True to form, surviving Who members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend haven't seen each other during the pandemic. During a chat with BBC Radio, the Who frontman explained, “We have completely different lives, but y'know, who knows where it will go…? I don't know where it will go in the future. All I know is we won't see each other now probably until spring. I haven't seen him for two years. Do I miss seeing him? No. I know what he looks like.”
He went on to say, “”I'll see him when I see him, that space between us doesn't exist because our brains are somewhere else. And when we get together, it's that creative thing that will still be there, I'm confident that it will be. People don't quite understand our relationship. There's creative friction, which is healthy, you’ve got to have that. . . friction is necessary, it's good.”
Daltrey, who first met Townshend in their adolescence, explained, “There's a deep connection between the two of us, but we're not in-our-pocket friends, y'know? It's not like that, but the creative process that we can conjure up between us is incredibly healthy, and there's an awful lot of love in the relationship, that's all I can say.”
Roger Daltrey told us he believes the band's latest music on 2019's WHO album easily stands tall alongside the band's most beloved material: “I think it's some of our best work since the '70s. I would've liked a bit more time on it, 'cause we did it in a bit of a rush, 'cause it was supposed to be out in July and they pushed the date back for release 'til now. But, all in all, I'm pleased with it. It's good. It's really good stuff. It shows that Pete hasn't lost his bite as a writer — as a songwriter. Which is important, y'know, he's just not a product stuck in the '60s — he's very much a man of today.” SOUNDCUE
In an exclusive interview with us, Pete Townshend spoke frankly about the artistic and commercial merits of him and Roger Daltrey driving the Who in today's age: “It's not just about the largest numbers, it's about the greatest effectiveness. And I think that Roger and I, together — once the creative work is done — we're a good delivery system; that's what we understand. Y'know, maybe what I've done is found a balance between my solo needs, creatively, and my needs to feel that the Who was not just a stereotypical classic rock machine churning out songs that were eventually be used to sell soap powder. Y'know, we have really put down some very, very clear boundaries: This is what you get.”
