Got the Summertime Blues? Roger Daltrey Has Your Prescription

In April, Pete told The New York Times, “I don’t get much of a buzz from performing with the Who. If I’m really honest, I’ve been touring for the money.” Are we looking at the end days of the Who?

I can’t do it for the money, and I don’t want to be out there with someone doing it only for the money. I go out there to deliver whatever energy I’ve got to my audience. I know how hard it was to work and buy those tickets. I did that in the early days, watching my first rock heroes in the late ’50s after saving up four to six weeks to buy a ticket. I don’t want to go and watch someone dialing it in. I don’t want to work with someone like that. So perhaps it is the end unless his attitude changes and he can try and find the passion for it again.

Are you going to do something about it? Talk to him?

How can I do anything about it? It’s not my problem. It’s his. My commitment is always there. I’m committed to not half doing it. It’s painful. If he’s going to go on tour with that attitude, my job becomes twice as hard. He seems to do it all in the press. And then I read about it and discuss it with you. Talk your head out, Pete. If you 100 percent want to do it, I’ll be there for you. If not, why would I want to?

If he throws in the towel, how do you see your career going forward?

I’ve got a solo career, and I’m very happy in it. I don’t need to earn oodles of money. I’m a musician, a singer. I can play bar mitzvahs and funerals. There could be more of those coming up. We did what we did, and I’m very, very grateful for it. I shall miss it. But I can’t half do it. It would be cheating our fans. It would be cheating everything we stood for.

Roger Daltrey, right, and Pete Townshend during the Music Walk of Fame Founding Stone Unveiling on Nov. 19, 2019 in London.

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Has your relationship with Pete mellowed since 1961?

No. I think the world of him. He’s a difficult cuss. He will say the same thing about me. He’s the north pole and I’m the south pole. Somewhere in between there is incredible chemistry. I put this group together in the first place. I’ve been with him since he was 16. Remember, I was the only straight one, with three addicts.

How did you navigate that chaos?

Someone had to control them. I was married very early on with a wife and a baby at 19 years old. I had no alternative but to make this band work. I did not want to go back to sheet metal work. Whereas they were party animals who just wanted to have a good time.

You had discipline the others lacked, but you were also known as a brawler.

When you’re dealing with somebody who’s just had two bottles of brandy and was spitting at you and kicking you, you kind of had to be a brawler. It’s how it worked. I don’t question it.

(Left to right) Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle of the Who.

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Despite the mayhem, did you sense the Who was bound for greatness?

A singer never sees the band. You are center stage, and you feel them. I used to be out front listening. I knew that our first drummer was completely wrong. Before Keith Moon joined, we were like every rock ’n’ roll band on the circuit. As soon as Keith joined, within a week, we were unique. The Who made headlines for smashing equipment and trashing hotel rooms. You didn’t approve or participate. I recognized its value. It got us noticed. It’s like a kid in a ghetto spraying his name on a wall. That doesn’t mean I particularly liked it. I especially didn’t like paying for it. It cost us a great deal of money.

You, Mick Jagger and Robert Plant are considered among the best showmen in rock history. What does it take to be a great rock singer?

Mick Jagger is possibly the best front man there ever will be. Him and James Brown. Without James Brown, Mick would have never learned his stage show. Freddie Mercury was a great singer and entertainer. It’s horses for courses. I can’t be objective. I always felt I was kind of introverted on stage. Swinging the microphone, I was just kind of trying to knit everything up into this ballet: Keith’s mad drumming behind me, Pete’s Mexican jumping bean windmill lunacy on one side and John standing completely stoic on the other. I used to feel the microphone whizzing about, and by God, it used to whiz about. Like I say, I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know.

You’ve released 10 solo studio albums and lots of other recordings. Did you ever consider leaving the Who?

I had a chance to go solo in 1973 when I had a huge solo record, my first, called Daltrey. I was actually selling more records than the Who, and the record company was worried about me creating a Rod Stewart/Small Faces situation. It’s my band! I’m not leaving the band. We were not doing anything at the moment. Pete was writing another load of songs, and I had to wait for them. But I wanted to keep singing.

In terms of skills, what have you gained and lost over time?

My voice is better than ever. My hearing has suffered terribly. Mostly it suffered from the factory rather than the band. I used to be on a grind wheel all day, grinding welds on belt grafts. We had no ear defenders in those days. I think that did more damage to my ears than ever the Who did, even though I call my right ear my Entwistle ear and my left ear my Townshend ear.

What is behind the band’s influence and longevity?

All I can say is that Pete wrote songs from a perspective totally different from almost anybody else out there. When it comes to be studied in the future, not in our lifetimes, they will realize that he was up on another level. He was writing internal songs that spoke to a different part of you than most pop music did. And he was talented enough to put voice structures and chord structures together so that his songs don’t seem to date, whereas quite a lot of pop and rock songs you listen to years later, you think, By God, that sounds old-fashioned. You hear “Baba O’Riley,” for instance, it sounds as fresh as the day it was made.

Was there an upside to growing up in a poor neighborhood?

We didn’t have much money, but we were incredibly wealthy because we had a fantastic community. We were post-war. We really knew how to support each other. But now everyone is divided, and everyone has to have a neurosis.

You and Heather tied the knot in 1971. What’s your secret to a lasting marriage?

She’s starting to like me. There’s no secret. I got lucky. I’ve got a lovely family. I like rural life. I like country people. It got so heavy for me in the late ’60s, early ’70s. It got unbearable to go out and get shoved under the lens of a microscope. I moved to the countryside and bought myself a farm. I love it. It kept me grounded. It kept me from going off the rails.

What’s the status of the Keith Moon movie you’ve been working on for so long?

We’re looking for directors. As soon as I get a director, I can do the final draft of the script. I think I’ve found the perfect Keith Moon, at least a good prototype. I would like for people to realize why we loved him so much and how clever and smart he was, but also how flawed he was. He was the most extraordinary man I ever met in my life. I want to make a proper film. Cinema seems to have lost its way. Film should be bigger than TV, brighter than TV. What they make now for streaming are these fuzzy, dull pictures for small screens that go on forever. We are going backwards.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Make mine a large whiskey.