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The Who have a history of coming and going from rock music, but guitarist Pete Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey have returned to touring once again for a 17-date North American journey. For the 80-year-old rocker, traveling and performance are an opportunity to celebrate what The Who have achieved, but also an acknowledgment of the passage of time and the members’ relative seniority.

“We’re lucky to be alive,” Townshend said in a new interview. “Sadly, I can’t see my family as much as I’d like, but that’s my lot for now. It’s a beautiful tour.”

“It can be lonely,” he added. “I’ve thought, ‘Well, this is my job, I’m happy to have the work, but I prefer to be doing something else.’ Then, I think, ‘Well, I’m 80 years old. Why shouldn’t I revel in it? Why shouldn’t I celebrate?”

Townshend is not the first musician to admit the bittersweet aspects of long-haul performance and touring in later life. The rockstar life of fame, drugs, and long periods away from loved ones can be soul-crushing even for those at the top of their game, which the guitarist admitted still happens now and then. “For a while this year, it was a bit of a grind,” he said. “The worst is jet lag, no sleep ,and then having to go out on stage. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ I have to ask people to help me out now. It just gets tougher as the days roll by.”

Townshend’s comments address a sense of gratitude to be still here at all, but also fatigue that almost anyone with a lifetime in music would understand. Half a century on from The Who’s first international tours, the band is much more than the collective output of four musicians. “It’s a brand rather than a band,” Townshend said. “Roger and I have a duty to the music, the history. The Who [still] sells records – the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something mory. The art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

Townshend’s reference to late drummer Keith Moon and late bassist John Entwistle only heightens the awareness of both an impending ending to The Who and what, for musicians, comes after it. “It does whet an appetite to think about how we should bow out in our personal lives — what we do with our families and our friends and everything else at this age,” Townshend continued. “We’re lucky to be alive. I’m looking forward to playing. Roger likes to throw wild cards out sometimes in the set, and we have learned and rehearsed a few songs that we don’t always play.”

The idea of learning new songs and giving up on setlist predictability for the current tour adds an element of excitement to the closing chapters. For Townshend and Daltrey, even after 50 years of performing and living, The Who is still about adventure and risk.

Roger Daltrey Opens Up on the Tour and What’s After The Who

The Who’s frontman, Roger Daltrey, is facing a similar headspace when he is on the road with his old friend and bandmate. After a June performance with Townshend at the Teenage Cancer Trust charity in London, Daltrey spoke to the audience about his physical condition. “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” he said, referencing the title character of the 1969 rock opera Tommy. He quoted the famous line, concluding with a grin, “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid.”

In a recent interview with The Times, Daltrey was more explicit about what he and Townshend were planning next and what that means for the future of The Who. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he said. “It’s grueling.”

Daltrey went on to consider the physical toll of performing on top of physical fitness that younger performers take for granted. He connected that exhaustion to what must have been the band’s most active touring cycle, his perception of The Who’s musical legacy, and the difficulty of maintaining that type of work today. “In the days when I was singing Who songs for three hours a night, six nights a week, I was working harder than most footballers,” Daltrey said. “I can’t imagine doing that now I’m 80.”

Whether or not the band will play live performances in the future, Daltrey has not said. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he said. Daltrey’s admission gestures at both the band’s self-entitled framing of itself and the creative potential of what has come before.

Daltrey also gave a guarantee that fans might not hear on the current tour, but perhaps in one last concert: his voice has not left him. “My voice is still as good as ever,” he said.

This summer tour for North America might be the last chance audiences in the United States and Canada will get to see The Who in action. For the members of the band, the shows hold multiple meanings, from gratitude for survival and opportunity to fulfillment of artistic intent to celebration of friendships and family beyond the band itself. “We’re lucky to be alive,” Townshend said.