![]() The house isn’t so far from either the old Acton County Grammar School, where Daltrey met Pete Townshend and John Entwistle – with whom he would form the band known first as the Detours, then as the Who – or the sheet metal factory in Shepherd’s Bush where he worked after he was expelled, aged 15. “When I got a bit of dosh, I bought this instead of a pension,” he says. While we chat, Daltrey’s wife, Heather, ferries teas and coffees from a well-appointed kitchen. It is a nice house, with a tidy front yard barely big enough to accommodate his four-wheel drive, but it is no rock star folly. Get over it! We seem to be living in fear and we can’t do that we’ve got to get out there and work.”ĭaltrey’s man-of-the-people quality is reinforced by the setting for our interview, the back garden of his two-storey, semi-detached home on a quiet residential street in Chiswick. “Who knows when the end is going to be? But it will be! Life is a terminal illness. “Ah, the joys of getting old,” grimaces the man who famously sang that he hoped he’d die before that ever happened. If I could change one thing now, I’d rather not be the innovators of loud, and have my hearing back.”Ī lump on his jaw, from a recent tooth implant, inspires another grumpy diatribe about how a post-war influx to the NHS of badly trained Australian dentists ruined British teeth for his entire generation. “The Who were the innovators of loud – more amps, more volume. If you’re in a roomful of people, it’s just a cacophony, horrendous. “If I take these out, everything’s a mumble. “It’s brutal going deaf,” he says, briefly removing them and laying them on the table. And I should suggest it’s taken on a very similar slant…”Ĭompact and lithe, Daltrey, who turned 77 in March, retains a restless physical energy but his hair is sandy grey, he wears prescription sunglasses and has two discreet hearing aids. The last people to burn books were the Nazis. Not burn things, or disappear things, because then it can all happen again. ![]() “Do they really think eradicating history – toppling statues and burning books – is going to solve anything? You should take the past as an example to make the point of why something was wrong. He is not impressed with the “woke generation”, either. I still haven’t changed my mind that we did the right thing. “Brexit hasn’t f- touring,” he insists. “We knew it would be difficult, but it will sort itself out. And, of course, Brexit, of which Daltrey has been quite an isolated voice of support within an industry angered by its impact on European touring. He has trenchant opinions about everything, expressed in pungent language delivered in an accent that’s all nasal tones and dropped aitches.ĭuring a couple of lively hours of conversation, he makes brusque, argumentative digressions into politics, taxation, history, charity, Covid, unions, wages and climate change. If we all take care of each other, we’ll be all right.”ĭaltrey is a fascinating character, a charismatic multimillionaire veteran rock superstar with the belligerent humour of a London cabbie. ![]() “What do you do? You roll yourself into a ball and say life’s over, or you push yourself out there. “Nothing in the world makes sense to me any more,” he says. He grumbles enthusiastically, swears colourfully. He is furious at the Government for its failure to provide adequate support and insurance for the music business throughout the pandemic now, he’s stumping up his own cash for a tour on which he fears, given the precariousness of the Covid situation, “they could pull the plug any minute”. ![]() “And secondly, to get our road crew and musicians working, because they’ve had a tough 18 months.” “There’s two purposes: one is to keep me singing, fit, out of the house,” he says. Gotta use it or lose it.”ĭaltrey is embarking on a short solo tour next month, backed by the Who’s live band. “Somewhere in there is a load of gigs that we hope to get to. “Like roaring into a thick fog at 300 miles an hour,” is how Roger Daltrey describes his imminent return to live performance for the first time in months.
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