November 13, 2025
Pete did another 30 minute radio interview with Jim Kerr for Q104.3 New York's Classic Rock station, which was broadcast from the iHeartRadio studio.
Here is an excerpt from the Q104.3 radio interview with Jim Kerr.
Pete: "When I first saw it in workshop, a bunch of young guys in their 20’s and a couple of girls in their 20’s, dancing their stuff, it suddenly came to life in a new way. It belonged to them, and not to me, and not to rock history. It belonged to them, and not to The Who. It belonged to them, and not to Who fans. It became something which they inhabited and which they brought to life in a new way. And when I watch the dancers dance now, Quadrophenia has a new function. I’ve always felt that art has to have a function. And it was a shock to me. I knew people could dance to it, but I didn’t realize how pure it would be. How effective it would be is really moving. I’m a huge fan of the show, It’s a great show, but I’m also a huge fan of the company of dancers. We were so lucky to be able to bring our dancers from the UK over here."
iHeartRadio Broadway – November 14, 2025
Director Rob Ashford & Dancer Paris Fitzpatrick who plays Jimmy discussed the new Quadrophenia ballet with iHeartRado Broadway.
Quadrophenia, a Rock Ballet Conversation – November 10, 2025
Pete Townshend and Phil Griffin (husband of the late Paul Roberts, who choreographed the ballet) discussed the evolution and cultural significance of Quadrophenia as a modern ballet. Their conversation is accompanied by lovely videos of early rehearsals for the Sadler's Wells production of the Quadrophenia ballet with Paul Roberts that took place in March 2025.
Here is an excerpt from Pete's conversation with Phil Griffin.
Pete: "I think I feel confronted by the fact that I’ve had to talk about [the new production] a lot, and I’ve had to talk about Quadrophenia a lot, I also wrote it, so I suppose I have to stand by it as the author. But this is a new interpretation of it, and it’s not one that I guided particularly. So I think in a way, the sense of confrontation is that I’m challenged to talk about things that I don’t really know. I don’t really know where this came from in the first place. I don’t really know quite how it happened. I also don’t know how it fits into todays world. What the ballet is doing is exercising an artistic set of decisions based on stuff, artistic decisions in the same field that have come before. It’s echoes, it feels to me like echoes. When I wrote Quadrophenia, when I wrote My Generation, when I’ve written every song that I’ve ever written, any story I’ve ever written, I’ve often been unable to see myself in them. And yet when I’m far enough along, far enough away from them, when I’m talking about them from a distance, I can see very, very clearly my role and my position in them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I understand my response to a new piece like the Quadrophenia ballet. That feels to me to be something that I can compare to other ballets that I will go and see this year, other movies that I see, other books that I read, other music that I listen to. I think it stands for me as something which is fresh. A fresh experience. Rather than being comforted or confronted, I feel that I’m travelling with it, and I hope I can keep up."
