12/15/2023 0 Comments Roger daltrey wokeThey did not get him, they did not get the music business. “I’ve had so many scripts written, by very eminent scriptwriters, but they just did not get it. For 30 years he’s been trying to get a biopic made about The Who’s exuberantly destructive drummer Keith Moon, but only now, with the help of author Nigel Hinton, is the project – on paper, at least – starting to feel as wild and multifaceted as its subject. I’m a totally different bloke now than I was all those years ago.” “But you do change over the years I’ve changed a great deal. “Two years on, you do start to wonder ‘Didn’t I used to be a singer?’” he grins. The tour is titled Who Was I? – not an existential conundrum, but a tongue-in-cheek post-pandemic gag. So if I can go out there and employ 10 musicians 10 road crew for a month, I’m gonna do it.” “Most of them are self-employed, they got no furlough, no anything. “Musicians have had a real rough two years, really rough,” he explains. He initially organised it in order to give work to a band and crew after two lean pandemic years. We were too f***ing loud.”įar from an ego fest, Daltrey sees the tour as an extension of his philanthropic work. It’s a penalty for what we did in our lives. Without these things everything’s a mumble. How’s the hearing? “Pardon?” He fumbles his hearing aids from his ears. “I wanted to give a feast for the ears, so it’s not just one noise coming at you for two hours.” He’ll also be taking questions from the audience, probably pre-written. In June, he sets out on a solo tour, rescheduled from 2021, playing songs from eight disparate solo albums that ranged from hard rock to electropop, blues and country. The shows raised £1.6m this year thanks to performances by the likes of The Who, Ed Sheeran, Paul Weller, Yungblud, and fellow rock’n’roll pussycat Liam Gallagher. “We didn’t really spend any money on rehearsals, we were all about just making more dosh for the charity,” he says. He’s fresh from playing a ramshackle acoustic Who set for the latest of the Teenage Cancer Trust stints he’s been organising at the Royal Albert Hall since 2000. But we worked bloody hard for it.”Īnd still, after six decades and north of 100 million album sales as the iconic mod wolfman fronting one of the biggest and best rock bands in the world, he works. We used to have very fast cars, and everywhere was foot on the floor. “We used to go everywhere at 120 miles an hour, there were no speed limits, lighting was very poor. “You look at our tour schedule in ’65, ’66, ’67, it’s just crazy,” says the gruff, amiable singer, beaming into the camera from a well-appointed music room in his Jacobean manor house in East Sussex. In fact, he’s most amazed not by The Who’s legendary tales of carnage and debauchery, but by their sheer velocity. The thankfully brief few weeks in 1965 that he spent on the Krays’ loan book when he needed £400 for a new car. The time he was hit directly in the eye by a mike stand wielded by Gary Glitter during boisterous rehearsals for a Quadrophenia live tour in 1996. The helicopter that conked out as it came in to land at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. The Hell’s Angels riots at early Who gigs. When The Who’s Roger Daltrey looks back at his nigh on 60 years as one of the roaring engines of rock’n’roll and declares “It’s a wonder we survived,” he could be talking about any number of near-death moments. Roger Daltrey: ‘Musicians cannot earn a living in the record industry any more’ (Press image)
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