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In a recent interview, Pete Townshend revealed that touring is a lonely business, even as he and Roger Daltrey, the Who’s other surviving member, embrace the opportunity to continue to play. The band is now on a 17-show tour across North America. Both of the band’s principals are 80 years old, and each has expressed that they see these upcoming shows as the possible conclusion of The Who’s run.

“It can be lonely,” Townshend told Associated Press in an interview. “I’ve thought, ‘Well, this is my job, I’m happy to have the work, but I prefer to be doing something else.’ Then, I think, ‘Well, I’m 80 years old. Why shouldn’t I revel in it? Why shouldn’t I celebrate?”

Townshend later reflected on how a lot has changed since the early days of the band, not least of which was how The Who has outgrown itself, having transformed into an entity much bigger than a band.

“Of course, the band is something that has grown beyond what we thought was possible,” he said. “It’s a brand rather than a band. Roger and I have a duty to the music and the history. The Who [still] sells records — the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something more, really: the art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

The Who have played an extensive catalog of music since the group first formed in 1964. For every crowd-pleasing song, the band has an album that will test the crowd’s patience. For many, there’s an inevitable sense of the known and unknown.

Townshend touched on this idea as well, continuing his remarks about the highs and lows of playing in The Who at 80: “The test will be, of course, that it can become boring. We get to play arenas, which is a bit of a letdown as well. I don’t get the buzz that I used to get when I walk into a stadium,” he added. “But it does whet an appetite to think about how we should bow out in our personal lives — what we do with our families and our friends and everything else at this age.”

Daltrey Opens Up About “The Last Time” Tour, Touring “Grinding” Into His 80s

Roger Daltrey shared a similar sentiment as he approached the stage at the Teenage Cancer Trust charity event earlier this year in London, telling the crowd: “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy.” Tommy is the title character from The Who’s 1969 rock opera. Daltrey went on to sing the title track from the album, adding: “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid.”

In a wide-ranging interview with The Times this month, Daltrey reflected on the band’s upcoming tour and possible end to The Who on the road. “I thought this was it,” Daltrey said of the current outing. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he continued. “It’s grueling.”

For many bands of the 1960s and ’70s, The Who were almost superhuman in how many concerts they played each year, particularly in the United States. “In the days when I was singing Who songs for three hours a night, six nights a week, I was working harder than most footballers,” Daltrey said. But at 80 years old, such exertion has become much more taxing.

For the moment, Daltrey isn’t sure whether fans should expect any one-off gigs or small tours down the line. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he said.

Of course, for many fans, the greatest concern remains Daltrey’s voice. The Times asked about this, to which he replied, “My voice is still as good as ever.”