Roger Daltrey Says the Who Is Likely Done Making New Music: 'What's the Point?'

Sergione Infuso /Corbis/Getty Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend

After nearly 60 years, The Who is still rocking — but they'll stick to the classics.

The band's frontman Roger Daltrey opened up to NME about the possibility of new music, and said that he and bandmate Pete Townshend are likely done in the recording studio after 12 studio albums.

"What's the point?" Daltrey, 79, told the outlet with a laugh. "What's the point of records? We released an album four years ago, and it did nothing. It's a great album too, but there isn't the interest out there for new music these days."

The pair released the record WHO in 2019, which was their first new material in 13 years. The album was received favorably by critics and reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album charts, though it failed to make waves the way classic Who records, like Who's Next and Tommy, did in the 1960s and '70s.

Daltrey told NME that he believes fans are most passionate about their earlier recordings, and that when he and Townshend tour, they try to give the people what they want.

"People want to hear the old music. I don't know why, but that's the fact," he said. "[Our fanbase ranges] from 80 years old, all the way down to 8 years old. We've got quite a lot of young people in our audience these days. It's quite interesting that they're picking up on our music."

The Visualeyes Archive/Redferns The Who in 1965 (L-R: Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle)

The "Baba O'Riley" rockers hit the road last year for the first time since 2019, and Daltrey said he "had a good time" on stage.

"We always have a good time, it was fun doing it. I've just got to keep singing. I'm an old rock singer, and I've still got my voice and I'm still singing the keys that the songs were originally written in," he said. "I've got to keep doing it. If I stop for any length of time, I don't know whether I'll have a voice at this age after a year off. And that's the truth. That's the joy of being a singer: you are the instrument."

The tour was notable in that it marked the first time The Who played in Cincinnati since a 1979 crowd crush outside the band's concert in the city killed 11 people. The incident occurred outside of the venue at which the band was playing a sold-out show, and they carried on uninformed, only learning of the tragedy after the performance.

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Michael Ochs Archives/Getty The Who circa 1966 (L-R: Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle)

"We've been in close contact with some of the survivors [and their] friends at a certain place in Ohio very close to Cincinnati, and we've supported their memorial for a long, long time," Daltrey said, noting that proceeds from the gig were donated to local charities. "We did [the concert] and it raised an awful lot of money that will supply scholarships to those families for a long, long time into the future – a long time, way after we've gone. So that's nice."

Townshend, 77, reflected on the tragedy in an interview with PEOPLE last year, and said that neither he nor his bandmates ever truly got over the incident.

"It's a form of post-traumatic stress, partly because we didn't witness what happened," he said ahead of the 2022 show. "We're going back to perform there soon for the first time ever since the tragedy, so it's an opportunity to reconnect. But it will open up old wounds. I've realized that there's nothing that you can do to change it. You just have to learn to live with it and try to accept that it happened."