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Pete Townshend will be on tour this summer on a 17-show jaunt in North America. For his 80 years, the guitarist was somewhat honest about his life on the road: It can be lonely. Yet the musician also expressed gratitude for being able to play again, as he and Roger Daltrey (also 80) contemplate the future of The Who.

“It can be lonely,” Townshend was quoted as saying. “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?”

The mix of appreciation and exhaustion is something Townshend has long felt, ever since The Who first broke through in the early 1960s. The rock band, he reflected, has become more of a concept than a traditional band after all these years. “It’s a brand rather than a band,” Townshend was quoted as saying. “Roger and I have a duty to the music and the history. The Who [still] sells records — the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something more, really: the art, the creative work, is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

The mention of Keith Moon, the former drummer who died in 1978, and John Entwistle, the band’s original bassist, underscores The Who’s weighty legacy. Townshend has said that while the surviving members feel an obligation to honor their music, the stage work also brings up deeper questions about his priorities. “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 added. “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.”

Even with all of these years in the limelight, live performance has lost none of its thrill. “We go out every day not knowing how we are going to be received,” Townshend went on. “Doing things we’ve never done before, or rarely done before, so even though there are certain things in the show that are sort of laid down in rock-tomb stone, we have kept a little bit of an edge to it so that it doesn’t feel rote.”

Roger Daltrey: ‘The Who Are No Longer an Act that Travels Around the World’

Roger Daltrey, meanwhile, has had a similarly rewarding and taxing journey as his bandmate. At the start of the year, while playing with Townshend as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust charity event in London, the singer also gave fans an update on his health. “Fortunately, I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” he told the audience, referring to the title character in The Who’s landmark 1969 rock opera Tommy. Citing the iconic lyric, Daltrey added: “Deaf, dumb and blind kid.”

In an interview with The Times earlier this month, Daltrey went on to reflect more deeply on what comes after the 17-date tour. “This is certainly the last time you will see us on tour,” he told The Times, words with the import of a conclusion for generations of fans. “It’s grueling.”

Daltrey, 80, has reflected on the physical toll of performing the band’s catalog night after night, especially during The Who’s heyday. “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 was quoted as saying. Touring for The Who has become exponentially more difficult at his age.

On the matter of one-off concerts in the future, Daltrey was uncertain. “As to whether we’ll play [one-off] concerts again, I don’t know. The Who to me is very perplexing,” he said. He elaborated: “It’s ended in a sense, but we are still touring. For a lot of Who fans, I think it will be final.”

Daltrey, who has long expressed concern about his hearing, sounded more confident about his voice. “My voice is still as good as ever,” he said. “That’s the good news.”