The Who played their first show of 2025 Thursday night at London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of the annual Teenage Cancer Trust benefit concert series. It was their live performance of any sort since they played the same event a year ago, and the rollout of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend’s new, stripped-down band that now features only drummer Zak Starkey, guitarist Simon Townshend, bassist Jon Button, background vocalist John Hogg, and keyboardist/backing vocalist Loren Gold. (In recent years, they toured with a lager group of musicians, and were usually joined by a local orchestra.)
The setlist focused on Who classics like “I Can’t Explain,” “Who Are You,” and “Baba O’Riley,” but also touched on some lesser-known tunes, including “Tea and Theatre,” “Bargain,” and “Love Ain’t for Keeping.” The latter was just played in 2004. Prior to that, they hadn’t touched the Who’s Next deep cut since their farewell tour in 1982.
No video of “Love Ain’t For Keeping” has surfaced yet online, but there is stellar footage of “The Real Me” and “5:15” from the front row of the venue. A fan a bit further back captured “I Can’t Explain,” “Substitute,” and “Who Are You.”
A few days prior to rehearsals, Townshend told Rolling Stone he was a bit uneasy thinking about the show. “I’ve got no idea what it’s going to be like,” he said. “I’m actually nervous. And I think Roger’s nervous as well. We’re both in our eighties, beyond our eighties, in Roger’s case. I’m 80 in May. And I’ve just had a knee transplant, which it was nothing to do with being young or virile. It was to do with having an accident years ago…That kind of stuff gets harder as you get older. It gets harder to recover from surgery, to recover from taking loads of codeine and all of that stuff, the brain fog that’s involved in it.”
At that point, he didn’t know the exact songs they’d be doing. “We’ve got a list of songs,” he said. “We’re looking at them, and I’m going, ‘Which are the easy ones?’ But it’s sold out. I could go out and just play a fuckin’ kazoo. I’ve made the money for the charity.”
Several hours before they took the stage, Starkey live-streamed their soundcheck on Instagram as well as some candid moments in his dressing room. As you can see below, they ran through “The Song Is Over” from Who’s Next several times. It’s never once been played by the Who, though Daltrey sang it a couple of times at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1994, and Townshend broke it out at three solo shows in 2000.
In a blog post on the Who’s official website, longtime band associate Brian Kehew noted that the group’s leaner live lineup will give them greater flexibility going forward. “With this reduced size, there is also more opportunity for the looseness of earlier years (the orchestra required everyone to be on-the-page for setlist and structure/timing),” he wrote. “There could be more jamming or improvisation, different acoustic material maybe. Both Roger and Peter have suggested trying out some interesting ideas – a few we’ve never before seen or heard onstage, and maybe a few unexpected older ones. Of course, the basic hits will always be in the set, and those milestones must be played, and will.”
The Who are playing a second Teenage Cancer Trust show Sunday night at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s an opportunity to debut “The Song Is Over” in front of a live audience. If they don’t take it, they have another show in July when they play two shows in Italy. Their plans beyond that are unclear.
“There are always many offers on the table, but touring is not as attractive as it once was,” Kehew wrote. “Maybe some of these proposed changes, and the smaller, looser version of the band will bring some new optimism and potential that we haven’t seen in the last five years.”
