Who press conference 10 April 2000

[Ken in MD <seahawkman2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Monday April 10, 2000 
The Who disagree over new material
By PAUL CANTIN
Senior Reporter, JAM! Showbiz
 The Who have proven to be famously fractious during
their 30-plus years together, and even now, as the
50-ish band members announced this summer's reunion
tour, the concept of "consensus" appears to be a
work-in-progress. 

Take, for example, the issue of whether The Who will
perform any new material on tour. Both singer Roger
Daltrey and guitarist-songwriter Pete Townshend agreed
they would take their stab at writing new songs and
may introduce them into the set. But that's about all
they seem to agree on. 

"I find it interesting, the questions from you all the
time about will there be new material," a
peevish-sounding Daltrey told a press conference that
was webcast Monday from New York. 

"I've been to see artists that I admire, and when they
declare they are going to play a new song, half the
audience gets up and goes to the bar or the toilet. I
don't know what this fascination with it is. It's
weird," he said. 

"It's a balancing act between pleasing yourself as
artists on stage and taking an audience on a journey
where you don't lose them when you say, now we're
going to do a new number. You immediately make them
judgmental. Am I going to like it? 

"We feel (new material) will evolve better on the
road. We don't want to ram new stuff down the throats
of people who don't particularly want to hear new
stuff, because we can't at the present time play
enough of our old stuff. We've got too much material
as it is. We're always letting somebody down." 

But Townshend was quick to disagree with Daltrey about
the importance of new songs. 

"It's because you want to know where you are going to
go. When you look at the Rolling Stones, The Who, The
Kinks, you want to know where they are going to go
now. You know where they have been, you want to know
what they are going to do next," Townshend said, more
to Daltrey than the assembled reporters. 

"I'm just about to finish John Updike's new novel. You
know, he is an old man, but he's writing about where
he is today. You want to hear what we're doing today.
We've got together, so we will see what happens, but
we want to know what will happen," he said of the
reunion plans. 

"When the Stones go out and do their tour, you can
listen to their CD and make your choice. What Roger
has said is true. But it is the creative process
between Mick and Keith I find fascinating, not whether
they can still get up and do what they did. Of course,
they can do that! Mick will always be Mick, Keith will
always be Keith. But can they get over their
differences and still write a song? 

"Roger and I have never written a song together.
That's what we're going to try and do. We're in our
mid-50s, and if we can't do it now, we are never going
to be able to do it." 

The pair revealed that Daltrey has three songs in demo
form he believes are strong enough lyrically to
develop into Who numbers, but they need the melodic
input of Townshend and bassist John Entwistle. For his
part, Townshend said he remains a prolific writer of
music, but his ability to write songs has just about
dried up. 

"You ask me if I have been writing songs, and the
quick answer is no. But you know, in the last eight
years -- and this is the absolute truth, everybody
knows I exaggerate, so just to make sure, I went back
and I counted -- I have 850 pieces of music. But they
are not songs. They are not songs. They are pieces of
music. Sometimes they have words, sometimes they
don't," he said. 

"I am very, very, very prolific, but I don't write
songs anymore. I don't know what it is. I don't have
that need to wrap it all up so you can have it. Maybe
I'm less interested in you," he said, gesturing to the
audience of reporters and critics. 

"We are going to introduce new material. It is a hope,
not a promise. If we make a promise we can't keep, it
would be a mistake. It is a hope that if somewhere on
the road, if I come up with a song or John comes up
with a song, or something happens on the stage that
feels like it could be the start of a song, we could
refine it and introduce it to the music. That way, we
could discover it in the place that we are together
today." 

Townshend also sounded ambivalent about the prospect
of heading into the studio with The Who to try and
crank out an album of new material. 

"We don't have a record deal. Nothing is going to get
me into the studio with a bullying producer to spend
six months trying to wring something out of my soul
which is not appropriate to either the band or the
rock and roll market," he said. 

"I can't imagine ever going into the studio and doing
what we used to do, with a hard-knock producer and
spending six months perfecting something. I don't
think the climate now is about that, not with people
making records in their garages or bedrooms. The days
of the big recording studio routines and spending two
or three million dollars are gone," Townshend said. 

The group also showed a flash of their cranky humor.
When well-known rock critic Ira Robbins asked about
the current state of relations between the band
members, Townshend growled back: "We like each other,
but we f---ing hate you, Ira!" 

Here's some of the other topics The Who touched on
during their press conference. 

On touring as a five piece, with drummer Zak Starkey
and keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick. 

Daltrey: We've obviously been through so many
different formats since Keith (Moon) died, almost
developing into a giant big band. Now we're stripped
back to the raw, and the music seems to have more
energy and power than ever. That is exciting for us.
We're rediscovering it. I'm finding different things
every night. It never gets boring singing Pete
Townshend songs. The band is playing better than ever.


We may be older in ourselves, and individually or even
collectively not have as much energy. But the music
generates as much energy, if not more, than it did in
the '60s and '70s. 

Entwistle: It also allows us to improvise a lot more,
rather than telling 10 people what we're gonna do
next. 

On the 20th anniversary of the making of the movie
"Tommy." 

Daltrey: I had the nightmare of having Ann-Margret as
a mother. 

Townshend: And there was no breast-feeding allowed! 

Daltrey: It was an incredibly difficult acting part,
looking at Ann-Margret every day as my mother, and I
was a rampant, raving sex maniac, and I had to be her
son. 

On Townshend's hearing problem, which had caused him
on recent tours to perform inside a plexiglass baffle,
on acoustic guitar. 

Townshend: Quite simply, I use exactly the same rig
(now that I had) for the "Live At Leeds"-period of Who
work, a slightly different guitar, but the same
amplifiers. But instead of using four rigs, I use one.
So it is a quarter of the size. And I keep it down on
the stage, not in my ear. I've had no trouble at all.
It works great, it sounds good. It is loud enough. 

I don't know quite why we needed to be so loud. We
weren't necessarily the loudest band in the Earth.
What hurt my ears was not guitar, it was recording and
living in the recording studio and getting drunk and
making a great song at home and listening to it over
and over again, like real masturbation stuff. I've
written a great song! Bottle of brandy and listen to
it again and blow my brains out. I never gave myself a
rest. 

My ears are in good shape, thank you for asking! 

On touring with Jimmy Page and The Black Crowes 

Townshend: I have always been a big fan of the Black
Crowes. And also, there is a link because we're both
done albums with Musicmaker. (Page and The Black
Crowes recently released a jointly recorded live album
through the online retailer), which focuses us in the
same place and a unified focus of energy. 

Jimmy played on The Who's first successful record. He
was the rhythm player on "I Can't Explain." It is
going to be good to get to know each other and share
the road in this way. 

On the future of music on the Internet 

Daltrey: Hopefully this musicmaker thing will be a
benefit, but this thing that the youngsters are doing
with downloading for free ... 

Townshend: You refuse to get a computer! 

Daltrey: Yeah, I f--king hate the f--king things!
Unfortunately, the downside is Napestick, or what do
they call it. (Napster, the file-sharing program that
has led to widespread unauthorized copying of music
online). 

The downside is too much downloading for free will
destroy the industry. Artists I don't think will be
prepared to do their work for nothing. 
It might be a very good idea at 16 and at college.
When you leave and have bills to pay, it might not be
the same thing. 

Townshend: It is too early to tell what is going to
happen. Change is happening so quickly, it is too
early to tell. It is a really exciting time. When
Roger said artists won't be willing to work for
nothing, they are. They are (working for nothing). I
think when you are a new band, you work for nothing
for a long, long time. The Who worked for nothing for
a long time. 

When you are writing, you publish your own material,
they call it vanity publishing. When I go out and play
a small hall ... Do you think I made a profit? I
didn't make money, but when you do it, you do it out
of artistic vanity. 

When people write music and they are proud of it, they
will go to any length to get the music before the
public. Unfortunately, what is happening out on the
Web is there is some exploitation of that fact. There
are young bands giving away their music on the web. 

On Townshend's recent licensing of his songs to movies
("Summer Of Sam") and TV commercials for cars and
computers 

Townshend: How do I make my money? I don't do it by
selling CDs. I made more money last year just by
sitting on my ass than anything else. If I want to
make money now, I have to look at turning the music
and artistry and history I have into ... If it is
about paying the rent, and it comes to push coming to
shove, the only way I can do it is to sell a piece of
my history to a movie or Hyundai cars, or
alternatively I get in my band and we go out and play
concerts. 

Ultimately, it is not how much you make. It matters
that you make enough. What matters to an artist is not
whether you make a load of money, but rather that
people hear your work and like your work. 

On the recently announced Keith Moon biopic, to be
directed by "City Of Angels" Brad Silberling 

Daltrey: I've been struggling for, what is it now, 10
years to make a film of the life of Keith Moon. I
found him to be an extraordinary character in so many
ways. To this date, I have had four scripts written,
none of which have been good enough. 

I have stopped two or three other people making what
would have been horrendous parodies of the man.
Hopefully by the end of this year, we might have a
screenplay that is worthy of being made. 

There is a great film to be made of the life of Keith
Moon. He was an incredibly complicated character. He
was a frustrated genius. I want to show people
everything they didn't know about Keith. It is not a
band story, it is about a drummer on his days off. I
am not going to give up. I'm glad the other films have
been forgotten and I'm glad Pete has supported me and
allowed me to use The Who's music.  

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicArtistsW/who.html
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