Why The Who may not be bringing their farewell tour to the UK

The Who just announced dates for their farewell tour of North America, but it sounds like the band isn’t too sure folks in the U.K. will get a similar goodbye.

During a press conference announcing the tour, both Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey expressed doubt they’ll bring the tour to the U.K., with Daltrey joking, “Let’s see if we survive this one.”

He then explained that it’s much easier to tour the U.S. than the U.K.

“For some reason or another, the U.K. has decided to make it as difficult as possible to go from A to B. In America, you seem to want to make it as easy as possible. But we are in the land of ‘no,'” Daltrey said. “I don’t want to say that there won’t be, but equally, I’m not confident in saying there will be.”

Townshend agreed with Daltrey’s assessment.

“I really enjoyed the last tour that we did, but it was a strange one. We played a lot of open-air gigs. We’d had an insurance problem, which meant that we couldn’t play some of the more classic places that one plays under a U.K. tour,” he said. “But the door is open to us. We could do a week at the O2, we could do a week, a couple of weeks maybe at the [Royal] Albert Hall, there are kinda things we could do.”

But he and Daltrey noted that they can’t do consecutive shows, which could make things more difficult.

The Song Is Over North American Farewell Tour will kick off Aug. 16 in Sunrise, Florida, and wrap Sept. 28 in Las Vegas. Tickets go on sale to the general public May 16 at 10 a.m. local time.

A full list of dates can be found at TheWho.com.

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