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The Who guitarist Pete Townshend has one foot on the tour bus once again. He and longtime frontman Roger Daltrey are on a 17-date North American tour this fall. At 80, he says touring can be a lonely life, but he’s grateful to still be able to perform and is happy to be out on the road with Daltrey.

“It can be lonely,” Townshend recently told Classic Rock magazine. “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 recently spoke to the same magazine about his feelings about touring life. He expressed a desire to just be done with the road, but also appreciates the fact that he’s still able to play. “It’s a brand rather than a band. Roger and I have a duty to the music, the history,” he explained. “The Who [still] sells records — Moon and Entwistle families are millionaires. There’s also something more. The art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

Moon was the band’s late, iconic drummer, and Entwistle was the bassist who also passed away. The Who is something of a living history lesson these days. Townshend feels a sense of gratitude at still being able to play. “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 we don’t always play.”

Touring life can bring about musings of how to take care of oneself, and Townshend hinted at more esoteric matters. “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,” he continued. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

Roger Daltrey Says Farewell to Touring in Candid Moment with Fans

Roger Daltrey has been through just about everything at this point, so he’s quick to remind himself and everyone else that he’s lucky to be alive as well. During a June Teenage Cancer Trust charity concert in London, Daltrey and Townshend took the stage together, and Daltrey spoke to the crowd.

“I don’t know how long we’ve got left,” Daltrey said, according to a video shared by Classic Rock magazine. “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy.” Tommy is the title character of The Who’s 1969 rock opera. “Deaf, dumb, and blind kid!” he continued, quoting the first line of the show.

Daltrey had a more in-depth interview with The Times last month. The article he did recently went more in-depth and carried more weight with longtime fans. Daltrey emphasized a certain finality that has now come over the band. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he said in the interview. “It’s grueling.”

Daltrey added some context to those comments, looking back on a time in the Who’s history when the group was churning through shows. “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,” he recalled. “I loved it and I still love it, but my body doesn’t go with it.”

At 80, the rigors of being on the road have begun to take their toll. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he told The Times. Even as Daltrey says this, he still takes the long view of his career. “My voice is still as good as ever,” he said.