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TOWNSHEND SAYS THIS ISN’T THE WHO’S FAREWELL

Rock fans are feeling a little bit of normalcy creep back into their lives with the Who going back on the road after being sidlined by the pandemic. Pete Townshend is adamant that the upcoming Who dates are not a “farewell tour,” telling Rolling Stone, “Roger (Daltrey) is of the opinion that he wants to sing until he drops. That’s not my philosophy of life. There are other things that I want to do, still want to do, and will do, I hope. I hope I’ll live long enough to do them.”

He went on to say, “But it’s not a farewell tour. Apart from anything else, we still have people who have tickets for the U.K. 2019 tour. We’re very, very keen to do that tour and we’ll be doing that tour in 2023, I think. But I’m talking about stuff I don’t really know about. I don’t have any guarantees, like everybody else. I don’t really know for sure what’s going to happen next month.”

Pete Townshend says that although the current touring version of the Who pays homage to the band’s ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s lineups — do not confuse it as a tribute “act”: “Y’know, there’s a temptation to describe what it is that we’re doing with the Who as a nostalgia exercise, but actually what it is a virtual reality exercise, really. It’s about trying to re-create what was once there, and inasmuch as we don’t particularly need to — it would be nice to have some new material. But y’know, inasmuch as we don’t need new material to do what we used to do, we can pretty much use the same techniques.”

DALTREY TALKS CINCINATTI RETURN AND BENEFIT SHOW

One stop will be extremely poignant for the band will be on May 15th when after 42 long years, the Who will return to Cincinnati. The stop will be the band’s first in the city since December 3rd, 1979 when 11 fans died in a stampede while entering their concert at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum.

Roger Daltrey appeared on Cincinnati’s ABC-TV affiliate WCPO and revealed that the concert will be a benefit show with the proceeds going to The P.E.M. Memorial Scholarship Fund For Finneytown High School Seniors. The fund is named in honor of three Finneytown students who died at the concert — Steve Preston who had graduated in June 1979 along with Jackie Eckerle and Karen Morrison — who both would’ve graduated in 1982: “We’re going to do a benefit show for the P.E.M. Memorial, which is the existing foundation today that gives out scholarships for youngsters in the Cincinnati area. And we’ll be playing in the new football stadium, the PQL Stadium. It’s about time. It’s taken a long time, I know, but it’s the least we can do in our final years to say thank you to Cincinnati, ’cause it’s a great rock town. You’ve been very, very good to us.”