The Who's Pete Townshend on Super Bowl

"This show, for us, is a an example of what he and I can do together, waving the Who flag, carrying the flag for the boomer generation, I suppose, just as Paul McCartney does, and a couple of other artists that have done it recently like Tom Petty and the Stones. But it also marks kind of a watershed. The music industry is changing so much. Almost everything about my life as a writer and a performer is about four or five songs that I wrote in 1971. It's all about television, movies, commercials. When we go out and tour we don't play stadiums like the Rolling Stones or U2, we play arenas, and we don't always absolutely fill them to the brim. We do pretty well because we're quite good at what we do."

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"When I go back and listen to those songs, the Who songs in particular of the late '60s and early 70s, there was an aspiration in my writing to attune to the fact that what I could feel in he audience was -- I won't say religious -- but there was certainly a spiritual component to what people wanted their music to contain. There's definitely a higher call for the music now which is almost religious. U2, for example, are hugely successful with songs about inner longing for freedom, ideas."

Read the whole Q & A interview at Billboard.