The Who may have played their last-ever U.S. dates. The veteran Rock and Roll Hall of Famers who’ve been taking their closing curtain calls since their “final” show in 1982 may actually be done playing shows in the U.S. according to singer Roger Daltrey.
While the band has some more Who Hits Back shows boked in Europe this summer, Daltrey, 79, told USA Today that another hop across the ocean might be out of the question. “Nothing at the moment. I don’t know if we’ll ever come back to tour America,” said Daltrey. “There is only one tour we could do, an orchestrated Quadrophenia to round out the catalog. 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.”
As far as what might finally slow the band down, Daltrey said the chaos of the post-pandemic touring economy is a huge reason. “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,” he said of the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns on touring.
“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,” Daltrey explained. “That’s just how the business works. The trouble now is if you get COVID after the first show, you’ve (lost) that money.”
The Who just released the live collection The Who with Orchestra: Live at Wembley, a 20-song chronicle of their 2019 show at the iconic stadium, which marked their first headlining slot there in 40 years. And while Daltrey said the band was in perhaps its finest form ever at the moment, some of their signature bits don’t have quite the same pop as they did a half century ago.
“Pete can’t quite jump 10 foot in the air anymore. He can do 3 foot, so he’s not bad! (Laughs),” he said of the band’s guitarist and only remaining original member. “I don’t swing the microphone hardly at all now because it doesn’t matter to the sound anymore. Before, when all of those things used to work, it was a circus act. We’re more than that now. I’m proud that our music has come of age and I think you could say this is the most modern classical music out there.”
The Who will hit the road again on June 14 with a gig in Barcelona, Spain and on a Euro run that is currently slated to run through an August 28 show in Sandringham, England at the Royal Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.
