Pete Townshend said the Who’s most recent album, 2019’s Who, caused resentment because it cost too much to make.

The guitarist admitted it left him wondering if he wanted to record any further LPs, although he added he probably would.

Who reached No. 2 on the chart and drew mostly critical acclaim, but singer Roger Daltrey originally wasn’t inspired by the material Townshend presented to him. In the end, he declared it was the best record the band had made since Quadrophenia.

“Will there be another Who album? I don’t know,” Townshend told Uncut in a new interview. “It was great to have an album out there, something that the fans liked, and I was really proud of it. But far too much money was spent making it. It went out of control completely and ended up costing me money. I can’t go on doing that.” He recalled the work as having been “tough” and added that he believed Daltrey felt the same.

“I think he and I have found a sort of common ground over it, but there is still a sense that we only just about got it done,” he noted. “There’s a certain amount of resentment on both sides. Partly on Roger’s side, perhaps, resentment that we were paid a lot of money for the album and it was all spent making it. On my side, the fact that Roger was so actively diffident at first. Now he’s proud of what he did on the record, and so he should be, because he did such a great job.”

Looking to the future, Townshend said: “I do want to make another one, and I probably will. It’s been on my mind a lot.”


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