The Who Ask Fans for Rare Recordings for 50th Anniversary Festivities

[Transcendence]

As the Who ready themselves for their 50th anniversary tour, the group is asking fans worldwide to share rare and lost recordings, forgotten radio and TV performances, fan-shot footage from concerts, bootleg recordings, demos, rare photos and memorabilia.

 

As an example, the group cites its 2002 film, The High Numbers at the Railway Hotel, which a Dutch fan had been holding onto since 1964. The Who will include the best and most interesting items in their forthcoming anniversary releases, crediting the fans who offered them up, and giving each respective fan two VIP tickets to a show on its upcoming tour. Fans with extraordinary odds & sods can email the group at thewho@umusic.com.

Meanwhile, the group will put out a greatest hits collection, The Who Hits 50!, on October 28th, and Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend & Co. are prepping for a Who Hits 50! tour that will take them to arenas in the U.K. this fall and North America in 2015. Additionally, over the next year, the group will mark its golden anniversary with releases and events that will commemorate the group's cultural impact.

At a press conference in late June, Daltrey personified the upcoming tour as "the beginning of the long goodbye." The band has said that it would play "all the classic anthems" and deep cuts spanning its entire career, from when it was using the name the High Numbers to the present. "It will have a finality to it," the singer said of the trek. "We'll stop touring, I'm sure, before we stop playing as a band, but just like Eric Clapton said, the grind of the road [is] incredibly tough on the body."