One of the Boys: Roger Daltrey Turns 80
Saluting one of rock’s greatest frontmen
Everyone knows The Who is – or was (it’s hard to choose a tense) – a fragile entity.
There are those who argue The Who isn’t even The Who anymore – or it’s The Who in name only – a position that first came when to the fore when drummer Keith Moon died in 1978 (replaced by Kenney Jones, later Zak Starkey) and then again in 2002, when bassist John Entwistle followed suit (replaced by Pino Palladino).
The counter-argument is that as long as there is Pete Townshend – songwriter-guitarist-singer and singer Roger Daltrey, there is a Who. I’ve seen that Who in concert a few times over recent years and it’s been damn good, emphasizing Tommy and Quadrophenia along with blasts from Who’s Next. As to newly recorded music, not so much. Fans tend to patiently wait them out or realize nature is calling.
But even when there has technically been a Who, it’s been an off-and-on reality for decades. Townshend has deep-sixed (and subsequently revived) the group more than a few times (while oft slagging it for failure). Or, at the least, he’d put it on hiatus while he stewed and worked on other projects.
What has Daltrey done during those Pete-imposed down days?
In general, Daltrey, who turns 80 on March 1st, has worked. In fact, he’s got a one-off solo show slated May 6 in San Diego at Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. Included in the backing group are some longtime Who-adjacent folks: guitarist Simon Townshend, bassist Jon Button, keyboardist Loren Gold and violinist Kate Jacoby.
Daltrey has always been invested in the material. He still stutters during “My Generation,” he still screams “They’re all wasted!” in “Baba O’Riley” and he still relentlessly batters us with the inane/existential question “Who are you?” in, well, “Who Are You.” Even (or maybe especially) if Townshend was writing songs involving drugs or drink – not Rog’s vices – or really bad misbehavior (as Jimmy in “Dr. Jimmy”) – Daltrey became that guy in song. I’ve never doubted his belief in the character.
In a 2019, during a New York Post interview with Michael Lello, Townshend was asked what kept him and Daltrey coming back together to Who it out. “In my case,” the ever-unfiltered Townshend said, “often it is the desire to make money so I can pursue ambitious solo projects, or musical or theatrical experiments, or just so I can go sailing. Roger needs to sing to keep his voice alive, but unlike me he is also a much more normal performing artist in that he enjoys being on stage.”
Indeed, he does and I’m sure Daltrey was an extremely anxious patient of Dr. Steven Zeitels, the ace throat specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2011. (Zeitels is also the throat guru for Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler’s and Tom Hamilton, along with Cher, Adele, Lionel Richie, James Taylor and many more.)
“If I stopped singing now, my voice would be gone in two years,” he told my former Boston Herald colleague Jed Gottlieb. “Voices aren’t like guitar strings. Guitar is the easiest work on the road. Need it louder, just turn it up.”
Zeitels worked his magic.
I saw Daltrey in 1994 as he launched yet another non-Who tour featuring Who material with a backup rock band and hired-hand local (Boston-based) orchestra. It was called “Roger Daltrey Sings the Songs of Pete Townshend and The Who.” My recollection is it bombed at the box office, but was a tremendous concert.
Daltrey did this sort of thing from time to time. Which is to say, he loved singing Pete’s songs whether Pete was there to join him or not. And yes, there were bills to be paid and checks to be cashed.
Daltrey was doing this again four years later. We talked. As he approached this particular gig he told me, “I am at the top of a very tall diving board, about to leap into a tank that is about two foot deep, and it’s flaming. If I can jump through flaming hoops, do three triple-somersaults, or whatever…”
He wasn’t really joining the circus, but he was rolling the dice with the British Rock Symphony, a 60-piece group (classically trained, most of them 20-somethings), the 15-member New York Boys Choir, and a six-piece rock band on a 28-date U.S. tour with music coming from the not just The Who, but The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. Classic rock incarnate, indeed.
Daltrey knew what you might have been thinking: Symphonies and rock ‘n’ roll often mix like oil and water. Classical fans think it’s slumming; rock fans think it’s pretentious. But back when it was a new-ish thing, Daltrey was the rock guy in 1973 when Lou Adler commissioned the London Symphony Orchestra to do Tommy.
This show comprised five suites — a Love Suite, a Universe Suite, a Celebration Suite, a Rebellion Suite and a Peace Suite. Daltrey, one of six vocalists, would perform eight to 10 songs.
He knew what kinds of slings and arrows to expect if it failed: He’d be labeled pompous, overblown, misguided. Daltrey, though, was asking you to trust him. “This one is very much a bed of nails,” he says. “When it kicks, it kicks. It really is rock ‘n’ roll.”
It was. Why? Here are a few reasons:
He loathed the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber and hoped some of the young musicians on this tour became composers and “erased” Lloyd Webber’s ditties from our memories. “I still hate schlock music,” Daltrey said. “I love Tony Bennett — when he does the old standards you hear them properly.”
VIDEO: The Who “Baba O’Riley”
The Townshend-penned Who material, Daltrey said, had “an in-built energy within the way Townshend wrote. That was clear with the Quadrophenia tour {of 1997]. I mean, we weren’t all jumping as high, Pete wasn’t playing electric guitar all the way through, but when you listened to the music — which is what I always wanted to be: a musician — that energy was exactly the same as the day we first performed it.
“You know,” added Daltrey, “I think, what have I got to prove anymore? I can’t be in the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. At my age, rock ‘n’ roll is a different experience. The music you made then is just as good, but when you play it now, it’s just as good in a different way. You can’t pretend it’s the same.”
In recent years, Daltrey has taken some heat from those of us left for, well, a few things. Number 1: Supporting the dumb-ass Brexit policy in the country in which he still lives, his position countering those famous lines he’s sung a zillion times, “Won’t get fooled again.”
Two years ago, in an interview with Britain’s The Independent he clung to his view that the European Union’s power was “too divorced from everyday people,” and said he wasn’t sorry for voting Leave.
“I’m disappointed we haven’t made the most of it – I’m really disappointed that we haven’t burned an awful lot of useless regulation,” he said. “I just put in planning permission for a building on the farm and just to get the planning in its cost me something like £40,000. It’s fucking ridiculous. Who the bloody hell’s got that?”
Uh, maybe multi-millionaire Roger Daltrey has that. And that’s because of Brexit or of Britain’s inability to implement Brexit dictates?
Of course, this leads us that hoary minefield of separating musicians we love from their politics or personal behavior, which we may roll our eyes at or actively loathe. There has been much wingeing about that – I’ve certainly done so – but I’ll not wade into that particular battleground here.
And then to counter the crusty old man throughline, there’s this: Daltrey is a longtime patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, which helps fund the creation of recreational spaces designed specifically for teenagers and young adults being treated for cancer at hospitals across the United Kingdom. The Who will kick off the multi-band benefit with a show March 18 and another March 20 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
But I will address this, in terms of making new music: Is the song over? (Cue The Who’s “The Song Is Over” from Who’s Next.)
VIDEO: Roger Daltrey on Late Night with Conan O’Brien
Last year, Daltrey spoke to the NME and to the London Times and addressed both a no-Who world and mortality.
The NME asked whether he and Townshend planned on recording another album, “What’s the point?” he responded. “What’s the point of records? We released an album four years ago [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.”
Eh, I’ve got a clue. WHO was a stinker. Endless Wire, from 2006, was meh. Same for 1982’s It’s Hard. I guess we’re now way out of the realm of new music, but you get the point. We – the audience at Who shows – generally time our bathroom breaks to coincide with the obligatory two “new” songs. And it really does reinforce the notion that, as with most any artist or band, the best music is made when they’re in their 20s and 30s. Youthful-ish pursuits and all.
“My dreams came true so, listen, I’m ready to go at any time. My family are all great and all taken care of,” Daltrey told the Times. “You’ve got to be realistic. You can’t live your life forever. Like I said, people my age, we’re in the way. There are no guitar strings to be changed on this old instrument.”
“If I became a burden on everyone, I’d consider [assisted dying]. A good friend of mine — a lovely woodsman called Tom — he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer. If I had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, I wouldn’t have chemo. I’d take the morphine and go down.”
Daltrey also shared his feelings on death in a 2021 interview with the End Well Project where he described “letting go” after he became really sick and then feeling as if he was “wrapped in a cotton ball.” He said the experience made him not afraid of death.
“I don’t mind. I don’t mind the next bit. It’s gonna be an adventure like the last bit,” he said.
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