Rick Guest/Interscope Records
Rick Guest/Interscope RecordsThe Who recently postponed all its 2020 tour dates because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Pete Townshend says having to forgo performing and shelter in place is allowing him time to work on various music projects.
In a recent interview with the U.K.’s BBC Radio 6 Music, Townshend admitted that he feels “really lucky” with regard to the situation, “because what I do mainly is spend a lot of time on my own in the studio.”
The 74-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, who reports that he’s currently at his country home in Wiltshire, U.K., maintained, “I feel like I’ve been given an answer to a prayer I don’t think I would have had the guts to do, which is [to say], ‘Please cancel everything and give me some time in the studio!’…It feels like a gift.”
Townshend said among the things he’s considering doing during his unexpected downtime is looking at “the possibility of starting work early…on writing new songs for another Who album, as the last one did so well.” The band’s 2019 studio effort, WHO, peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 and has received wide critical praise.
Another project Pete’s working on is a planned musical adaptation of his 2019 novel, Age of Anxiety, which he said is “time-consuming, but…really pleasurable.”
He added, “I’m working with orchestrations, drum boxes, old vintage synthesizers and, of course, the usual guitars and piano.”
Townshend also revealed that he’s remixing one of the WHO album’s tracks, “Beads on a String,” for possible release as a single.
Pete admitted that he’s “never really enjoyed [touring that] much,” and that the “joy of what I do has been in the composing, the writing, the playing around with studio gear.”
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