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The Who are back on the road, with guitarist Pete Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey embarking on a 17-date tour across North America. The 80-year-old rocker is upfront about the loneliness of touring at his age. Yet he’s also grateful to be doing it in the first place. For all that, both he and his bandmate Daltrey have been vocal about what the future might hold for the Who.

“It can be lonely,” Townshend recently told an interviewer. “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? “

Pete Townshend opens up about loneliness while touring with The Who

Townshend’s comment conveys a sense of both thankfulness and exhaustion at being able to tour and perform at this point in his life. The Who made their debut in the 1960s, so it’s little surprise to him that the band itself has become an entity bigger than its members. “It’s a brand rather than a band, really,” he continued. “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.”

As Pete Townshend has intimated that this tour could be The Who’s last

The nod to late drummer Keith Moon and original bassist John Entwistle is as much about a legacy that lives on as it is about The Who themselves. He later added that the laborious work of the stage itself raises broader questions about his own life and what is important. “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,” he said. “We’re lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to playing. Roger likes to throw wild cards out sometimes in the set, and we have learned and rehearsed a few songs that we don’t always play.”

After 50 years in the music business, it’s safe to say Townshend isn’t taking live performance for granted. Even a 17-date tour across North America is small potatoes for a band with as storied a history as The Who. For Townshend, the process of rehearsing and finally putting on stage a song that’s long sat on the shelf adds a level of unpredictability to each night and keeps the old energy flowing.

Roger Daltrey on health, touring, and The Who’s future

Touring has provided its benefits and challenges for Daltrey, too. Speaking to the crowd from the Teenage Cancer Trust charity in London this year, the singer also delivered some sobering news to the audience about his health. “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” he said, talking about the lead character of the titular band’s seminal 1969 rock opera. Citing a well-known lyric from the same song, he quipped, “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid.”

In a separate interview with The Times earlier this month, Daltrey added more context to the future of The Who after the current tour. While it’s little surprise to anyone familiar with the band that they will no longer take to the road, it’s no less final a note to longtime fans. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he said. “It’s grueling.”

Daltrey also reflected on the toll of performing songs from The Who’s back catalog at length, night after night, during the band’s busiest era. “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,” he recalled. At 80, it’s getting more challenging to keep that level of performance up night after night.

One-off concerts down the road? That remains to be seen, according to Daltrey. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he admitted. The air of unknowing echoes the band’s own split identity as a musical institution that straddles the past, the present, and everything in between.

For many fans, especially those across North America where the band currently tours, the present moment is perhaps the final opportunity to see Townshend and Daltrey performing together as The Who. For the two men themselves, it’s a moment to say goodbye and celebrate at the same time. It’s a recognition of everything The Who has meant to the history of rock and roll, as much as a reckoning with the reality of being older and how to move forward with the weight of an iconic band still on their shoulders.

The band’s ongoing relationship with each other, their fans, and family members and friends beyond is less about playing music than it is a commitment to the fact that they’re still here. “We’re lucky to be alive,” Townshend said.