Q&A; WITH PETE TOWNSHEND : ‘What Did We Do With the Future?’

After the Who ended its turbulent, two-decade run in 1982, the English rock band’s leader Pete Townshend shifted gears from that high-profile existence. He took a job with a book publisher, wrote fiction, issued solo albums with little fanfare and, aside from a benefit or two and the Who’s 1989 reunion tour, never performed.

But now Townshend is suddenly more visible than ever. His collaboration with Des McAnuff, the La Jolla Playhouse’s artistic director, on a musical adaptation of his 1969 rock opera “Tommy” is a hit on Broadway--and earned him a Tony for best original musical score.

And Townshend’s new album, “PsychoDerelict,” returns to the “concept album” mode he helped pioneer. Exploring complex themes of truth and illusion, it utilizes a radio-drama format to tell the story of an aging rock star involved in a web of metaphysical deceit. And Townshend will embark on his first solo tour in July, a brief swing that includes concerts July 29-30 at the Wiltern Theatre.

The entire new album, with actors performing the dialogue, will form part of the show, along with Townshend solo material and songs he wrote for the Who, a band that took rock to heights of intensity and inspiration. During an interview this week, Townshend pondered the prospects of any group ever attaining that level again.

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Question: Is it possible today for a band to match the achievements of the Who and the other great ‘60s-era bands--the scale, the sense of speaking to a community so directly?

Answer: I think not so much, because I do think that devolution is happening now. Yugoslavia has gone back to being a bunch of Balkanized, squabbling neighborhoods. (Fragmentation) seems to be happening a lot in music. I think the thing about the big rock acts of today, the task that they have, from Pearl Jam to Suede, whoever it is that you choose, it’s not about the size of the audience, it’s not about the canvas, it’s about the ability--maybe this is really the thing that “PsychoDerelict” is. . . . I’ve always tried to deny this in myself, that I’m sad about what’s lost. But maybe I am sad that the potential for rock ‘n’ roll seems to have changed drastically.

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Q: “Tommy” is part of that legacy and it’s certainly doing well in its Broadway form. How do you account for that success? What are people responding to?

A: I think people are responding to a number of things. I think firstly there’s a hunger in the boomer audience that is growing old with rock ‘n’ roll, the people that are in their mid-40s. There’s a hunger there to find some other way of spending their time and satisfying their need for entertainment rather than going to Italian restaurants and the cinema.

I also think that the time is right from another angle which is that there’s a kind of review going on at the moment of the last 25 years. I think what people want to do is re-examine what was upheld at that time as being of some importance, and just see whether it holds up. And this is a chance to do that.

But the main reason I think it’s a success is because the show really moves along quickly and briskly and in a modern way. It moves at a speed which modern audiences need these days. Our senses are tuned to high-speed entertainment and rhythmic entertainment, and I think what Des (McAnuff) has done is honored the rhythm of the piece.

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Q: Do you see theater a new horizon for you?

A: Well, I’ve been pitching to work in theater for a long time. I started to show an interest in it in 1970. I was hoping to do a theater-film project back then with the Who called “Life House.” When the Who finished I was keen to move into theater just because of the fact that it was another show-biz area which didn’t require me to drag my body around the world like a hunk of meat, which I was rapidly turning into, with holes in various bits and blood pouring out of various parts of my hand most of the time.

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Q: When you were creating “PsychoDerelict” were you thinking about its potential for staging?

A: No, I never wanted to stage it at all, and I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. What I wanted to do was allow the album to live as a radio play, an audible experience. You would just hear it and you would receive it and you would get it. But I do want to draw it to people’s attention, and I think that radio is gonna be hard for this record, so i figured that the best thing to do was to try to tour.

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Q: It doesn’t sound as if you’re burning to tour.

A: I’m extremely ambivalent about performing, period. I know when I perform and when I hear music, I love it and I’m energized by it, but I have a great difficulty committing. I was very smart. I’ll tell you what I did. I became a drunk for three months, and in that three months I made about four or five serious commitments which I wouldn’t have made sober. . . . I feel good about it. I think I was a brave guy, and I think I can do the job. I’m certainly confident that I can do the job sober. I’m not trying to make a case for alcoholics going and getting drunk in order to make important life decisions.

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Q: Is there anything that made you feel that “PsychoDerelict’s” themes are especially relevant at this time?

A: Only that in a way the question that I’m asking right now seems to be one that everybody’s asking: What is the future? How do we articulate the future for our children? I now belong to a generation of people that have kids. And so it was to begin to look at the fact that it seems in the last 10 years we’ve lost a clear sight as to what our children’s inheritance really is.

I think one thing that we had when we were young is that we knew that we were guaranteed a future. That’s what we were given. Whether we used that guarantee intelligently or not is kind of by the by. You know when (“PsychoDerelict’s” protagonist Ray High) ends up saying, “Whatever happened to the dream, whatever happened to all that hippie stuff?” I think that what he’s saying is, “What did we do with the future and where is it now?”