Pete Townshend in search of the old Who

Pete Townshend says coming up with new music for the Who is almost unbearable, but he and Roger Daltrey aren't giving up just yet. On his official petetownshend.com website, the guitarist wrote, "People say 'just write,' and that's what I do, but then I often end up with what sounds more like (Bertolt) Brecht and (Kurt) Weill or Serge Gainsbourg than the old Who. I know what people want, and there is part of me that would be happy to give it. But I can't seem to control my creative side...What works is writing in the kind of volume I did when I was younger. Of every 10 arty-farty 'egg' songs I write, I select just one as being right for fertilization by Roger. Of every 10 of those I demo at home, about half land. Of every 10 that land and I play to Roger he tends to fertilize just six. Of every 10 we record, four sadly die at birth. What this means is that I need to produce about 50-plus 'eggs' to get one finished track for the Who."

Townshend continued, "To get 15 songs ready to release I need to have written 750 songs or 'pieces' of some kind...This is why the first filtering step is vital: me deciding what Roger might actually be able to sing...in 1996 -- after 10 years of songwriting -- I had 1400 pieces ready to demo. By my reckoning, that should have given me at least two Who albums. But to complete demos on all of them...would have cost me $1,260,000 and taken 15 years...This filtering process is obviously untenable, but that is MAYBE why we have no new Who product."

Townshend also said that he has a problem, at this point in his life, with songs being rejected: "What stops me in reality has been far less about productivity, effort and filtering, and more about my artistic sensitivity: as an egg-bearing artist I cannot abide that any of my music is 'rejected' in this filtering process, even though this has always been what happened...The problem starts as soon as Roger, quite innocently, begins his own filtering process as the Who's principle voice. If - by luck - he likes the first songs he hears, all goes well...But if, of the first few songs he hears, he rejects the majority, then the whole mathematical thesis collapses. The ratio I have set out cannot be applied because the 'artist' who wrote the songs says..."I refuse to have my best efforts - already heavily filtered in advance and subjected to the constraints of finance and time - rejected by any criteria whatsoever."

Townshend added that he wasn't the only member of the Who to have the same kind of protective feelings about his work - "John Entwistle told me shortly before he died that he would find it hard to offer songs for the Who to record because he could no longer allow Roger (or me) to comment on them in any way at all."

As depressing as all this might be for Who fans to hear, Townshend says that he and Daltrey will still try to get it done. He wrote, "If I keep at it, with luck we should see a great new Who record before I drop dead. What helps is that I love Roger and he loves me and we are both willing to work and wait."
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