The Who’s Roger Daltrey tells all
Iconic frontman has a revealing new memoir.
If anything, Roger Daltrey can explain.
In his new memoir, “Thanks A Lot Mr. Kibblewhite” (Henry Holt, 259 pp.,
★★★g), the singer tells how he rose from London’s post-World
War II privation to the privilege of rock stardom. The curly-haired, microphoneswinging, full-throated frontman of The Who brings a Cockney conversationalism to the story of his life and complicated relationship with his bandmates.
Daltrey was born in 1944, amid Nazi bombs over Britain. Though peacetime soon followed, the days of food rationing and limited opportunity would linger.
A restless, fistfight-prone Roger was bounced from his South London grammar school at age 15, after he and a few friends disturbed the peace with their air rifles. The book’s title refers to the headmaster, Mr. Kibblewhite, who expelled him, predicting, “You’ll never make anything of your life, Daltrey.”
Wrong. Daltrey connected with guitarist/composer Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle and drummer, Keith Moon. In the wake of Beatlemania, as London’s “mods” dictated fashion and sought musical catharsis, the quartet mastered a high-energy brand of “maximum rhythm and blues,” as The Detours, then The High Numbers, and finally as The Who.
The Who heralded a new era of performance. Townshend smashed guitars, Moon hurled drumsticks, and the adolescent angst anthems flowed – from “I Can’t Explain” and “My Generation” to the rock operatics of “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia.”
Drugs and excess claimed the lives of Moon (in 1978) and Entwistle (in 2002), but Daltrey and Townshend carry the Who brand to this day. From his point of view – behind blue eyes – Daltrey, 74, dishes on key moments in Who history:
1. The guitar-smashing started by accident.
“The first time a guitar died was an accident,” Daltrey writes. “Pete was in the middle of his repertoire of moves when he stuck the guitar through the ceiling … So he covered up his mistake by smashing the guitar to pieces … When I remembered how much I’d struggled to get my first guitars, it was like watching an animal being slaughtered.”
2. So did microphone-twirling.
“I started twirling my microphone not because of my ego but because I didn’t know what to do with my hand during the solos … holding the microphone. You can only do so much choreography with one arm, and there was no way I could outdance Mick Jagger. So, in the breaks, I tried a bit of twirling. Over the next few months, it got bigger and bigger.”
3. Keith Moon’s birthday madness.
Drummer Moon turned 21 on tour in 1967, in Flint, Michigan. Amid his wild celebrating, Daltrey writes, “Keith … drove a Continental or a Cadillac (depending who you ask) into the hotel pool. Keith was arrested, held for the rest of the night, and then escorted to the plane by the sheriff, who warned him never to set foot in this town again.”
4. Their managers were spending their money – on drugs.
Daltrey describes how The Who’s early managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, fell prey to the lure of cocaine in 1969: “That was the year people started to describe us as millionaires. That was a load of bollocks … all the money we were supposed to be making was getting spent. We were headlining festivals. We were the first band to sell out six nights at the Fillmore West in less than an hour. We were filling opera houses. And we were barely breaking even.”
5. The fan tragedy in Cincinnati.
Tragedy engulfed the band at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum in December 1979, when 11 fans were crushed to death in a rush to get inside the venue. “The organizers … let the show go on to prevent further panic … That meant we did the whole gig without any knowledge of the tragedy. Imagine how it feels to walk off stage, euphoric ... full of the joys of life, only to discover that people have died in their attempt to see you play.”