Townshend Planning Who's Next

Surviving Who members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are ready to begin work on their first new studio album in more than twenty years.

"I do not want to write with Roger so we can pass ourselves off as a 'new' Who," Townshend writes in a Web post. "I want to see if he and I have anything we can say together, that we could not say separately. Whether we call an album a Who album is not the point."

According to Townshend, his friend the longtime sound engineer Tom Wright, put the idea in his head: "[Tom] feels Roger and I need to make a 'last' album. One that is real, passionate, earthy, and innovative -- but also accessible."

The news continues a year of dramatic ups and downs for the legendary British rockers. They recently wrapped an emotional three-month-long summer tour without founding bassist John Entwistle, who died of a heart attack in Las Vegas on June 27th, just prior to the outing's originally scheduled kickoff. In 1978, the Who lost their original drummer, the mercurial Keith Moon, to a drug overdose.

Although the new Who material will be collaborative, guitarist/songwriter Townshend and singer Daltrey will not abandon their traditional roles. "I am not shying away from the usual division of labour," Townshend writes. "Roger is more of a singer than a writer, and I am claiming to be more of a writer than a performer. What I am shying away from is trying to pick up the Who recording legacy where it was dropped in 1976."

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Song Stories

“Too Close”

Next | 1998

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

More Song Stories entries »

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