The olds are alright
By Ian Shedden
July 17, 2004
ANGRY old men don't suit the rock stage. Young audiences might find it acceptable - at last - for the old 'uns to be up there trotting out the old hits, but it's stretching the limits of credibility to have a frontman such as Roger Daltrey rallying the world's yoof to, say, the sound of The Kids are Alright when he has just turned 60.
Daltrey, the wiry screamer who once posed as the tough guy, has mellowed through the years and his demeanour onstage with the Who - this year celebrating an on-off relationship spanning 40 years - is no longer all about aggression or antagonism towards his career adversary and bandmate, guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend.
Nowadays he's what some of his fans might call a "diamond geezer", one who didn't die before he got old.
He prides himself on the fact the Who, formed in London in 1964, were always a band "of the people". Their mod beginnings cast them as such: ordinary British lads with a roguish streak having a bit of fun while being true to their working-class roots.
This was reflected in Townshend's early songwriting, and titles such as I Can't Explain, Substitute and My Generation inspired a kinship with their audience that survives to this day.
These days, Daltrey is the epitome of ordinary blokeness. He talks in a cheery cockney brogue.
The veneer of "to the manor born" he adopted during the 1980s - all wellington boots and hunting jackets down on the trout farm - has evaporated, although the country estate in Sussex that has been home for the best part of his career remains.
In that setting he is a man content. He's wealthy, with interests that range from acting to painting, has a stable family life and in 2004 finds himself fronting a band that is enjoying a remarkable renaissance, attracting rave reviews for its concerts and working on a new album, to be released next year.
Most amazing, perhaps, the Who are about to play in Australia for the first time in 36 years.
"I'm really glad we're coming back now because Australia never really got to see the band at its best," says Daltrey. "You'd have to go a long way to see a better rock band.
"
That wasn't quite the view taken by pilots, customs officials and prime minister John Gorton in 1968, the last time the Who were on these shores. The group and its entourage were booted out of the country after an incident on a plane from Adelaide to Melbourne, after which an outraged Townshend vowed never to return.
In hindsight, the whole drama seems overblown.
The Who and fellow English band the Small Faces drank some beer on the flight and got into an argument with crew members. According to some press reports, "an invasion of pop singers" used terms such as "go to hell" and were "garishly dressed".
Daltrey, who last visited Australia four years ago as part of the Ultimate Rock Symphony extravaganza, laughs at the controversy he caused in 1968.
"I've got a lot of memories of that tour, all of it just being an incredible laugh," he says. "In some ways, when you look at Australia now, it's seems so un-Australian back then. You had no sense of humour.
We got thrown out of the country for drinking a bottle of beer on the plane. Was it really Australia?"
Back then, the Who were one of the most confronting and loudest bands in the world.
They were also a powerful influence on generations of rockers to come. Without them, the Jam, Oasis and our own You Am I, the last of which will open the Who's Australian shows this month, would not have had a starting point for their careers.
Daltrey acknowledges the band's imprint on rock history and is encouraged by the way bands such as Oasis are carrying on the bad-boy swagger.
He's also full of praise for Melbourne band Jet after seeing them in London a few weeks ago. "They were great," he says. "It's great to see these young bands with the same light in their eyes that we had.
"
A dimming of that light has not dissuaded Daltrey from treading the boards but it's fair to say that the Who are a different, less confronting proposition than they were in 1968, not least in terms of personnel. Wild man drummer Keith Moon died of a drug overdose in 1978, while bassist John Entwistle passed on in similar circumstances two years ago.
Through these tragedies and countless tantrums and upsets, particularly the volatile relationship between Daltrey and Townshend, the band has fractured several times only to regroup, determined to cling on to whatever vestige of "greatest rock'n'roll band in the world" status might linger in fans' minds.
Exciting as they may be, the perception of the Who as dangerous and innovative relates mostly to another era. As with the Rolling Stones, the Who are trading chiefly on nostalgia for their influential back catalogue.
That's not the full story, though, as Daltrey sees it.
He sings My Generation, the band's ultimate teen anthem, at every show without fear or embarrassment. That's because, he says, there is a lot of his generation who still want to see the band. More than that, the modern-day Who want to remain relevant to that older generation, even if it means writing songs about more mature issues.
"I sing that song for my generation because my generation hasn't gone away," he says. "We're all here ..
. and all our fans are losing people around them the same way as we are. They might be all old and fuddy-duddy, some of them, but they're just as important as the young generation.
"
To that end, Daltrey says the next batch of Townshend songs may address topics that are more suited to his ageing audience.
"One thing that musicians like us are able to do is to show people how to go on living their lives," Daltrey says. "I'm hoping we can be the first to articulate what it's like to be middle-aged and old-aged.
We want to capture the feelings and anxieties of that and put them in songs in the same way that Pete did when he was talking about adolescence. I think he's about the only writer out there who could do it."
Whether this means we can expect new material about hip replacement surgery and grappling with modern technology (internet sites, for example) is down to songwriter Townshend, but what's clear is that in a few years, if they stick around that long, the Who could well be the first champions of a new art form - senior citizens rock.
Just imagine: "Are you feelin' aawlriiiiigghtt?" screams Daltrey. "You'll have to speak up," cries the audience.
GGG
IN the mid to late 1960s, the Who were the baddest boys among the British exports. That reputation, built on uproarious live performances, endeared them to an international audience that looked on the Rolling Stones as too tame and the Beatles as anathema. Daltrey calls them "girls' bands".
The Who, on the other hand, were very much a blokes' affair. Daltrey reckons that 75 per cent of their following during the '60s and '70s was made up of young males. This, he believes, is down to "the way Townshend writes his songs .
.. they come from an incredibly male, introspective place.
He writes in such a personal way. It's so honest and it connects with everybody, particularly when he was writing about teenage angst and adolescence."
While some rockers of his ilk might have had issues with having such an abundance of blokes in the room every night, Daltrey says it worked for them in the long term.
"We had our fair share of women, I'm not complaining there," he chortles, "but the great thing about blokes is they're a lot less fickle ...
and they stuck with us over the years."
There's no denying that testosterone levels - onstage and off - were above average at Who shows. Daltrey was all swagger and swinging mic stands, Townshend wrote the book on smashing guitars, while Moon smashed drums with alarming dexterity, got smashed himself just as often, and wasn't averse to smashing the odd hotel television set on to an unsuspecting pavement from a great height.
Moon's indulgences eventually caught up with him and he died from an overdose of sleeping pills shortly after the release of the band's 1978 album Who Are You? The band's career - and the careers of the individual members - had gone off on a variety of tangents by that point, mainly because of the whims of its creative force, Townshend. Although hits such as I Can See for Miles and Happy Jack had cemented the band's success worldwide in the '60s, the guitarist had a grander vision of rock'n'roll than many of his contemporaries.
Thus the concept album Tommy was born in 1969. The tale of a "deaf, dumb and blind kid" provided the hit Pinball Wizard; more significantly, it took the band in a new, more theatrical direction.
The follow-up was another conceptual piece, this time science fiction titled Lifehouse, but Townshend was one of the few people who understood it.
Fortunately for them, it was whittled down into what is recognised as their best album, Who's Next (1971), which features two of the mainstays of their live
set, Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again.
Throughout the '70s, all four members released solo albums. The Who's Quadrophenia (1973) marked the point when Daltrey and Townshend's relationship was at its most volatile.
Fists flew and egos locked horns during the recording of that album. Right from the beginning the Who had acknowledged that they didn't really get along with each other. Now it was all coming to a head.
In retrospect, Daltrey believes that the bad blood only added to the energy and potent chemistry of the unit. "Creatively volatile, yes," he says of the partnership with Townshend. "And may it always be so.
That's what makes the creative thing work. We do put out a lot of energy. The music demands that of the player.
The music itself is so powerful, more so than almost any other rock music you'll ever see."
The Who lost all continuity during the '80s and '90s. The three surviving members had plenty of other projects to keep them busy.
Daltrey became an actor, starring in the 1980 biopic McVicar, among other roles. They toured together several times, but never as successfully as in their early years.
Townshend had his own demons to deal with.
He had a heroin addiction that nearly killed him in the '80s and last year had to endure a tabloid drama involving his logging on to a child pornography website. He was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Now the two main men are back to give The Who another shot, with another member gone but with a new zest for the task and a line-up that includes Ringo Starr's son Zak Starkey on drums and Townshend's brother Simon on guitar.
Many thought the death throes of the band had been reached when bassist Entwistle died in his Las Vegas hotel room on the eve of an American tour in 2002. "Of course we thought about that," Daltrey says. "It would have been very easy to stop then.
" Instead, he and Townshend vowed to keep going.
"To be honest, since John died the band has been a bit different to what it was before," he says, perhaps understating the case. "It's kind of come of age and we've had the best reviews we've ever had.
We're doing these shows because we don't want to lose touch with what the band's all about, which is being a great live band. We're having more fun than we've ever had, that's for sure. We feel totally free now to do whatever we want.
It's really exciting from that point of view."
It's also a less hostile duo that is holding the band together. Hatchets, it would seem, have been buried.
In fact, given the opportunity, Daltrey is fluid in his praise for his longstanding musical collaborator, putting him up there with Lennon and McCartney and Brian Wilson. "Our relationship has got stronger," he says of Townshend. "It's not a buddy-buddy kind of thing.
It's more like a brother thing. You know, when you're there for someone and they're there for you. It was the same when John [Entwistle] died.
I only saw John maybe twice a year when we weren't working ...
but, my god, I miss him.
"Pete's an animal on that guitar, too," he adds. "It becomes like a living creature when he plays.
I have an understanding of how important Pete is to the music of the 20th century."
Time will tell if he can carry that relevance into the future. In the meantime, Daltrey has plenty to occupy his time when he's not on stage or in the studio with Townshend.
He and his second wife, Heather, have been married for 33 years and have three children - Rosie, Willow and Jamie. He's happy being at home when not committed to touring. Now he's considering writing an autobiography, although it might not be the tell-all tome that publishers have begged him for at various stages of his career.
"It would be interesting if I can remember half of it," he says. "There are always offers, but people just want the dirt. That's the problem with it.
All they want to know is who you shagged. I just say I shagged them all."
Shagging aside - or perhaps not - it's clear there is life in the old dog yet.
While it has been a hell of a long time between beers in Australia, this could be just the first of many visits the Who make in their twilight years, as long as there's an audience out there to watch them. Whatever the future, Daltrey is convinced that age is no longer an impediment to maintaining a rock'n'roll career, if not the archetypal hedonistic lifestyle.
"To me, getting old is to do with the mind, not the age you've lived," he concludes.
"Our generation is refusing to grow old gracefully. They seem to be growing old disgracefully, which is great.
"I don't really want to retire.
The music will change to suit where we are, so what's to stop it going on for another 20 years? At the moment it's better than it ever was. If it starts to go the other way .
.. write me a note.
"
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