| February 2nd, 2005 10:37 AM |
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| Gazza |
Who's back
He has dabbled in trout, worms and charity benefits, but Roger Daltrey could never quite stay away from rock'n'roll. He tells Dave Simpson about teaming up with his old sparring partner, Pete Townshend, to record the first Who album in 23 years
Friday January 28, 2005
The Guardian
Then and now ... Roger Daltrey
Roger Daltrey is remembering a typical business discussion between himself and Pete Townshend. It was 1973; the Who were filming Love Reign O'er Me for the Quadrophenia movie when Daltrey realised that the film crew - mates of Townshend's - were just sitting there and not actually filming anything. Daltrey, who was straining his voice, was hardly pleased, and voiced his concerns to the guitarist.
"So he whacked me round the bloody 'ead with a guitar," remembers Daltrey, with a laugh. "I was being held back by two roadies, because they knew what I was like. I stood there and watched him do it. 'Yeah, what else you got?' So he said, 'Let him go or I'll kill him.'"
The roadies, unfortunately for the guitarist, let the singer go. "One whack and he was on the floor. But it was hysterically funny! In five minutes we'd gone from Love Reign O'er Me to me sittin' in an ambulance holding 'is hand, saying, 'Sorry, Pete, I didn't mean it,' with him sparko."
The irony of the situation is particularly savoured. "Course, if they'd had their bloody cameras on, it would have been the best thing in the film. Hahahaha!"
Thirty-two years later, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are no longer knocking seven bells out of each other; since December they have been holed up in Townshend's London studio, working on the first album of new Who material since 1982. Fans will be intrigued at the revelation that the pair are bickering just like they did in the old days. "Let's just say we don't please each other all the time," says Daltrey.
It was precisely this dynamic that spawned one of the all-time great British rock bands. The Beatles were more famous, the Stones arguably sexier, but neither matched the explosive power of the Who in their prime. Songs like My Generation (containing the immortal line "I hope I die before I get old") were delivered with trashed equipment and unparalleled bad behaviour, such as when drummer Keith Moon drove his Rolls-Royce into the foyer of a Glasgow hotel.
Townshend - the middle-class, art-school intellectual - created songs voicing alienation and frustration. Daltrey - the rebellious expelled schoolboy and disgruntled steelworker - tapped into exactly the right vein of testosterone, questioning and hurt to bring them all to life. "He is able to get inside my head and I get inside his," says Daltrey of their partnership.
Townshend's savage wit also triggered Daltrey's rages. However, it was a rumble with Moon that caused Daltrey to reassess his violence. In 1965, fearing drugs were diluting the band's power, Daltrey flushed Moon's pills down the loo. Moon attacked him with a tambourine and got flattened, and Daltrey was kicked out of the band.
He came back, but "with all these conditions!" Daltrey recalls. "Jesus, my whole personality had to change. But I hated myself for hitting them." Instead, he channelled his fury into the songs (the 1973 incident was self-defence, he says) and the Who became more powerful still.
But Daltrey is not here to talk about the Who. He is here to plug Moonlighting, an anthology of 30 years of solo work produced "on my days off". Several songs derive from his fairly successful acting career. His 1989 role in Brecht's Threepenny Opera throws up a Cockney Mack the Knife. The cracking Free Me hails from the film McVicar, where Daltrey brilliantly played the notorious criminal-turned-writer who battled the prison system. "John McVicar had a questioning mind. But his whole life had been a waste up to that point. He was like a coiled spring waiting to be released."
However, the compilation is peppered with Townshend classics such as Pinball Wizard, and talk keeps returning to these. Nothing, Daltrey says, challenges him like a Townshend song. Everything else, even the acting career, is "secondary". Thus, when he is singing new Townshend material, Daltrey can hardly contain his excitement. They already have two songs down for the new Who album. One is about Beslan, another about the redemptive power of music. And that, he beams, is "classic Townshend".
Some will doubt whether Townshend and Daltrey on their own can really be the Who. Moon died in 1978 after overdosing on pills prescribed to help his alcoholism; bassist John "Ox" Entwistle died a similarly rock-related death in 2002. Surprisingly, Daltrey agrees with the critics. Townshend is toying with calling them Who2; Daltrey, typically contrary, jokes about "Who's Left".
More seriously, he sees this as an attempt not to revive the Who, but develop it. He thinks they did the wrong thing by simply replacing Moon with another drummer (Kenney Jones).
"It's like, in a room of four walls if you lose one, the room can be any size you want it. But we built another fuckin' wall! Keith and now John are gone and we can never replace those walls, but with me and Pete, the possibilities are infinite." Daltrey hopes to have an album finished by spring.
Until now, the Who have made two albums without Moon: 1981's Face Dances and 1982's It's Hard. Since then, they have functioned on and off as a live band, boosting charities such as Daltrey's Teenage Cancer Trust; he says it is important to him for family reasons (and "a working-class thing, putting something back") and fits with the Who's long-standing connection with youth. Daltrey lives for playing live ("I'd do 300 gigs a year if Townshend was up for it. And we are physically able, haha!") but, since the early 1990s, he has kept out of the studio. It wasn't the same without Pete.
Townshend has contemplated doing new material for years. Entwistle's death reignited the fire, but the petrol on the flames came when Townshend was arrested in an internet paedophilia swoop in 2003. Daltrey's defence was immediate and unflinching. "I know Pete. I knew it was bollocks," he says, citing Townshend's record in helping abuse victims, including battered wives. However, he admits that it was as big a crisis as he had ever faced. "The shock of it, coming so soon after John's death, almost put me on overload."
Townshend faced the press and offered an explanation (he visited a website, just once, researching child abuse for his biography) that was eventually accepted. But Daltrey still suspects a witch-hunt. "The police actually told me that if he wasn't who he was, they would never have even investigated it, because they knew he'd only visited the site once."
Equally, Daltrey knew that the character of Uncle Ernie from the Who's rock opera, Tommy, is based on a character from Townshend's "weird childhood", and was aware of the guitarist's long-standing concern about the issue. "He used to tell me, 'My son picks up the internet and all he gets is porn.'"
Those famous blue eyes are piercing into mine, searching for doubt. Daltrey continues: "What's really amazing is that nobody answers the question he wanted answering: 'Why can't they stop it?' If you give your credit card details, the banks must know who you're dealing with. The servers can stamp it out. What the fuck is going on at government level? It's because there's too much money being made."
Townshend was cautioned. The incident has brought the pair closer together, fuelled Townshend's "creative juices" and their long distrust of the establishment.
Daltrey was recently awarded a CBE but nevertheless, he blasts forth at everything from parliamentary "pigs in the trough" to David Kelly's "suspicious death". It angers him that everything the Who deemed "old" - bureaucracy, class, the two-party system and hidden corridors of power - is still here.
The band return to the ring as their stock among young bands is again high. Daltrey mentions the Bees and Franz Ferdinand, who recently had a Who-like punch-up. He "quite likes" wild boys the Libertines, but he frets that there is "something missing".
One of the frontmen, usually.
"Harhar! Yeah ... but he's a clever guy, that one," he says of the errant Pete Doherty. "He's got the X factor, hasn't he? He's magic to watch. You can't learn that.
"What's so disarming about Peter [Doherty] is that he pretends he's in control, or he thinks he is. But if he's up to everything [with drugs] people say he is, he cannot be in control. He is a genius. But I've known many people like that and they're all dead."
Daltrey is aware of comparisons between Doherty and the Who's own rock tragedy, Keith Moon; he points out that public fascination fuels their behaviour but people missed the point with Moon.
At the moment, Hollywood wants to make a film about Moon, "the madcap character". But Daltrey would like such a film to shed new light on one of rock's most complex characters, whose sideways take on life went far beyond filling bass drums with gunpowder and playing as if his whole body was exploding.
"Keith was a savant," he says. "The most amazing mimic. He could vacuum a character off someone in 10 minutes and he would then become them. Not just a caricature, he'd get inside. It was scary! He may have been a little bit autistic; we didn't know about those things then. There was definitely something different in his head."
For a millisecond, the cheery demeanour gives way to something wistful. All this musical activity coincides with a lull in Daltrey's life. He is rock's most celebrated trout farmer (although in fact he "got out of trout" five years ago) and recently ("disastrously!") experimented with farming worms. His children are now adults; he hasn't acted for some time.
A psychologist might say the man who hoped he'd die before he got old is fighting against time. Daltrey insists not: the only Who member who never got into hard drugs is chasing something almost mythical that he can find only in the band.
"Some nights," he confides, "it's like pushing an elephant upstairs, but then suddenly that elephant starts to run and it's that fleeting moment that amazes me ... it's like a zen experience. You see so many acts who don't even get the elephant to the fuckin' stairs. I think that's why the Who is still valuable."
So when will you stop?
"When it leaves me," he says. "And when it leaves me, I'll know."
Who are you?
March 1 1944: Roger Harry Daltrey survives a difficult birth in Shepherd's Bush, London.
1957: After hearing Elvis, Daltrey makes a guitar from a block of wood.
1959: Daltry passes his 11-plus and qualifies for Acton grammar school, where he is expelled for causing trouble among boys of higher social backgrounds.
1962: Steelworker Daltrey is invited by former Acton pupil Townshend to join Mod band the Detours, who become the High Numbers, then the Who.
September 1964: The group destroy their equipment at the Railway Hotel, Harrow, the first glimpse of an enduring image of rock rebellion.
November 1965: Daltrey accompanies Number 2 hit My Generation by telling an interviewer:"When I'm 30 I'm going to kill myself. I don't ever want to get old."
1967: Daltrey faces a choice between his first marriage and the Who. He chooses the band.
August 17 1969: The Who's performance at Woodstock turns them into US superstars. "Field of bloody hippies. We were tired, stoned and jetlagged," Daltrey says today.
July 19 1971: Marries Heather Taylor. Their marriage still survives.
April 1975: Daltrey wins the US New Star of the Year for his acting in the Tommy film.
August 1975: Daltrey stars in Ken Russell's Lisztomania ("I made all my mistakes in terrifying Technicolor").
May 3 1976: The Who's gig at Charlton football stadium is certified the loudest ever (120 decibels).
May 1979: The Quadrophenia film starts a Mod revival.
April 1980: The film McVicar opens in London.
Dec 16 1983: The Who split.
July 13 1985: The Who reform for Live Aid.
November 1985: Daltrey's Under a Raging Moon, about Keith, reaches number 42.
April 1989: Daltrey plays a street singer in Brecht's Threepenny Opera.
2003: Daltrey presents TV programme Extreme History, in which he demonstrates survival techniques and dons wolf skin.
July 2004: The Who return in triumph to the Isle of Wight festival after 34 years.
December 31 2004: Daltrey awarded a CBE. "It's nice to be honoured by your country, but I have my own criticisms of the honours system," he says. "If it helps my charity work open doors towards huge amounts of money sittin' in fuckin' foundations everywhere, then fine!"
· Moonlighting is released on Sanctuary on Monday. To order a copy for £12.99, call the Guardian music service on 0870 836 0712
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| February 2nd, 2005 11:11 AM |
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| rolling who |
Roger Daltrey is remembering a typical business discussion between himself and Pete Townshend. It was 1973; the Who were filming Love Reign O'er Me for the Quadrophenia movie when Daltrey realised that the film crew - mates of Townshend's - were just sitting there and not actually filming anything. Daltrey, who was straining his voice, was hardly pleased, and voiced his concerns to the guitarist.
The 'Quadrophenia' film was released in 1979. I don't believe filming for it began in 1973. Sounds like Rog has his dates mixed.
Of course, in 'Stone Alone', Wyman wrote: "When the Who were compiling footage for their 1971 film 'Quadrophenia,' they requested their segment from the show ("A Quick One" from the 'Rock 'n Roll Circus)."
Umm, wrong Bill. It was for the 1979 film 'The Kids Are Alright.'
[Edited by rolling who] |
| February 2nd, 2005 11:19 AM |
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| Joey |
Thanks Gazza ...........................
First New WHO Studio Disc since 1982 !
I'm so excited that I'm typing this with my nipples .
....................................................
[ Edited by Cassie ]
[Edited by Joey] |
| February 2nd, 2005 12:27 PM |
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| Gazza |
quote:
rolling who wrote:
Roger Daltrey is remembering a typical business discussion between himself and Pete Townshend. It was 1973; the Who were filming Love Reign O'er Me for the Quadrophenia movie when Daltrey realised that the film crew - mates of Townshend's - were just sitting there and not actually filming anything. Daltrey, who was straining his voice, was hardly pleased, and voiced his concerns to the guitarist.
The 'Quadrophenia' film was released in 1979. I don't believe filming for it began in 1973. Sounds like Rog has his dates mixed.
Of course, in 'Stone Alone', Wyman wrote: "When the Who were compiling footage for their 1971 film 'Quadrophenia,' they requested their segment from the show ("A Quick One" from the 'Rock 'n Roll Circus)."
Umm, wrong Bill. It was for the 1979 film 'The Kids Are Alright.'
[Edited by rolling who]
maybe he's getting a few things mixed up, but its well documented that when making the Quadrophenia album, Roger knocked Pete out cold after Pete struck him with his guitar.
The Who didnt appear in the 1979 movie anyway, so maybe the film crew were filming the sessions for another (unreleased) movie project around the album? |
| February 2nd, 2005 12:32 PM |
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| Jumping Jack |
"The Beatles were more famous, the Stones arguably sexier, but neither matched the explosive power of the Who in their prime."
AMEN TO THAT! |
| February 2nd, 2005 12:37 PM |
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| Snappy McJack |
Joey, how can someone NOT like this?!?! The Ox's bass playing on this one can not be matched!
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V
You - you're wasting my time
We're making music we're doing fine
Then a slap in the face takes me back to the starting line
You - your wasting my life
You can't lose what you've already lost
Your arms are open but your legs are crossed
Save me - save me
I'm going down for the third time
Save me - save me
Somebody throw me my next line
Too hot for me to handle
So cold I'm getting nowhere
Pinch me to see if I'm sleeping
Maybe it's only a nightmare
You - why did it have to be you?
Of all those girls I had to choose
You win and I lose
You - you with the poisonous eyes
One look and I'm hooked
One touch and my goose is cooked
Save me - save me
I'm going down for the third time
Save me - save me
Somebody throw me a life line
Too late to change partners
Too late you've got no chance
Too late to change partners
Too late to say I don't dance
You - there's a name for girls like you
You lead me on like a lamb to the slaughter
Then you act like a fish out of water
You - there's a name for girls like you
You've coming on like a steam train
Then you blow me away just like a hurricane
Save me - save me
I'm going down for the last time
Save me - save me
Somebody throw me a lifeline
Save me I'm falling
From the top of the page to the next line
Save me I'm burning
From tips of my toes to my hairline
Too hot for me to handle
So cold I'm getting nowhere
Pinch me to see if I'm sleeping
Maybe it's only a nightmare.
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| February 2nd, 2005 02:13 PM |
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| Joey |
[quote]Snappy McJack wrote:
Joey, how can someone NOT like this?!?! The Ox's bass playing on this one can not be matched!
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V
You - you're wasting my time
We're making music we're doing fine
Then a slap in the face takes me back to the starting line
You - your wasting my life
You can't lose what you've already lost
Your arms are open but your legs are crossed
Snappy McJack & J.J. Flash ........................
I would like to nuzzle BOTH of you .
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| February 2nd, 2005 03:05 PM |
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| glencar |
Straight to the cut-out bins!!! |
| February 2nd, 2005 03:48 PM |
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| Joey |
quote:
glencar wrote:
Straight to the cut-out bins!!!
Blue ..............................
You may NOT touch my Monkey the REST of this week !
Ninea
Ninea Abs Shae Monkee |
| February 2nd, 2005 03:51 PM |
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| glencar |
Ha ha! |
| February 2nd, 2005 04:12 PM |
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| Hannalee |
quote:
Gazza wrote:
maybe he's getting a few things mixed up, but its well documented that when making the Quadrophenia album, Roger knocked Pete out cold after Pete struck him with his guitar.
The Who didnt appear in the 1979 movie anyway, so maybe the film crew were filming the sessions for another (unreleased) movie project around the album?
It's more likely that the Guardian got the date wrong. After all, it says that Pete asked Roger to join the Detours, but Daltrey can't have forgotten that that was his band, and that he recruited both Townshend and Entwistle.
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| February 2nd, 2005 04:14 PM |
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| Joey |
quote:
glencar wrote:
Ha ha!
Blue ....................................
Wasn't Alicia Rickter , the woman that NY Met Mike Piazza married , the ' other ' woman in the " Vince & Janine " Sex Tape ?!?!
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| February 2nd, 2005 04:17 PM |
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| glencar |
Piazza married a woman? |
| February 2nd, 2005 04:21 PM |
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| Joey |
quote:
glencar wrote:
Piazza married a woman?
Blue ...............................................
You make Joey sniggle
" Piazza, Rickter reportedly to wed Jan. 29
FOXSports.com
Posted: 7 days ago "
" Mike Piazza is no longer a free agent ... so to speak.
According to a report on the Newsday website, the Mets' All-Star catcher will be getting married next weekend.
Piazza and longtime girlfriend Alicia Rickter, a former Playboy Playmate and Baywatch actress, will be wed on Jan. 29 in Miami, where Piazza owns a condo.
According to a report, Mike Piazza and Alicia Rickter (right) will be getting married soon. (Adam Rountree / GettyImages)
Piazza could not be reached for comment, but the newspaper reported that former Mets teammates Al Leiter and John Franco would be among the wedding guests. The team's equipment manager, Charlie Samuels, is also attending, but no other club officials are expected to attend the small ceremony.
Perhaps Piazza's impending nuptials will bring persistent rumors that the catcher was gay to an end. In 2002, the speculation about Piazza's sexuality reached such a fevered pitch that he felt compelled to hold a news conference before a game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia to proclaim his heterosexuality.
"I'm not gay," Piazza said. "The truth is that I'm heterosexual and date women."
And he's reportedly going to marry one of them. "
You make Joey sniggle !
[Edited by Joey] |
| February 2nd, 2005 05:17 PM |
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| Joey |
Scratch that ......................
This is the woman who starred with Vince & Janine :
http://www.brandyledford.com/photo_misc.htm |
| February 2nd, 2005 05:25 PM |
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| glencar |
She has an amazing set. |
| February 2nd, 2005 05:46 PM |
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| Joey |
quote:
glencar wrote:
She has an amazing set.
Oh Yeah .............Just ask Bill !
http://www.brandyledford.com/photos/brandyledford_c_billclinton-PRESS.jpg |
| February 2nd, 2005 08:54 PM |
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| Soldatti |
Great article, all is true. |
| February 3rd, 2005 09:36 AM |
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| Joey |
" Great article, all is true. "
< ----------- Thanks Soldatti
( Rocks Off Member ) |
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