We have no choice, unfortunately. The insurers are the ones making these dictates. This is not the Rolling Stones or Elton John [making these calls]. This is the insurers. They are insisting that they won’t pay out if you cancel because of Covid. That’s the first thing. And secondly, if they do pay out, they only pay out 85 percent. And thirdly, they up their charges from 2.5 percent to 5 percent and now to 8 percent of the gross income on a tour. It’s absolutely brutal.

I’ve been reading about a Keith Moon biopic for about 20 years. It seems like it’s finally happening now. So there’s lots of stuff going on. We’re really looking at the way the pandemic has hit the country. And in the U.K., we’ve also had the effect of Brexit, the political upheavals, and all kinds of stuff. But the big news in the U.K. at the moment, and I’m sure you’re conscious of it in America even though you’re farther away, is what’s going to happen in Russia and Ukraine. I’d done the demo, by the way. The difference between my demo and his was really the difference in age, the difference in experience, the difference in craft. It’s a masterpiece. It’s the last thing he did, sadly, since he didn’t live long enough to do Faust. He’d learned all the lines, apparently. Pete Townshend Details Massive 'Who Came First' Reissue - Rolling Stone". Rolling Stone. 20 February 2018.I’m hoping that by May that those restrictions will have been eased a little bit. That’s because your first question was the obvious one: “Are you looking forward to this?” I laughed because this has never been something I love to do, but one of the things that I do greatly enjoy about touring is that people know where you are.

Because I don’t think, at the moment, I need to do that. I think I need to finish The Age of Anxiety… My original idea was the novel would come out, I’d put out an album, and then I’d do an art installation. What actually happened was I put the album out, and then the pandemic hit and there was no question of putting an album out. There’s been a big gap between the publication of the novel and the possibility of putting out an album of music. And so I need to find a new bridge, in a sense, and I’m still thinking that through, getting advice from various people. With the orchestra, it’s a similar effect. It’s almost like I could stand there for a good 50 percent of the show and play nothing at all. What’s interesting about that is that it gives me a chance to make sure what I do play, what I do do, where I look, how I behave on the stage, is more connected with the people around me, with the audience, and with, I suppose, to get prosaic about it, an inner sense. In other words, I don’t lose myself the way I did when I used to jump around, have a big adrenaline rush, and then come off the stage and someone would say, “Great show,” or someone would say, “Terrible show,” and I wouldn’t really know what I had done, to be honest, since I was like someone running a marathon. So the orchestra gives me space.

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Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrateded.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p.312. ISBN 0-646-11917-6. A lot of the Who’s music is already fairly heavily decorated and dense harmonically anyway, so we’re not like the Stones or the Kinks. With an an album like Quadrophenia, for example, there was brass and there was violins. There were lots of synthesizers on it. On subsequent albums, I’ve always used a lot of synthesizers and keyboards. We kind of cruised through the 1980s, even though our recording career ended in 1982, but we cruised through that period with our music sounding really quite rich.

In other words, they wouldn’t insure us again until the pandemic was very, very behind us. We’ll do that in 2023, I think … 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 what’s going to happen next month or the month after. I’ve been working with a very interesting group called the Bookshop Band. They write songs about novels and fictional books. They’ve done a couple tours of America playing bookshops. I’ve just done the score for Robin Robin, which is an animated film. I think it’s up for a couple of awards. Their work is just fabulous. You turn 80 in about three years. Do you still want to be onstage then, or do you view that as a time when you might step aside?Pete Townshend of The Who has revealed Keir Starmer was the lawyer who challenged him in Townshend’s infamous child pornography case. To be relieved of that responsibility, in a sense … because Roger 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. I have somewhat of a random question, but I just re-watched Freaks and Geeks. They used a ton of your songs in really poignant and interesting ways. I’m wondering if you ever saw it. That sums it up. I’ll let you go. I know you aren’t looking forward to the tour all that much, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the show when it hits New York. Atkins, John (1 February 2000), The Who on Record: A Critical History, 1963-1998, McFarland & Company, ISBN 9780786440979 , retrieved 18 June 2016

I’ve been enjoying working with other musicians, and we’ve been doing that work in my studios. I’ve got two studios in the U.K. I’ve kept myself busy musically.So by the time we got to Monterey in ‘67, Pete’s going, ‘Well, that’s my whole show! And it was always a great finale.”