The Who will finish their Who Hits 50 tour with a headlining show at Hyde Park in London. Their gig on Friday 26 June 2015 will be the third time they have headlined Hyde Park, and the fourth time they have played there – they also played the Live 8 show in 2005.
The Who are the second headliners announced for next year’s Barclaycard presents British Summer Time shows in Hyde Park, following the news that Taylor Swift will headline on Saturday 27 June.
The bill for the Who’s show also includes Paul Weller. Johnny Marr and Kaiser Chiefs. The Who Hits 50 tour begins on 30 November in Glasgow, taking in a series of UK arenas in the run-up to Christmas. “We can’t go on touring for ever,” singer Roger Daltrey said when the tour was announced this summer. “[This tour] will have a finality to it. We’ll stop touring before we stop playing as a band.” They also said they were likely to record a new album, their first since 2006’s Endless Wire. One new song, Be Lucky!, has already emerged on the compilation album Who Hits 50.
The last time the band headlined Hyde Park, in 1996, Daltrey fractured his eye socket the day before the gig, in an accident during a rehearsal. “‘I remember doing it with an eye patch holding my eye in when we did Quadrophenia, that was a nightmare.” he said. “We had a quarter of a million people coming the next day and i’ve got a fractured cheekbone. How we did that show I’ll never know.”
Tickets for the show go on general sale on Thursday 20 November at 9am, with presales on 17 and 19 November for Barclaycard and AEG customers.
