Daltrey flies solo ...
... with support from his longtime bandmate Pete Townshend
Roger Daltrey has his Who bandmate Pete Townshend to thank for his first solo album in 26 years, because Daltrey had given up on the project after a bout of meningitis.
Daltrey started work on the album, As Long As I Have You, four years ago, but had to shelve it when the band’s schedule took over and then an illness stopped the singer in his tracks.
He tells Billboard when he finally revisited the classic soul tracks he had recorded for the album, he was less than impressed.
“When I went back and listened to what I’d done, I was very disillusioned with it,” Daltrey said. “I thought it was rubbish and didn’t go anywhere. I just completely lost the momentum of it and didn’t like what I was hearing, and I just thought, ‘This is not a good idea,’ and was gonna shelve it.”
But his managers and label bosses refused to let the project go, and slipped the music to Townshend, who encouraged his bandmate to reconsider.
“It was (Townshend) who convinced me to carry on,” Daltrey says. “Pete called me up and said, ‘This is great, Roger, you’ve got to finish it,’ and then he offered to play guitar on it, and that was the clincher for me because he’s my favourite guitarist, and whenever he plays on a record it’s always original. So I decided to finish it, and I’m very pleased with the outcome.”
The album features covers of songs by Stephen Stills, Buffalo Springfield, Nick Cave and Joe Tex. has just been released.
“This is an idea I had about 10 years ago for The Who, where I said to Pete, ‘Rather than you having to sweat blood to write new songs, why don’t we just record an album of what we used to play before we made it big and before you started writing the material?’” Daltrey told Billboard.
“Pete didn’t go for it, so that’s where the idea came from for me doing a solo album.”