The Tapes Archive

Marc Allan: Hello, Roger?

Roger Daltrey: Hi, Marc.

Marc Allan: Hi, how are you?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah. Good.

Marc Allan: Good. Good. Well, since we have a short time, I’ll get right to it. I was in on the conference call a couple of months back when you did the Carnegie Hall show. And it was interesting to me that not one person asked about your solo records. So I’m gonna out start out by asking about that. Do you feel like you’ve gotten your due? I mean, I think if you’ve had some real fine records as a solo artist.

Roger Daltrey: Well, I’ve got what I wanted to do out of it, is I made the music I wanted to make. Whether they were commercially successful or what, I mean, that to me is not really why I do it. I’m not complaining, put it that way. It would have been nice to have more success than I actually had, but I think people find it very difficult to accept band members that have been in a band like the Who for that length of time, in a different capacity. I think they find it very difficult to accept that. I think we all suffer from it. Pete suffers from it as well to a certain extent.

Marc Allan: Yeah, no question about it. There were a couple of things that stand out in my mind as solo recordings of yours, and that would be some of the stuff on the McVicar soundtrack, and “Under a Raging Moon” in particular. Are there standout things for you?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah, I was really pleased with my last album, “Rocks in the Head.”

Marc Allan: Yeah, that one too.

Roger Daltrey: It was a real writing breakthrough for me. I was very pleased with that. But yeah, I’m proud of both of those records. I’m proud of everything I’ve done. They’re down with different reasons. And I was always trying to do different things. I mean, sometimes I fell flat on my face, but it’s the trying that’s important.

Marc Allan: Now, you said that you think people have a hard time accepting it. Why is that, do you think? Are they just so used to seeing you with The Who that they can’t take it with anybody else?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah, I mean, it’s the same, what can I say. It seems to be everything about this industry now wants to pigeonhole you. And it seems that audiences have become almost the same thing. They want you in that box or they don’t want you at all. So when I sat down and thought, well, I really still wanna sing. I still wanna get out there. But the economics of touring and doing something different, it’s very difficult. So I thought, well, let’s give people what I want. They wanna hear me singing Who songs. I’m the guy that sang them in the first place. I can make it sound like the Who if I want to, very, very easily. I can make it sound exactly like the Who. In fact, John’s with me on a few of the shows. Pete’s brother’s with me. I could even call it Townshend, Daltrey, and Entwistle. But that’s not the point. It’s making it, taking it on. Make the music live and push it on a bit. And what’s great about Who music, especially the post-Tommy stuff or “Tommy” and after, is that when you hear it played with an orchestra and it works, I mean, we’ve only done it twice, the Carnegie Hall things. And the first night was a nightmare, complete nightmare. But the second night it came together and it worked. It really is an amazing sound. And it really does feel like the orchestra always should have been there. It doesn’t take away from the sound at all. When you hear it, it’s just so dramatic the effect that it makes every hair on your body stand up when it’s working.

Marc Allan: Given what you said about being a solo artist, did you have any trepidation about going out on the road with something like this, which is very expensive and might not pay off?

Roger Daltrey: Oh, I’ll worry about that when the time comes. I don’t worry for myself so much, ’cause I mean, I’ve done well out of this industry. And I worry about the guys in the band. It’s their bread and butter, But it’s a great show. And like I say, I would love the Who to be out there playing this summer. I would love the Who to have a record out there and be the group that I always felt that it should be, and it should never stop being. But it’s not because Pete doesn’t wanna do it. And this is the next thing I can do that will keep this music alive, because Who music doesn’t just live on the radio. I mean, that’s what we did 20 years ago, 25 years ago. It’s still vibrant today when you hear it played live. But there’s very few people that play it. And I don’t think anyone plays it better than myself and the other guys in the band. So being the voice, I’m out there doing it. I’m gonna be out there doing it.

Marc Allan: Is it still comfortable to sing those songs? I mean, I know you still-

Roger Daltrey: This is hard as shit.

Marc Allan: I’m sorry?

Roger Daltrey: This is hard as hell. It crucifies me every night, but that’s why it was always so great. It was the struggle to make it. Those songs are created out of interior agonies. And you can’t go through the motions on those songs, ever.

Marc Allan: Right, and that’s true. And also I think those songs are very geared toward youthfulness, youthful rebellion, antagonism, and all that.

Roger Daltrey: I think they were written with that, but I think there’s something that they gained from middle age. Because anger changes in middle age. You’re still passionate, but anger, it’s not so much anger anymore. It’s bigger. It’s a bigger canvas, not a smaller one. And I think it’s in some ways more relevant. I mean, ’cause my energy hasn’t dropped at all, and I still sing in the same keys. I mean, it’s still the same. Just because it hasn’t got the kind of ignorance of youth if you like, I mean, you can never get that back. A lot of your innocence goes out the window along with your ignorance, and it changes you. And anger becomes something else. I wish I could find a word for it. I’ve thought about it an awful lot. But it’s definitely not anger anymore, although it’s not any less passionate. But it’s something bigger. And it’s certainly a lot less destructive.

Marc Allan: Yeah, in the “Playboy” interview that Pete did not long ago, he said that he always felt a competition with you. That he was on stage, and he was really trying to vie for the attention and the affection of the audience against you. Did you feel that too?

Roger Daltrey: No, I never did. I always wanted to be a band member and do my bit in the band. I didn’t really care about things like that. I mean, obviously, a singer’s stuck up at the front whether he likes it or not. It’s not the easiest job in the band. But to me it was never really a competition. I used to like the friction between us creatively, because I used to feel that Pete’s biggest problem in life used to be this kind of sycophantical attitude adopted by people around him, which I think in the end did him no favors whatsoever. Telling people what I wanna hear isn’t necessarily always the best thing. I used to be very good at telling him sometimes what he didn’t wanna hear. And I think he respected me for that.

Marc Allan: Did you know he was?

Roger Daltrey: I’m not certain. That’s not to say that I was always right. But it made him think.

Marc Allan: Did you know he was competing with you?

Roger Daltrey: I always got the feeling by his interviews. They always shocked me, where he’s sometimes coming from. They still do. I mean, I still feel that he’s almost in Who denial. And I find that very sad because I know he wrote wonderful, wonderful songs. I wonder if he would have written those songs had he not been in a band like the Who. Or even the band, the Who. So I think it’s a shame he can’t just give the Who some credit where it’s deserved. Because a lot of great books have been written and never been read. And it’s the same with music. If you look at the history of “Tommy” for instance, when it first was released, it was a fair hit. It wasn’t a big, big hit. It was a hit after the Who had gone out and slogged their balls out on the road for two or three years, and got it back in the charts and made it the huge hit that it became. That’s not just the writer. That’s the band.

Marc Allan: Yeah. So speculate on it. Why is he the way he is about the Who?

Roger Daltrey: I can’t speculate ever on what Pete is. He’s a guy that is very, very complex. I do love him very dearly. I don’t like him a lot of the time. But I do love him very, very dearly. And I couldn’t ever hope to analyze him.

Marc Allan: There was a “New York Times Magazine” piece not long ago that was kind of looking at the Who, and saying that there are actually more Who greatest hits and repackages than there are original material.

Roger Daltrey: No, it’s true. Never before has so little been produced so much.

Marc Allan: It’s true. I mean, why was that? I mean, was it just a constant struggle to try to get things done?

Roger Daltrey: It was very, very difficult in the studio with us because Pete wanted control all the time. It became more and more difficult as it went on. And we were like on the road. Then we got into film projects and grandiose ideas of producing films and all this kind of stuff. And it kind of took away from what we really did well, which was to make records. And when we did it well, we did it as well as it can be done.

Marc Allan: Let me ask you something else about the Who. I’ve always felt that Entwistle’s contributions were the least recognized and that he really got a pretty raw deal as far as people listened and analyzed what the Who did. That Entwistle was a huge part of it. Can you talk about that?

Roger Daltrey: No, I wouldn’t say he got, I mean, I would agree with you that he, I think all of us, the other three members apart from Pete, I don’t know whether any of us really got the credit we deserved inside the Who. Look how much we suffered at the loss of Keith. We struggled on, but it was never, I mean, we didn’t do any, we lost much, much more than just the drummer. And it’s the same with John. I mean, he’s on the road, he’s coming on the road with me, and there’s chemistry that he brings with him when he gets with me and we play together. There’s a magic that comes out of nowhere. That’s one thing the Who had in bundles. We had this chemistry that you can’t hear on the records. I think recording-wise, in the actual sound, not the content of the stuff. And the actual sound was always very mediocre to what the sound, or what appear to be the sound on stage, because we had such an incredible chemistry. And people used to be looking literally at magic, because you’re not looking at anything really tangible. There’s something created by the chemistry between the four of us that is, you have to see it to understand what it is.

Marc Allan: Is that apparent to you when you’re on stage too?

Roger Daltrey: It was always apparent to me in the Who. I mean, I haven’t done enough solo work to answer that question. I’ve done the Carnegie Hall thing like I said, which was a real challenge to do. And I’m really proud I did it and pulled it off. I mean, it’s a real off-the-wall thing to do. I mean, to have the Chieftains playing “Baba O’Riley” with a rock group behind them and an orchestra behind that, it was a real kind of mad thing to do. But it worked, and I’m really proud of that. But I haven’t done enough solo work to know whether that is still happening. I would hope it is. I’ll keep my legs crossed that it is anyway.

Marc Allan: When you were on the “David Letterman Show” a couple of months back with the Spin Doctors behind you, I mean, that was as powerful as just about anything, as powerful as the Who.

Roger Daltrey: Oh, sure. They’re a great band. They remind me so much of how it used to be. And it was wonderful to play with them, just to be reminded of where I come from. Because I mean, it’s like everything in life. Time seems to make you take a lot for granted, unless you’re constantly reminded of where you’ve been. That’s why I can’t get to grips with all these people that have plastic surgery all the time. I mean, it must be very strange looking in the mirror and continually looking like you were when you were 19.

Marc Allan: So tell me about the show. Are people get to see something markedly different from the Carnegie Hall show?

Roger Daltrey: Well, I mean, it will be all me, of course. No guest stars. We’re doing some other songs. The Carnegie Hall was very difficult for me because I had to give a lot of my best songs to the guest stars. I was acting as an emcee. I couldn’t get warmed up. It was hard. But generally this will be, I think there’ll be more of a rock and roll set within this orchestral piece. And also an acoustic set which is nice. We had a time problem at Carnegie Hall because of the guest stars. Which were there because I wanted to make it a celebration of Pete, which it wouldn’t have been if I had just done it on my own, without other people to do that, to sing his songs. Because he’s been so little covered. I mean, there’s been very, very few covers of Pete’s songs.

Marc Allan: What did he say to you after those shows?

Roger Daltrey: Not a lot. Happy birthday.

Marc Allan: But nothing really friendly-

Roger Daltrey: He sent me a very nice telegram afterwards, ’cause the reviews weren’t kind to us. I mean, most of the reviewers were there on the first night, and because of the union problems at Carnegie, we didn’t get set up until the evening. We were supposed to have a rehearsal in the afternoon, which was one of the few rehearsals we had with the orchestra. We were denied that because of the time the unions took to set up. And so the first show, we were totally winging it. Now, it’s easy to wing it when you’ve got a five-piece band, but you try winging it with 80 people on the stage. And I struggled. But I mean, personally, it doesn’t worry me, that. I don’t have to prove that I can sing. Singers have good nights and they have bad nights. If someone had a bad night, that doesn’t worry me. Surely to me, what is important, if I was in the audience, I would much rather watch anyone struggling and trying to achieve and occasionally getting it right, but fighting all the way, than watch someone else doing it, note-perfect, and going through the motions. To me it’s much more in the struggling, especially in rock music, is much more important than the end of the journey.

Marc Allan: So the show that you’ll bring on the road, do you think it’ll be a bit better, a bit tighter like that?

Roger Daltrey: Oh, much, much tighter. And I mean, Carnegie Hall is notoriously bad for sound, notoriously bad. I mean, you couldn’t pick a worse place for sound to put anything electric in. I mean, in the kind of venues we’ll be playing on this tour, everything is mic’d. We’ll be able to get a brilliant sound. We’ll be able to take the sound up and make it much more funky.

Marc Allan: Did you know that you were gonna take this out on the road, or was it just kind of a snap decision afterwards?

Roger Daltrey: The second night at Carnegie went so well, I just thought this is something we could work, might work really well on the road. And I think it’s a show people will come to and have a really good time at.

Marc Allan: Getting back to the question I was asking about the Spin Doctors. I wondered if you ever thought about, I’ll just get a three-member rock band behind me and go out and really do this. I wanna do the Who stuff, if Pete doesn’t, fine. But I’ll get something and try to re-create it as best I can.

Roger Daltrey: I mean, I’ve thought of all those things. But I mean, that would just be copying what the Who does. I think what’s great about doing it with an orchestra and doing it the way we’re doing it at the moment is that it is something a little bit more than that. And you really do have to hear it working well to understand what I mean.

Marc Allan: Has there been any talk of the Who playing in Woodstock ’94?

Roger Daltrey: No, there’s none at all. Pete doesn’t wanna do anything anymore.

Marc Allan: Yeah, just a couple of other things and I’ll let you go. You told the story on Letterman of how you started spinning the microphone. Could you retell it again? I’ve forgotten what the gist of it was.

Roger Daltrey: Oh, I can’t remember that. I don’t think I told that story. I started spinning it out of boredom.

Marc Allan: That was it. You just started doing it out of boredom. For another story I’m working on, do you listen to a lot of what’s contemporary today? You listen to a lot of-

Roger Daltrey: I haven’t for the last few weeks ’cause I’ve been rehearsing so much. I keep in touch.

Marc Allan: Okay. Yeah. If music were like the stock market and you could invest in some up and coming young band or bands, have you heard anything that you like, you think will be big or do well?

Roger Daltrey: I’ve heard some good things. I wouldn’t like to put my money on anything at the moment, the way the music business is so bloody corporate. It’s so much different than it was when we came up in it. I don’t really understand it anymore. And when we came up, it was anything you could do to help another artist, you’d do, and it was camaraderie. It seems to me today it’s the camaraderie of the bank balance, which is very strange.

Marc Allan: Yeah, does that ever make you wanna say, ah, forget about it. Let me just sit back and rest and enjoy-

Roger Daltrey: No, fuck ’em. No, fuck ’em, I’m gonna keep singing. I’m gonna sing all the time I can. I’ve still got a good voice when it’s right. I can still holler with the best of them. And I’m a rock singer.

Marc Allan: Do you ever go see any of your contemporaries from the ’60s, ’70s, like that? You ever go see them in concert anymore?

Roger Daltrey: Well, there’s not a lot, I mean, there’s a few of them about, but I hope to catch the Floyd while I’m out there. And I hope to catch the Stones when they go out. I played the Mick Ronson benefit the other night, and there was a few guys from the ’60s, Willie and the Poor Boys, and Gary Brooker from Procol Harum was on. And It was nice to see those guys.

Marc Allan: In 1974, I saw the Who for the first time, “Quadrophenia,” and I thought, and I can still remember a lot about that concert. And it’s just an incredible memory. And I wonder if there are gonna be a lot of people like me in the audience, that when you’re here and when you’re everywhere, do you worry about the possibility that they’re gonna be disappointed?

Roger Daltrey: I don’t see why they should. I mean, just come with an open mind. If you want it to be the same, you’ll be disappointed ’cause it won’t be. I think I’m singing better than I’ve ever sang. And I think this band is as tight as anything. This is an incredibly tight band. But it depends what you want. If you want someone jumping up and down like Pete Townshend and another one on the drums playing the drumsticks like Mooney, you ain’t gonna get it. But I’ve got Pete’s brother who plays great rhythm guitar. He’s got a very similar voice to Pete. I’ve got Zak Starkey on drums, a brilliant young drummer. Ringo’s son. Hear those great songs again played live. And I’ll tell you, they sound much better live than I do on the record.

Marc Allan: And is there anything that you want me to tell people about you or the show or anything else that we haven’t talked about?

Roger Daltrey: Like I said, just come with an open mind.

Marc Allan: And finally, I gotta ask you one thing. The night that I did see this Who show in ’74 at Madison Square Garden, you didn’t do an encore. And I guess the Who were famous for not doing encores. Was there a particular reason for that?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah. Our encores were always shitty.

Marc Allan: Is that true? Is that why?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah. It’s true. If you ever got an encore, you regretted asking for it.

Marc Allan: Why was that?

Roger Daltrey: ‘Cause we all gave it all out in the show. If you give a good show out, you’ve got nothing left for a good encore. And pretentious crap about, oh, we go off now so we can be called back. What a lot of bollocks. OK?

Marc Allan: Thanks very much.

Roger Daltrey: All right, Marc.

Marc Allan: Take care.

Roger Daltrey: Bye.