Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend of The Who performs onstage during Desert Trip 2016 held at The Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, United States - Sunday 16th October 2016

The Who To Perform Classic Album 'Tommy' In Special Acoustic Shows For Teenage Cancer Trust

By Ed Biggs in Music / Festivals on 28 July 2016

The Who Roger Daltrey Pete Townshend

The Who will play their 1969 classic rock opera 'Tommy' in full at London's Royal Albert Hall on March 30th and April 1st 2017.

Legendary rockers The Who have announced they will revisit their classic album Tommy in acoustic form at next year’s Teenage Cancer Trust shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

The special one-off shows, on March 30th and April 1st 2017, will coincide with the 100th instalment of the Teenage Cancer Trust series, of which the group’s singer Roger Daltrey has been a patron for many years.

At the performances, The Who will play Tommy from start to finish in acoustic form accompanied by a special video presentation, along with a selection of other famous Who hits. Tickets go on sale for the shows from September 23rd.

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The Who Cancels U.S. Tour Dates After Roger Daltrey Diagnosed With Viral Meningitis

By Elinor Cosgrave in Music / Festivals on 19 September 2015

The Who Pete Townshend Roger Daltrey

Roger Daltrey has been diagnosed with viral meningitis and the remainder of The Who’s tour dates in North America have been postponed until next year.

The Who have cancelled the rest of their dates in the U.S. leg of their 50th anniversary world tour as Roger Daltrey is ill with viral meningitis. The British rock band announced their decision to postpone the dates on their website on Friday (18th September).

Roger Daltrey performing on opening night of the Quadrophenia Tour in November 2012.

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The Who Reveal They Replaced Prince At Glastonbury As They Claim Headlining Set Was 'Sabotaged'

By Stephanie Chase in Music / Festivals on 11 July 2015

The Who Glastonbury Festival Prince Pete Townshend

The band closed the three day festival last month, having last performed there in 2007.

A blog post on the official website of legendary rockers The Who has claimed the band’s Glastonbury set was ‘sabotaged’ and that they were drafted in to headline the festival as a last minute replacement for Prince. The entry is thought to have been written by a member of the band’s road crew who worked behind the scenes during the band’s headling set.

The Who The Who have claimed their Glastonbury set was ‘sabotaged’.

Giving a full account of the band’s Glastonbury performance, the writer reveals that the headliners were actually a ‘last-months addition to the show, replacing Prince who decided not to come this year’. The band closed out the festival on the Sunday evening, following sets from Patti Smith, Paul Weller and Lionel Ritchie.

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Lambert & Stamp Review

By Rich Cline

Very Good

There's a cool 1960s beat to this documentary, which explores the creation of The Who through the eyes of the two men who made them stars, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. Filmmaker James D. Cooper deploys an astonishing collection of unseen photos and film footage to tell the story, including both new and archival interviews with the people involved. And even if there are sequences that feel like they're off the topic, this is a strikingly engaging documentary both about the band and the music industry.

Kit and Chris were the ultimate odd couple: Kit was super-posh (and also gay at a time when being so was illegal), while Chris was a working-class Londoner. But they shared a deep love of art and philosophy, and planned a career together making movies. To kick off their career, they decided to make a film about a band, and they thought the High Numbers were the perfect subjects: neither cute like the Beatles nor brutish like the Stones. They chose one of the band's old names for itself, The Who, and came up with clever ways to build an audience. Then in 1969 their rock opera Tommy pushed The Who into super-stardom, resulting of course in drug use, money issues, fame problems and lots of arguments.

What's most fascinating about Lambert and Stamp is the way they allowed The Who to have a life of its own, constantly shifting their own goals rather than try to make the band what they wanted it to be. Using a range of colour and black-and-white imagery, this lively and witty documentary captures their strong personalities, while carefully detailing how they managed everything from the band's music and clothing to the way they played on-stage (there's a hilarious montage of guitar-smashing). And like Lambert and Stamp themselves, everything is infused with a strong sense of the British class system, which they cleverly exploited for their own gain.

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Lambert & Stamp Trailer

Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were important players in The Who's career. Eager to produce a film based on rock 'n' roll as amateur filmmakers, they ended up managing the group, bringing their music to a wider audience and gleaning interest from the US music industry with top albums such as 'Who's Next', 'Tommy' and 'A Quick One'. They wanted to mentor and document a band that would become renowned for their misfit music and rebellious lifestyle, but within ten years the relationship between the Lambert and Stamp and the band was broken down beyond repair as serious financial issues arose, and their drug fuelled lifestyles began to take their toll on their success.

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The Who Are Releasing Their First New Song In Eight Years

By Hannah Woodhead in Music / Festivals on 28 September 2014

The Who Roger Daltrey Pete Townshend

The Who are releasing their first new song in eight years.

It's been a long wait, but mod legends The Who are releasing their first new song in eight years. What took you so long fellas?!

The Who
Daltrey and Townshend performing in The Netherlands last summer

BBC reported on the news that Roger Daltrey and co would be releasing a new track on their complimation album 'The Who Hits 50!' as the band gear up to celebrate their half-century anniversary. The mammoth album features forty-nine of the band's previous songs as well as their their new song 'Be Lucky'.

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Confusion Reigns On First Night Of The Who Tour As Pete Townshend Walks Off Stage (Photos)

By Contributor in Music / Festivals on 02 November 2012

The Who Pete Townshend

Roger Daltry Florida

"Where's Pete gone?" Confusion reigned on the first night of The Who's tour

The first night of The Who's tour in America got off to a shaky start in Sunrise, Florida last night (November 1, 2012) after guitarist Pete Townshend walked off stage, forcing the legendary rockers to curtail their encore. The night was the first of 36 planned dates and saw the group play all of their seminal 1973 album Quadrophenia as well as classic songs Pinball Wizard, Behind Blue Eyes and Who Are You.

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Pete Townshend: I Paid $7 For Child Pornography Images

By Michael West on 28 September 2012

Pete Townshend The Who

Pete Townshend has broken his nine year silence on the child pornography scandal that threatened to derail his career. The legendary guitarist with The Who was arrested for downloading images of abused children, though has always maintained it was for research reasons.

Now, speaking about the storm in detail for the first time, Townshend still insists he was trying to prove that British banks were complicit in channelling profits from paedophile rings. However, the rocker concedes that he was “insane” to download the images, though when asked why he didn’t speak out sooner said, “Because there was no sense of 'the truth will out'. I've had the misfortune to read online comments where I'm judged as a paedophile because I've got a big nose.” In his new memoir – which is to be serialised in The Times – the guitarist admits he felt suicidal after his vilification in the media, writing, “If I had a gun I would have shot myself…It really did feel like a lynching.”

Before his arrest in 2003, Townshend had posted numerous essays on his personal website as part of his campaign against the widespread availability of child pornography on the internet.

Pete Townshend, Quadrophenia The Director's Cut Video Interview

Interview with Pete Townshend about Quadrophenia The Director's Cut

Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who celebrated the re-release of Quadrophenia: The Director's Cut by performing an intimate acoustic gig at London's Bush Hall in front of 200 guests. The set list included Corrina, Corrina; Acid Queen; I'm One and Drowned. Prior to their gig, there was an hour long question and answer session featuring Pete, who ranks Quadrophenia as the 'last great Who album'.

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Amazing Journey: The Story Of The Who Review

By Christopher Null

Good

"From humble beginnings to their meteoric rise to rock legend status," Amazing Journey offers everything we've come to expect from a rock documentary. Every piece of information you'd want about The Who can be found here. Early hits like "I Can't Explain" and "My Generation" are chronicled, as is Pete Townshend's instrumental destruction (which has since become a widely copied cliche). Each member of the band gets face time -- though John Entwhistle and Keith Moon, both deceased, are covered via archival material -- in order to pontificate on the band's origins and legendary stories. Non-Who rock gods, from Sting to Eddie Vedder, are also on hand to wax Whoish.

You really hear all there is to know about The Who along the way: from Tommy to two drug overdoses to the influence of guru Meher Baba (the "Baba" in "Baba O'Reilly") to the 11 people killed at a 1979 Who concert trampled trying to get into the show, still the deadliest concert event in American history. Even Townsend's run-in with the law over a child pornography incident earlier in the decade is covered, if only on a surface level.

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