Pete Townshend tells us about his new Quadrophenia ballet and the future of The Who

nme.com:

Pete Townshend has spoken to NME about next year’s production of Quadrophenia, A Mod Ballet – as well as the turbulent past and uncertain future of The Who.The dance adaptation of the band’s seminal 1973 album, currently in development and set to tour the UK in the summer of 2025, is Townshend’s first foray in ballet following projects in the media of opera and literature.“What inspires me is trying to do something that has a slightly more ambitious thread,” he told NME. “It’s not me being pompous.

It’s just something that seemed to fit more into the dis-conjunction that I felt when I left art school and ended up in the band.

It felt like there was unfinished business for me, which was the art.”A long-term ballet fan, Townshend envisioned the project after hearing early demos of his wife Rachel Fuller’s orchestral score of the album, which was first performed at the Royal Albert Hall in 2015 and recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. “I heard her score and I remember saying to her, ‘I can just see dancers dancing’,” he said. “It had tones of Prokofiev about it.”Alongside Fuller’s arranger Martin Batchelar, the pair began a collaboration with Sadlers Wells which saw Harry Styles choreographer Paul Roberts and director Rob Ashford pull together a group of young dancers from contemporary troupes such as BalletBoyz to bring ‘Quadrophenia’’s story of troubled mod Jimmy to balletic life.“There was a poetic sensibility to what I was seeing,” Townshend said of early workshops. “I was just shocked and surprised.