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new record?
Who Plan To Record Album While On Summer Tour
Staff Writer Brian Hiatt reports
Sonic.net
Legendary British rockers the Who have gone nearly 20 years without
releasing new songs, but they plan to break that streak
this summer by recording new material live in concert, singer Roger
Daltrey said.
"I'm hoping it will be just another live album, [but] with new
songs,"
Daltrey said last week, relaxing in a chair in a
Manhattan hotel room. "We might not make this record in the studio.
I'm hoping we don't."
The 56-year-old singer's famous curly hair was cropped short, but
intact. His face showed wear, but his blue eyes were as
bright as ever, even behind a professorial pair of gold-rimmed
glasses.
Not only does the band hope to record new material live, but they
also
plan to write songs through onstage improvisation,
according to bassist John Entwistle.
"Maybe a lot of songs will come out of stage performances
we'll go
into a bit that could be a new song. A lot will come just from
listening," he said, sitting in
a room down the hall from his bandmate the same afternoon.
Entwistle, 55, who damaged his hearing years ago in the recording
studio not during the band's notoriously loud shows, leaned in
close
to hear questions. He
wore a denim jacket bearing a Hard Rock Cafe logo.
'We Need Communication And Honesty'
Before the band embarks on its reunion tour in June, its three
surviving original members guitarist Pete Townshend, Daltrey
and
Entwistle (drummer
Keith Moon died in 1978) will join together in the bassist's
home
studio to listen to three new songs written by Daltrey.
"We're hoping to get together ... to chat and mix and talk," Daltrey
said. "What we need is communication and honesty, really. Let's see
what their feelings are
about what I've written and see if it inspires them."
The singer is hesitant to flesh out the material he's written, he
said, instead hoping that Townshend, who has always been the band's
primary songwriter, will
help shape the songs, with Entwistle.
"I don't want us to get back to the situation we used to have with
Pete in the latter days, where he would come up with such a perfect
demo that you'd end up just
trying to copy it," Daltrey said. "I want them to be organic from
the
band."
In a press conference the day before, Townshend, the author of
countless rock classics, including "My Generation" and "Won't Get
Fooled Again," said it was high time that he and Daltrey collaborate
on songs.
"Roger and I have never written a song together, and that's what
we're
going to try to do," he said. "We're in our mid-50s if we can't
do it
now, we never
will."
For his part, Daltrey said he hopes to help Townshend rise to the
challenge of writing new Who songs that reflect the current lives of
the band and many of their
fans.
"It's always perplexed me that rock 'n' roll writers can write about
the angst of adolescence so easily, and yet give up when it comes to
all the f---ing problems of
getting old and middle-aged," Daltrey said, so intensely that he
began
to stammer. "There's an awful lot of people [our age] out there that
could do with the same
help in their lives now as they got from Quadrophenia when they were
that age."
Returning To Their Roots
After years of live shows in which they were backed by armies of
musicians, the Who rediscovered themselves in several stripped-down
performances last year,
Entwistle said. Some of those performances are captured on The Blues
to the Bush, the band's new Internet-only live album.
"We always had an orchestra to hide behind we never really
felt like
the Who back then," Entwistle said. "It's much more like the old Who
we're actually
playing together."
Before those scattered dates last year, the Who last toured in 1997.
The band hasn't recorded a studio album since 1982's It's Hard.
This summer's reunion tour will begin June 25 at Tinley Park, Ill.'s
New World Music Theater.