The Herald - The Herald Magazine
The darkness has gone
ROGER DALTREY ON DODGING THE WHO’S DRUG-SOAKED DECADES, SAYING GOODBYE TO LOCKDOWNS, AND HELLO TO SCOTLAND
IN a contrary act of rock band taxonomy, Time magazine once wrote that while The Beatles aimed for the head and The Kinks for the funny bone, The Who went straight for the crotch. It’s true to an extent. Think of a rock gig as a sort of Dionysian frenzy and the strutting rock frontman as a satyr in figurehugging blue jeans and it won’t be long before an image pops into your head of The Who’s mop-haired singer Roger Daltrey.
Perhaps he’s prowling the stage with his shirt open to the navel and deploying his trademark stage move – throwing his microphone high into the air and catching it again. Perhaps he’s howling “Hope I die before I get old”, from the band’s iconic 1965 hit My Generation. Perhaps you own a copy of his 1975 solo album Ride A Rock Horse, with its cover image of a naked Daltrey done up as a sort of sexy centaur.
Combined with the sonic assault provided by wind-milling, scissor-kicking guitarist Pete Townshend and the manic antics of drummer Keith Moon, who once nearly deafened himself blowing up his kit on live television, there have been few bands as eye-catchingly kinetic as The Who. Or as gleefully, unapologetically, viscerally loud. So yes, it’s hard to imagine the crotch remaining unaffected.
But that’s not to say the head and the funny bone were never on The Who’s list of targets. This is the band, remember, who wrote not one but two rock operas – Tommy and Quadrophenia – and whose lyrics tackle everything from suburban ennui and intergenerational conflict (the head) to, er, spiders called Boris (the funny bone).
Moon’s death from an overdose of prescription drugs in September 1978, a month after the release of the Who Are You album, effectively pulled the plug on the band. Collectively they were so much more than the sum of their parts, so without their totemic drummer they struggled.
Two albums followed in the early 1980s with Kenney Jones of The Faces on drums, but in 1983 Townshend left and The Who ceased to function as a going concern – until, after a couple of partial reunions, they returned to the stage with Ringo Starr’s son Zak Starkey on drums in 1996.
“Keith was his babysitter, so he survived Keith Moon,” Roger Daltrey tells me when we talk. “But he’s wonderful and he’s the closest you can get in drumming style to
Keith, which is important for The Who. Something about the way Keith drummed and Zak drums just suits the Who. It wouldn’t suit any other band, but it works with us.”
Is it a looseness?
“Dunno. They’re both just fearless.
They’ll hear something and try it and sometimes it won’t come off but you’ll forgive them because the trying is everything. They don’t just dial it in. A bum note and a bead of sweat is far better than getting every note right and playing like it’s a record. That’s what Zak does. He’s willing to gamble on a drum roll in a place you’ll never expect it, and sometimes it won’t come off but he’s willing to try. It gives you an edge.”
Bassist John Entwistle died in 2002 – a cocaine-induced heart attack in a hotel room in Paradise, Nevada, a stripper by his side in bed – but a quarter of a century on Starkey is still there. Together with The Who’s remaining members, he’s part of a rock and roll juggernaut which just keeps on going despite claims that this time really will be the last. Townshend has been saying it since at least 2013, but in 2019 the band mounted their Moving On! tour and