Premiere: Pete Townshend's 'Guantanamo'

Brian Mansfield | USA TODAY

While The Who carries on with its 50th-anniversary tour, the group's guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend, has some new music to share.

Guantanamo, making its U.S. premiere at USA TODAY, is one of two new songs that will appear on Truancy: The Very Best of Pete Townshend, 17-track compilation out June 30.

Townshend, who turns 70 on Tuesday, says he thought the politically charged track might never see the light of day, "but now President Obama has relaxed sanctions in Cuba, it is a happy sign he might go further."

Actually constructing the track was a laborious process, he say. "I recorded a long organ drone using my vintage Yamaha E70 organ (used many times by me on Who and solo recordings in the past), and then cut it into something that sounded like a song using a feature unique to Digital Performer called 'chunks.' This creates blocks of groups of tracks that can be assembled and disassembled easily, like cutting multitrack analogue tape with a razor blade, but with less blood. The lyric grew out of the implicit angry frustration in the organ tracks."

Guantanamo debuted early Monday morning on The BBC 6 Music Breakfast Show in the U.K.

Truancy will feature tracks from eight of Townshend's solo albums, along with Guantanamo and a second new track, How Can I Help You. The compilation is the first part of an extensive reissue program that will see Townshend's solo catalog remastered and reworked over the next year or so.

"I hope it offers a selection that works to introduce new fans to my solo work," he says. "I am a bit of a dabbler, I'm afraid. I am as interested in building, developing and playing with recording studios as I am with making music. The Who has taken up most of my road hours, and in this year of the 50th anniversary of our first significant year in 1965, we are back on the road again."

The Who's tour schedule take the band to Uniondale, N.Y., on Wednesday and will continue into November.

The track listing for Truancy: The Very Best of Pete Townshend follows:

Pure and Easy (from Who Came First) Sheraton Gibson (from Who Came First) Let's See Action (Nothing Is Everything) (from Who Came First) My Baby Gives It Away (from Rough Mix) A Heart to Hang on To (from Rough Mix) Keep Me Turning (from Rough Mix) Let My Love Open the Door (from Empty Glass) Rough Boys (from Empty Glass) The Sea Refuses No River (from All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes) Face Dances (Pt. 2) (from All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes) White City Fighting (from White City) Face the Face (from White City) I Won't Run Anymore (from The Iron Man) English Boy (from Psychoderelict) You Came Back (from Scoop) Guantanamo (New song) How Can I Help You (New song)

On June 9, Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Classic will release a symphonic version of the Who's 1973 work Quadrophenia. Classic Quadrophenia, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Oriana Choir, will feature Alfie Boe as the main character Jimmy, Townshend as The Godfather, Billy Idol as Ace Face/Bell Boy and Phil Daniels, who starred as Jimmy in the 1979 film version of Quadrophenia, as Dad.