The Who Wraps Tour Tonight

The Who wrap up its incredibly successful Quadrophenia & More Tour tonight (February 26th) at Providence, Rhode Island's Dunkin' Donuts Center. Although it's the band's last proper show on the North American tour, on Thursday night (February 28th) they'll join Elvis Costello at Manhattan's Theater At Madison Square Garden for the Teen Cancer America Benefit. The tour has been relatively smooth sailing for the band, despite longtime drummer -- and Ringo Starr's son -- Zak Starkey being forced to sit out six gigs due to a pulled tendon. Roger Daltrey's solo drummer Scott Devours was deputized at the last minute and helped keep the show on the road.

Pete Townshend told us that for Quadrophenia, when writing and demoing the material, he simply followed the same template he had used for the Who's previous projects: "I put my brain into gear, y'know, get my guitar and keyboards out, go into my studio, and then try to start to serve the band in response. And I'd done it a few times. Y'know, I'd done it in the early days with a bunch of pop singles, I'd done it with Tommy, I'd tried to do it again with Lifehouse -- which led to Who's Next -- and with Quadrophenia, it just landed beautifully."

With Roger Daltrey essentially acting as Townshend's voice on his three major extended Who works -- Tommy, Lifehouse, and Quadrophenia, we asked him if there's any difference in how he preps for the different pieces in concert: "Same. I mean, I just listen to the words of the song and (I) sang it as an actor. As an actor playing the part of a guy he was trying to portray within his music. I often sang them very differently than he imagined them sung."