Who are they?

Read this -

And then read this -

This captures all the reasons I still love this band/ these guys and will always make time to listen to whatever Townshend decides to do next. Any band of this size and vintage would have figured out a neatly worked, manicured and tweezed story for the press and the public by now, containing just the right proportions of the following:

- Yes, we had our differences but we're like brothers now that we've discovered how much we mean to each other.
- No, we never wrote songs together, but I was surprised how much he brought to the process this time and it really opened my eyes.
- No, no, no it's never been about the money for us. Honest.
- This album really is a return to form for us.
- We love all of this new technology and all of this new stuff - it's a great way for us to communicate directly with our fans.

The Who? Townshend says of the last few Who tours: 'When Roger and I were on our last tour with John, I sat with our manager, Bill Curbishley, on the last day and asked, "Are we gonna do this again?" He said, "If you want to, we can always do it again." And I said, "Is there any possibility that we're enabling John Entwistle? Rather than helping him, what we're actually doing is sending him home with, after tax, probably a million dollars, half of it's probably gonna go up his girlfriend's nose." God rest her soul, she's dead now. I thought, "I don't need to play old Who songs. I could sell them to fucking CSI."'

And this next bit is, for my money, the most brutally honest and direct statement to come out of any rocker of his generation in what - 30 years? (Take notes Sir Mick, when you're done shtupping 25 year old models!) From Rolling Stone:

'I don't think that the big boomer bands are going to be able to do this much longer. I really don't. We're fucking lucky to be able to do it, but I don't think we'll be able to do it much longer. I don't want to go out and see Bob Dylan. I don't want to go out and see the Stones. I wouldn't pay money to go see the Who, not even with new songs. I wouldn't pay money to go see Crosby, Stills and Nash. They fucking make me sick. When I say that, what I mean is I'm ageist about it. I don't want to look at these old guys in their self-congratulatory mode. Somebody gave me tickets for Marlene Dietrich's last concert in London, and apparently she came out and she looked fantastic under the lights, but you know that she's an eighty-year-old woman held together by glue and string. Why would you want to do that? I'd prefer to come and see Elaine Stritch down in the bar here. My point is, I don't think it will go on much longer.

Our audience, our boomer audience, are sustaining it. It's not young kids. People say, "Oh, I went to a Rolling Stones concert and there were lots of young people there!" Once. They come once. I went to see Jimmy Reed once. I went to see John Lee Hooker once. I went to see Jimmy Smith once. I went to see Ray Charles once. I just wanted to be able to say I saw him. If Charlie Parker had been alive, I would have seen him once. I saw Roland Kirk once. I saw them all once. I wouldn't follow them around the fucking world. There's a lot of people that come and see bands like the Who once.

RS: It works out fine, right? Because those same artists aren't going to be touring forever. It's not like fifteen years from now you're going to be like, "Oh, I guess nobody wants to come to our shows anymore."

'No, my point is when you look at the commerce behind the music business, what's running the whole thing is live shows. The problem for the Who is because we can go out and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket grosses, we're a commodity and treated as such. It would be nice if it was the same with the record, but it won't be. Universal are probably stamping around today thinking, "Oh, my God, not another fucking Who record. Oh, my God, what do we do? Thank God for the Scissor Sisters!"'

The last bit is as funny as it is true - acts of the Who's vintage often put out new albums just for a hook to hang a tour on. The bands I'd hail as honourable exceptions would be few - Neil Young (NOT CNSY - when I went to see them, I pretty much sold it to myself as Young + 3), Dylan and I can't think of anyone else. Townshend will be well aware that he himself released two very average 'new songs' as part of the 73rd Greatest Hits compilation from The Who two years ago and then went on tour ...

Still - bracing stuff.