Pete Townshend Writing New Musical FLOSS

A message from Pete (via The Who.com),

"I am writing a new musical.

FLOSS is an ambitious new project for me, in the style of TOMMY and QUADROPHENIA. In this case the songs are interspersed with surround-sound 'soundscapes' featuring complex sound-effects and musical montages. FLOSS will be a son-et-lumiére musical piece, intended for outdoor performance, or arenas. Several of the more conventional songs from FLOSS will be featured on a forthcoming Who recording for release in 2010. FLOSS will be heard in concert for the first time in 2011, at a venue and date yet to be established. I am already having talks with producers in New York.

The collected music and sound for FLOSS convey the story of a married couple whose relationship gets into difficulty. Walter, a straight-cut pub rock musician, is able to retire when one of his songs becomes the TV anthem of a big car company. He becomes a house-husband while his wife Floss devotes herself to a riding stables and stud. When he tries to return to music after a fifteen year hiatus, he finds that what he hears and what he composes evoke the ecologically rooted, apocalyptic mindset of his generation. Shaken by this and torn by personal difficulties, he and Floss become estranged. A series of dramatic events in a hospital emergency ward bring them both to their senses.

While Roger Daltrey exercises his ageing vocal chords by embarking on a two month USE OR LOSE IT solo tour, my focus is on FLOSS, which touches on the current issues faced by the Boomer generation. It also addresses their uneasy relationship with their parents, children and grandchildren. As a 19 year old – with My Generation – I wrote the most explicitly ageist song in rock. At 64, I now want to take on ageing and mortality, using the powerfully angry context of rock 'n' roll."