Pete Townshend: ‘I have to be careful what I say about Roger – he’ll be sacking me next’

In a sterile second-floor backroom at the Plymouth Theatre Royal, Pete Townshend is contemplating if the latest iteration of Quadrophenia resonates with a modern young audience. Townshend’s account of youth disaffection amid the 1965 Brighton Mods v Rockers riots – centring on young Jimmy, who finds suavely suited, amphetamine-fuelled scooter-riding worth in the Mod movement (and then disillusionment in it) – was the basis of The Who’s masterful 1973 rock-opera album. Then the cult 1979 film starring Phil Daniels and Sting; latterly it’s been a book and, in 2015, an Alfie Boe-sung classical piece by the Royal Philharmonic, scored by Townshend’s wife Rachel Fuller.

The previous night was the world premiere of Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet, the story given an artful modern update via a stirring, emotive dance interpretation that repurposes Fuller’s score. (“As soon as I heard, I thought – that would make a good ballet.”)

Whatever the form, Quadrophenia’s themes of young male alienation and unrequited love are timeless. “I’ve realised it could be called The Story of the Boy That Complained Too Much,” Townshend says. He hopes this particular production will still be a “comment on the way that young people struggle to find a meaning”, just as it was in 1973, or like The Who’s 60s anthems such as “My Generation” and “The Kids are Alright” that made Townshend the guitar-wielding voice of the subculture.

Dancers from ‘Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet’, which has a score composed by Townshend’s wife, Rachel Fuller (Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty)

But times are very different. He admits at 80 he can’t be sure, but does feel as though young people are getting a rougher deal. “Roger Daltrey often says, at 16, you could work in a factory and get paid good enough money to buy yourself a scooter. I don’t know whether that’s true today. People are paying to get themselves educated. They’re living off their parents, and that’s a very different world for a 16-year-old,” he says. “The other thing is this dehumanising of young people. We’re taking away their ability and their right to behave as adults. And now we’re talking about the fact that people are kids until they’re 25. F**k off!”

This is also a generation of boys lost to the manosphere and Andrew Tate. If Jimmy was alive today, would he be an incel? “He is an incel,” Townshend says. “I hate to have to use the word incel, because I think it’s a scourge, that movement. He is a young man who has fallen in love with a girl who’s tied to the handsomest, toughest, smartest, coolest guy in the town. He wants her, and he can’t have her, and it really hurts. So he’s looking, using that incel lens – what is it that they have? I think if he was around today, he wouldn’t be an exceptional case.”

Townshend says he actually knew plenty like Jimmy. “The mod movement was very boy-driven. The Who decided quite early that we were going to be a band for boys.” Townshend was writing for the boys he knew growing up in working-class Shepherd’s Bush, in west London, where a post-war generation was struggling to find its place in society. “I felt as an outsider, a middle-class boy, I was on – not a pedestal – but on a chair watching. I was able to see what these kids wanted and needed.”

Townshend, in a sharp blue jacket and beanie hat, nursing a “suitably poisonous” coffee from the venue’s kitchen, is as engaging and forthright as ever. A fan of ballet since his art school days, he says part of the motivation for the production was: “What else could I do that is going to get me called pretentious?” Though he notes that “what’s interesting is the most pretentious thing I’ve ever done is to pretend to be a rock star. Because that’s the bit that I feel most uncomfortable with.”

Dan Baines as Ace Face and Serena McCall as the Mod Girl in ‘Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet’ (Photo: Johan Persson)

After commissioning the production, he says he was hands-off: as music director, it was Fuller’s subsequent decision to enlist award-winning director Rob Ashford and choreographer Paul Roberts, known for his work with Harry Styles and Spice Girls. “He’d never even seen the film. I don’t think he knew who The Who were.” Neither did most of the twentysomething cast.

Townshend originally wrote Quadrophenia as a means to reconnect The Who with their fanbase after 1971’s blockbuster album Who’s Next. “We’d lost our audience completely,” he says. “We’d become a prog rock, overblown stadium band.” He thought if he wrote about a fan who “saw The Who as his ideal group of men, that we would be able to find ourselves in him, in our fans, reconnect. To some extent it worked. To other extents, perhaps it didn’t.”

Having been at the Brighton riots, taking “leapers” (pills) and sleeping under the bridge with his girlfriend – “a few of the photos were staged by the press” – he’d also felt the same disillusionment with Mod culture as Jimmy. “In the end, it was all about getting in the newspapers for being yobbos.” Quadrophenia was therefore full of spiritual songs, inspired by Indian guru Meher Baba, that looked for a higher purpose, such as “Love, Reign o’er Me”, as well as “The Punk and the Godfather” about Jimmy losing faith in The Who.

But did the audience really feel that same disconnect as Townshend? “No. It was a bit of a sleight of hand I was attempting. It turned on me, because, of course, the members of the band were quite happy with the idea that a young fan would want to be like them, but they weren’t all that keen on the idea that they should see themselves as a member of the audience.”

The Who perform on the set of the film ‘The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus’ in 1968. From left, John Entwistle, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (Photo: Mark and Colleen Hayward/Redferns)

Still, off the back of his first successful rock opera, 1969’s Tommy, the band let Townshend follow his vision. “They trusted me without question. I dare say that now, the problem – if there is a problem between Roger and I – is that he doesn’t trust me the way that he used to.” What does Daltrey think about a ballet of Quadrophenia? “I don’t know what he thinks,” he smiles, “and I’m not going to ask him!”

The dysfunction at the heart of The Who, and the tense relationship between Townshend and Daltrey, is decades-old and legendary. It has been publicly played out once more with the recent sacking, reinstatement and then eventual re-sacking of Zak Starkey, son of Ringo Starr. Starkey had drummed for The Who since 1996, but was fired after their gig at the Royal Albert Hall in March after an onstage dressing down from Daltrey during 1971 track “The Song is Over”. (Starkey says Daltrey claims he was overplaying and dropped some beats, which he denies.)

He was restored three days later, with Townshend claiming “communication issues” for the misunderstanding. Yet Starkey was finally relieved of his duties a month later, and has been vocally critical of Daltrey’s handling of the situation and the claim he had been “retired” to concentrate on other projects.

“It’s been a mess,” Townshend says. I ask him about the Albert Hall incident. “I couldn’t see anything wrong. What you see is a band who haven’t played together for a long time. But I think it was probably to do with the sound. I’ve lost my sound man as a result.

“I think Roger just got lost. Roger’s finding it difficult. I have to be careful what I say about Roger because he gets angry if I say anything about him at all. He’ll be sacking me next. But that’s not to say that he sacked Zak. It’s a decision Roger and I tried to make together, but it kind of got out of hand.”

Was it a difficult decision to let him go? “Well, I’ve never been a huge…” Townsend says, stopping himself short. “I didn’t invite him in, right? Roger invited him. And at that time, I don’t know quite why he chose Zak, but Zak is another Keith Moon. He comes with real, real bonuses and real, real difficulties.” Still, he says, “I will miss Zak terribly. But quite what the story is, I don’t f**king know. I really don’t know.”

The Who have planned what is billed as a final tour of America in August. I get the impression Townshend doesn’t exactly seem too up for it. “I don’t know whether I’ve been up for doing anything with The Who since 1973,” he says laughing. “But I am looking forward to it. Not because it’s the end, but because I hope that we can continue to explore other things.”

Townshend wants to make another Who album, the follow-up to 2019’s Who – Daltrey doesn’t. “Which is really hard for me. He feels that we’ve got enough legacy, and that’s where we differ.” Townshend does think about legacy, though. “I suppose, secretly, in our dreams, I don’t know about Rog, but who dies first, then what happens?”

He has given the impression for a long time that he’s been creatively unfulfilled in The Who. “It sounds like you’re asking for my sad story,” he says. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to be in my shoes. I mean, it’s f**king ecstasy. But I do suffer mood swings. I suffer from manic depression. So sometimes when I wake up, if there was a gun under my pillow, I might blow my brains out. But after a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, I realise that I’m very, very lucky. I have an amazing life.”

‘Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet’ tours the UK until 19 July