Pete Townshend Changes His Mind About The Who Farewell Tour

Pete Townshend has been all over the place when talking about a potential Who farewell tour. First he said the band would "certainly will tour" one last time , before saying "I'm not doing a farewell tour" back in April. Now, it sounds like the guitarist is back onboard. However, there's one problem: he doesn't "converse" with his bandmate Roger Daltrey , and doesn't want to "bully" him into a reunion.

"I'm not gonna try to bully Roger to do anything," Townshend said during an interview with the Daily Beast after being asked about the possibility of getting back in the studio and on the road. "I don't want to have the job that I used to have around the time of Quadrophenia , which is bullying everybody in the Who to do exactly what I want to do."

"I'm hoping Roger and I can find some common ground and find some way to work again, possibly without an orchestra because I think we've done that," he added, referring to a string of orchestral shows in the UK last year. "But also, there's this sense that we're in the last tour period of our career. Are we just hoping to do what Bob Dylan does and just keep going?"

Daltrey toured in North America last month , and Townshend liked the style of that setup. "I'm encouraged by seeing what Roger's doing in his solo tour," he noted. "It seems to me that if we put a small band together and just decided to throw s*** at the wall, it might be great."

Then he pointed out the largest obstacle: "Roger and I don't converse. We don't talk. So, it might be difficult to land on something that we both share an interest in – but it's there for the taking, I think," Townshend admitted. "I'm hopeful. I’m certainly not saying that we won't do anything, but Roger and I do have a bit of a river to cross. And once we cross that river, we'll see what happens."