I’ve said this to Dave and to Ray whenever I had the chance, usually in emails,” Townshend claimed. “‘You have no fucking idea!’ I don’t think they’ve really played in America. ‘You could go and do pub gigs – that’s all The Stones do – to fucking stadiums full of people. The love, the respect and the passion that you would get and the joy that you would get would just be monumental. Apart from that, you’d come back multi-millionaires.’”

While The Kinks have certainly not heeded Townshend’s advice, they could so easily have owed him a favour in return by explaining that not all things need to return, and that the constant bickering would have been a massive obstacle for them ever attempting to return, much like his own arguments with The Who frontman Roger Daltrey proved to be throughout the lead-up to their own farewell tour. Perhaps it was never meant to be.