The Who Release Live Songs Over Internet

Reuters Photo

By Derek Caney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - ``Hope I die before I get old,'' was the Who's rallying cry in 1965. Now, 35 years later, the British rock band is hoping for new life with a new set of live songs available only on the Internet and a U.S. tour beginning this summer.

The band released on Tuesday ``The Blues To The Bush,'' a series of songs recorded at the band's recent charity reunion shows at the House Of Blues nightclub in Chicago and their first shows since 1966 on their home turf in the Shepherds Bush section of London.

The songs, which include new versions of the band's best-known songs ``My Generation,'' ``Substitute'' and ``Won't Get Fooled Again,'' are only available on the Web through Musicmaker.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:HITS - news) (http://www.musicmaker.com).

Musicmaker.com sells customized compact discs with songs customers choose from its library of 200,000 songs. The songs are also available for downloading onto customer's personal computers in the MP3 and Microsoft Windows Media formats.

The band's surviving members, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle, are also planning a summer tour beginning June 25 in Chicago and in October. They will be joined by drummer Zak Starkey, son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who replaces Keith Moon, who died in 1978.

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``The Blues To The Bush'' is not the band's first foray into the world of the Web. After the Chicago shows, Internet firm Pixelon Inc. hosted and promoted a Webcast of a Who concert in Las Vegas in October. The proceeds of those shows were donated to the Maryville Academy residential facility for troubled youths in Chicago.

``We did these reunion shows last year in the spirit of camaraderie and charity,'' said Townshend, the band's guitarist and main songwriter. ``And when the Pixelon deal came along, through this dot.com commerce, we were able to raise $2 million for Maryville instead of $500,000.

``It felt so good that I went through a mind shift,'' he said. ``An album from those shows released through Musicmaker.com would not only help us find a new audience in a new way, but it could also fund a tour and get us on the road and get us working together and possibly writing together.''

The band, which currently has no record deal, has not released an album of new songs since 1982. Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle have toured together in various incarnations including a ``farewell tour'' in 1982, a reunion tour in 1989, and a stage show of its album ``Quadrophenia'' in 1996, sometimes touring with as many as a dozen backing musicians.

``This is the way the Who was meant to be heard,'' Daltrey said of the band's current lineup, which also includes longtime sideman John Bundrick on keyboards. ``We have more power than ever before. And we're rediscovering what these songs are all about. And we're rediscovering new energy in ourselves.''

In the past, Townshend has been ambivalent about touring with his old bandmates, wary of catering to nostalgia rather than creating new music and challenging their forward.

``People are always interested in where you are,'' he said at a press conference on Monday. ``They already know where you've been. But the first step is to get together. Nothing is going to happen until you get together and play. It is our hope, not a promise, that something happens that feels like a new song.''

Entwistle and Daltrey, for their part, had no qualms about playing the old hits for fans. ``I saw the Eagles reunion tour and I saw the Stones a couple of times in the last few years. When they played their new material, I was bored out of my f+++ing mind. I wanted to hear the hits. That's why I was there. So I know how the audience feels.''

Daltrey agreed. ``It is nostalgia, but it's also my life,'' he said. ``That's my blood, sweat, a lot of tears and a lot of broken bones that went into those songs.''

Townshend said he did not see the sense in assembling in a studio to work on new material. ``Nothing is going to get me into a studio with some big producer for six months to a year to wring new songs out of me,'' he said. ``I can't do that anymore.''