JUDY WOODRUFF: Our economics correspondent
Paul Solman talks to an older worker of some
note tonight about his music, his life traumas,
his career as a rock star, and why he still
feels the need to record a new album and hit
the road at the age of 74.
It's part of our Making Sense series Unfinished
Business.
ROGER DALTREY, Musician (singing): People
try to put us down.
BAND MEMBERS (singing): Talking about my generation.
PAUL SOLMAN: Maybe the generational anthem
of the '60s, with a line for the ages, and
ageists.
ROGER DALTREY (singing): Hope I die before
I get old.
PAUL SOLMAN: But Pete Townshend, who wrote
those lyrics, doesn't live by them; 55 years
after co-founding the rock band The Who, Townshend
is still at it.
You're famous for the line "I hope I die before
I get old."
PETE TOWNSHEND, Musician: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, you didn't.
PETE TOWNSHEND: It was a song I wrote when
I was 18 years old.
I was living in London and getting pushed
around by rich women in fur coats.
I hated them all.
They hated me.
Let's just shut down the conversation.
(LAUGHTER)
PETE TOWNSHEND: I know your show is about
old people.
Well, I'm happy to be here as an old person.
I have actually come to realize that this
time of life is probably the best.
When you hit 70, when you hit 75, as I will
next birthday, you realize that -- you know,
that you're definitely on a shorter leash.
And you tend to kind of settle with the present.
And, in a sense, for people of my generation,
who went through the LSD era of trying, in
a sense, to find out who is God, you know,
who am I, all of that stuff, you know, you
suddenly realize, well, here it is.
I'm me.
It's now.
I have a life.
I have minutes, I have hours, I have weeks,
months, years, maybe, and I should live in
the present.
So it's a very beautiful thing.
PAUL SOLMAN: How much of what you're feeling
in terms of gratification is because you are
continuing to work?
PETE TOWNSHEND: I'm really -- if I'm absolutely
honest, I'm really only working as hard as
I am at the moment for money.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now, unlike so many his age,
Townshend can continue to work.
And, as a high-living rock star, money to
him means yacht racing, one of his boats a
classic from 1906.
PETE TOWNSHEND: The average for running a
boat is 15 percent of the rebuild cost.
Let's say you tried to build it today.
It would cost about a million dollars, maybe
a million-and-a-half dollars to build.
So, it's $200,000 a year to run a tiny little
boat I go racing in twice a year.
PAUL SOLMAN: Townshend and the other surviving
member of the original Who, lead singer Roger
Daltrey, have hit the road again touring.
For Townshend, there's another economic incentive
to keep going, his sizable retinue of dependents.
PETE TOWNSHEND: My daughter Aminta, for example,
has got a full spectrum autistic boy.
And when we worked out how much it would cost
to get him through education, it came to a
million pounds.
And I employ people and the band employs people.
And it's great to be the person who kind of
decides whether that happens or not.
It's a moment of power.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL SOLMAN: Well, isn't it a moment of power
to go on tour, to have all those people sticking
with you for all these years, your fan base?
PETE TOWNSHEND: That isn't me.
I don't feel excited.
I feel I'm there to do a job.
I have no -- there's no thrill.
Indeed, I would say that I don't like it much.
As I said to my wife, now, Rachel, I said,
I must be a really brilliant actor...
(LAUGHTER)
PETE TOWNSHEND: ... if I look like I'm enjoying
it, because I really don't enjoy it.
I do it as a job.
And I find it incredibly easy, so easy.
I don't even have to think about it.
PAUL SOLMAN: Over the years, Townshend brought
energy a plenty to the stage.
The Who's lyricist and lead guitarist became
known for his windmilling and mutilating his
instruments.
Do you still jump?
PETE TOWNSHEND: You know, I try.
I don't get very high, but I still try.
You know, I don't know why I'm in good shape.
I certainly -- I don't exercise.
I don't eat well.
PAUL SOLMAN: Well, do exercise, because you
exercise when you tour, right?
PETE TOWNSHEND: That's true.
I wore my Apple watch for one gig, and it
turned out that I'd walked, so it said, eight
miles.
PAUL SOLMAN: Townshend and Roger Daltrey have
been performing together since the 1960s.
PETE TOWNSHEND: He loves doing it.
And I think he will do it until he drops.
I don't think that's my story.
You know, one of us really, really, really
wants to go on.
And then there's me, who really actually -- I
know, I would prefer to just go sailing and
read a book.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL SOLMAN: And write one, too.
He calls his new novel, "The Age of Anxiety"
-- quote -- "an extended meditation on manic
genius and the dark art of creativity."
He plans to turn it into an opera, like previous
works "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia."
The Who also have a new album out called "Who"
about, among other things, aging.
PETE TOWNSHEND: I wrote the songs for Roger.
So, I was dealing with his perception of what
aging is and hoping -- funny enough, he didn't
connect with -- I sent him about 15 songs.
He didn't connect with any of them.
And he didn't respond for five months.
Nothing.
I heard nothing.
And then, when he did respond, he said, these
are songs for you, Pete.
And I said, no, Roger, these are songs for
you.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL SOLMAN: Because he doesn't want to face
the aging the way you do?
PETE TOWNSHEND: Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I don't know.
PAUL SOLMAN: One song Townshend penned for
the new album, "I Don't Wanna Get Wise."
PETE TOWNSHEND: I 
aligned the idea of the wisdom of aging, the
wisdom of experience, the wisdom of suffering,
the wisdom of passing through life, being
something which is a mark of aging.
And, therefore, you know, in a sense, the
song "I Don't Wanna Get Wise" is another of,
I don't want to get old.
PAUL SOLMAN: In 2003, Townshend was arrested
on child porn charges.
But he's always said it was part of his own
sting operation.
PETE TOWNSHEND: We were just trying to demonstrate
that banks needed to stop taking money for
this.
It's not like buying "Playboy" magazine.
It has consequences.
PAUL SOLMAN: Townshend himself says he survived
childhood abuse.
PETE TOWNSHEND: I had been damaged.
I always used to say, you know, I'm like a
diamond with a flaw, and the flaw is that
period of abuse.
It was brief in my case.
I was only with my grandmother for two years.
That was pretty terrifying.
And, you know, at 74 years old, oh, you know,
it's still here.
It's not something that's ever going to go
away.
And I should use the word sexual abuse.
I shouldn't shy away from that, that some
of the abuse that I suffered was sexual.
And...
PAUL SOLMAN: From your grandmother?
PETE TOWNSHEND: Yes, the grand -- friends
of my grandmother.
My grandmother was off her trolley, unfortunately.
PAUL SOLMAN: "Tommy," the film and hit Broadway
rock opera about a boy struck deaf, dumb and
blind by trauma, turns out to have been an
allegory of that experience.
PETE TOWNSHEND: I completely unconsciously
use this idea as a vehicle for exploring my
own really quite tragic story.
Roger Daltrey wanted to do a tour of the complete
"Tommy."
And we did a test of it.
And on the first night, I had a nervous breakdown
on the stage.
And so I took him aside and I said, Roger,
I can't do this.
This is too much, in a sense, a celebration
of my difficulties, a celebration of my childhood
suffering.
PAUL SOLMAN: In the end, though, Townshend
believes in art and its ability to reinforce
not suffering, but hope.
PETE TOWNSHEND: And my method, as a musician,
is to try to create events, to try to create
musical moments where people gather, where
they unify, and where they realize that just
standing together and understanding that we
all understand is very, very important.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, are you in part working at
your age because you feel that you are a source,
as indeed you are, of people coming together?
PETE TOWNSHEND: As an artist, I feel very,
very lucky to have, what do they call it,
a patron.
And the patron is my audience.
What I do has worked for them and continues
to work for them.
And I want to keep doing it, if I can.
PAUL SOLMAN: So Pete Townshend is still on
the road rocking for a living.
For the "PBS NewsHour," this is Paul Solman
in New York.
