The Royal Mail has announced a special stamp set to celebrate the 60th anniversary of The Who – find out all the details below.
- READ MORE: Pete Townshend tells us about his new Quadrophenia ballet and the future of The Who
Today (October 3), the Royal Mail announced that 12 special stamps are being issued in honour of The Who’s formation six decades ago. Of these 12 stamps, eight will feature some of the band’s most iconic album covers, while the remaining four stamps are of promotional photos or live performance images.
The eight albums featured on the stamps are 1965’s ‘My Generation’, 1969’s ‘Tommy’, 1971’s ‘Who’s Next’, 1973’s ‘Quadrophenia’, 1978’s ‘Who Are You’, 1981’s ‘Face Dances’, 2006’s ‘Endless Wire’ and finally, 2019’s ‘WHO’.
Of the four remaining stamps, two will be images of the band performing live, taken at the Marquee Club in London in 1967 and at the Kings Hall, Belle Vue in Manchester in 1973.
The stamps and a range of collectible products are available to pre-order from today (October 3) at www.royalmail.com/thewho and by telephone on 03457 641641. A special Presentation Pack including all 12 The Who stamps will be available for the price of £22.80. The stamps go on general sale on October 17.
With the stamp collection, the band have now become the seventh music act to receive their own Royal Mail stamp set following The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden and the Spice Girls.
The Who’s Roger Daltrey said of the Royal Mail stamp collection: “The artwork on the album sleeves was almost as important to the success of the record as the music. It’s great to be reminded of them.”
Pete Townshend added: “Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! It’s what I’ve done on stage all my life, sometimes in the air. At last, my stamping, and that of my buddy Roger, has been honoured properly, and will help letters, parcels and birthday cards travel through time and space, just as we have.”
In recent The Who news, Townshend shed light on whether he’d like to get Daltrey into the studio to make an album and promote it with a tour, but he said he wasn’t going to “bully” his bandmate into it.
“I don’t want to have the job that I used to have around the time of ‘Quadrophenia’, which is bullying everybody in The Who to do exactly what I want to do,” he said. “It was no fun. And at the end of that, Roger knocked me out. I asked for it, but he knocked me out.”
He added: “Anyway, I’m hopeful. I’m certainly not saying that we won’t do anything, but Roger and I do have a bit of a river to cross. And once we cross that river, we’ll see what happens.”
This isn’t the first time in recent weeks that Townshend has discussed the possibility of new The Who music or live dates. In June, he told NME that he was “pretty sure” there would be more Who shows, and that “The story of the end of The Who is gonna be when either Roger or I drop dead or can’t function anymore on the stage”.
But a new album? “If there was a need or a place for a Who album, could I write the songs for it within six weeks? Of course I fucking could, it’s a piece of cake,” he said. “The problem is I don’t think Roger wants to do it again. For me it would be a joy because I love writing songs, I love writing to a brief, I love having a commission, I love having a deadline and I love the feedback.”
In March, meanwhile, Daltrey said he’s “on [his] way out” and that he “has to be realistic” about future plans. And, when NME asked Daltrey about the possibility of a new album last year, he laughed: “What’s the point? What’s the point of records? We released an album four years ago [2019’s ‘WHO’], and it did nothing. It’s a great album too, but there isn’t the interest out there for new music these days. People want to hear the old music. I don’t know why, but that’s the fact.”
