Pete Townshend confirms that The Who's farewell shows really are goodbye

17 November 2025, 12:20

Is the song really over?

The Who have wrapped up what they've been calling The Song is Over: The North American Farewell Tour.

But they wouldn't be the first band to go back on calling it a day when the road came calling again. The Who already seemingly retired for good in 1982 before reforming later in the decade.

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And when they went out on their 50th anniversary tour in 2014, frontman Roger Daltrey said: "This is the beginning of the long goodbye.

"We can't go on touring forever... it could be open-ended, but it will have a finality to it. We'll stop touring before we stop playing."

But Pete Townshend has now insisted that this time they mean it, though it's fair to say he did it with a bit of humour.

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“In '82, I left The Who," Townshend said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

"It was my farewell. In '89, I pleaded with The Who to come back because I was broke, and we did a 25th anniversary tour. This time the farewell tour is genuine.

"We are going to end it after we've done as many shows as Elton John. He did 330, we’ve done 22. So we just have another 308 to do."

Elton's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour was one of the biggest in rock history, with its 330 shows taking place over nine legs in five years, with concerts in Europe, North America and Oceania.

Most of The Who's 22 "farewell" concerts have taken place in the US, with just a few in Canada and none out of North America.

Their last UK concerts were at the Royal Albert Hall of the Teenage Cancer Trust on March 27 and March 30, 2025

The Who, Isobel Griffiths Orchestra - Baba O’Riley (Live At Wembley, UK / 2019)

If the shows are to be The Who's last, it seems as though Pete has had more fun than on previous jaunts.

"I really enjoyed this last tour, it was great," he said. "I decided I was going to try and make Roger happy, which isn't easy.

"Not because he's a nasty guy or anything, but because he sings, and he sings the way he sings, his whole body and life goes into it.

“I thought, 'I must forget about myself, and just do this for him, it could be the last thing we ever do together'. And it worked."