PART 1
(From RollingStone.com, June 7, 2000)
Roger Daltrey says Who reunion not nostalgia, but “magic”
Consummate frontman praises Pete, remembers Keith and talks tour
By Richard Skanse
There were, of course, rock & roll frontmen before Roger Daltrey. But really, what was the point of ’em? When it came to the Who’s magic bus, Pete Townshend’s songs formed the engine, John Entwistle provided the chassis and Keith Moon brought the high octane rocket fuel, but it was always Daltrey who commanded the wheel. And it wasn’t just his powerhouse voice and epic stage presence that put him in that position. It was Daltrey who founded the Who [as the Detours] in 1962; Daltrey who built the band’s guitars out of plywood; Daltrey who drove the van; and Daltrey who cracked the whip when it needed to be cracked. “Good old Rog,” wrote Townshend in the 1994 Who box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B, “. . . without his driving, tin-plate, cutter-uppers force, I would still be languishing in the garret of the visual artist I was training to be.”
Not surprisingly, Daltrey has long been the foremost champion of the Who. He’s currently plotting a biopic on the life of the late Moon, and even in the off years since 1982 when the band wasn’t reuniting, he’s never stopped promoting and performing Townshend’s songs, being arguably prouder of them than Townshend himself. So expect him to be in fine fighting form this summer on the band’s stripped-down, rock & roll amphitheater tour.
Whenever the Who reunites, it often seems like Pete has to be dragged into it kicking and screaming, John couldn’t care either way, and you’re playing cheerleader.
In actual fact, it’s Pete this time who really wants to go out and do it. And I can’t believe it’s happening! To be really honest, this is something that’s grown out of those benefit shows last year, and I’m just taking it a day at a time. And of course, I love being with the band — to be on a stage, and even though we’re playing songs that are old, they’re our songs . . .
At the press conference announcing the tour, how did you feel when the “nostalgia question” came up?
What a load of bullshit that is. I mean, if you went to see a Beethoven concert tonight, is that nostalgia? If you go to a museum and look at a Renoir exhibition, is that nostalgia? How can it be nostalgia if it’s our fucking music? It fucking belongs to us and we can play it when and where ever we like. And if people don’t want to come and see it, then that’s up to them — we don’t force anyone. But it’s certainly not nostalgia. And sometimes you go onstage, and mostly by accident, things happen and a musical direction gets switched in a certain way, and it’s just pure fucking magic. And that to me is probably the single most beautiful thing in my life, to have ever achieved something that wondrous. And it happens quite regularly with the Who, so of course I enjoy it and I’m enthusiastic.
What is it about Pete’s songs that allows you to never get tired of them?
There’s a courage and an honesty about them. And I know they were written really about problems of adolescence and just a little bit beyond that, most of them, but they equally apply to problems of middle age and onwards, too. I think there are other problems of middle age and onwards, but it’s frustrated me that Pete has never managed to put pen to paper or pen to guitar and write more about them. It always frustrated me that Pete could do it so well about adolescence and about the young boy growing up, but he can’t write about the middle-aged man figuring out his life with all the problems he faces. I mean, what’s the fucking difference?
Did you ever listen to his solo albums and think, “I’d love to get my hands on that song, see what we could do with it with the Who”?
Yep. I’m a Pete-fucking-Townshend fan. But when we’re in a working relationship, I am honest enough to say, “Maybe you could do something a bit better,” or, “Why don’t you try something a different way?” Pete’s always known that I’ll be honest with him. I would never tell him that something that wasn’t very good was. There’s an awful lot of people who will. I think he is a genius. Well, let’s put it this way — he was a genius. I don’t know whether he is now. There’s a difference between talent and genius. Talent you possess, which is what he’s still got, but genius is when you are possessed, which is what he was. I think when he wrote the songs, there was no doubt that he was a genius. And he’s still got potential to become obsessive again and get back to there, but when you are like that, far too often you’re surrounded by people who just tell you that everything you do is wonderful. And it’s death to an artist — fucking death. Because of course a lot of what you do is wonderful, but nobody — nobody — can do everything wonderfully. We all need that person to say, “Buddy, don’t be a prat — that’s crap!” [laughs]
When the subject of a new Who album has come up recently, you’ve mentioned having some songs of your own that you thought were up to par.
I’m so critical of myself because I lived in paranoia of writing anything for years and years because Pete to me was the ultimate, and it’s kind of a hard place to be when you think, “Let me have a go at writing,” because what can you do? You have no confidence whatsoever. But when I did Rocks in the Head [Daltrey’s 1992 solo album], I took it down to Pete and said, “Just tell me what you think of the lyrics, Pete, because I think I can write now.” And God bless him, he listened to it and said, “They lyrics are great, Roger.” That meant so much to me. And I’ve got three songs now which lyrically I think are really good. I’ve already played him a few demos.
You’ve expressed interest in doing a movie about Keith Moon’s life. What was your relationship with him like?
For the first 10 years of the Who, I think I was probably his number one enemy — mainly because I was in front of him. In Keith’s opinion, the drums should be at the front of the stage and the singer should be in the back. And there was a tour of Europe where they were doing speed more and more and more — I couldn’t do speed, because it’ll dry your throat up — but we did this tour and we were all so out of it and the music was going down the tubes, it was fucking dire. Finally I was so fed up with it, I went in the dressing room and there was Moon’s big bag of pills and I just threw them down the toilet. And he went crazy, came at me with a cymbal, and of course we ended up in a big fight, and I was thrown out of the band. Fortunately, management stood by me, and I promised never to fight again.
And I didn’t fight. For years, I was the butt of all of Moon’s jokes — and he could be wicked — and I had to just bite my lip, but I did it because I loved the band. Once we did Who’s Next, I kind of passed my apprenticeship, and we became more friendly. And when Keith started to have a really bad time, I was the only constant because I was at a period then where I didn’t do any drugs. We got closer and closer and closer, ’til right towards the end when he was cleaning himself up and he finally got off of the drink and the drugs. I had a pact with him, because he said, “I’ve got to tour, we haven’t toured for three years — drummers have to work.” But he’d put on all this weight, and he was brokenhearted. And I said, “Look, Keith, if you get yourself set, we’ll get you a training program, and I’ll make sure we tour.” That was the deal, though God knows how I was going to make sure we toured. But anything to get him to get himself in shape. And we were working on it, and then, boom — he died of the bloody drug that he was taking to cure him.
How have the potential scripts for the movie that you’ve seen missed the mark?
They always just go for the cliches. I don’t want to see a script about the Who on stage at Woodstock. I’m not interested in that. I know how to deal with the Who in film. But none of them seem to have the balls to go to the depths that they’ve got to go to get to the center of Keith Moon. He was an incredibly complex character.
Speaking of complex characters, did you enjoy playing Scrooge last year in the New York production of A Christmas Carol?
Oh, I loved that. But 15 shows a week, that’s fuckin’ hard work, I’ll tell you — it was harder than a Who tour or any tour I’ve ever done. Fucking exhausting.
And how about your role as a fairy king in that NBC miniseries, Leprauchans?
Leprechans . . . was just a mess.
***
PART 2
(From RollingStone.com, June 7, 2000)
John Entwistle ready to join together … again
Bassist says he’s looking forward to his Who holiday
By Richard Skanse
They called him “The Ox.” In the midst of the unstoppable force that was The Who at its most fearsome, bassist John Entwistle was the immovable object. Measured against the extreme stage presence of his bandmates — Pete Townshend’s windmill guitar playing, Roger Daltrey’s deadly swinging microphone and Keith Moon’s explosive, unpredictable drumming, Entwistle was “the Quiet One”; but take away his bass, and the Who’s roar would be reduced to a whisper. Think of the Who’s signature anthem “My Generation,” and Entwistle’s earth-rumbling run down the neck of his bass guitar resonates as loudly as Daltrey’s stuttering “f-f-fade away.”
Entwistle’s also, in his own quiet way, probably the most astutely funny of the bunch. A noted caricaturist, he shudders at the thought of drawing the Y2K version of the Who: “It would take too much ink!” In a bio he penned for himself a few years back when he was touring with Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, he painted himself as the watchman sitting on the Who’s coffin, making sure it stayed safely dead. How then to explain all those reunion tours over the last 18 years, including this summer? Even the most dutiful of guards has to make the occasional run to the loo.
How do you feel going into this Who reunion tour? Eager to get back into it?
I think more so now than before, because it’s down to a five-piece. The last couple of times, there were so many people onstage doing my job, there weren’t hardly any holes for me to fit in and do my little bass bit. Now there are a lot more holes, and I can play a lot better. Pete and myself have gotten eye contact back again, so we’re playing like we used to, not letting someone else play all the melody lines, which didn’t allow us to improvise — which is what I always loved about the Who, and I think a lot of our fans missed that. They’d come and see Quadrophenia two nights in a row and it’d be almost exactly the same show. Now all the shows are different.
How would you compare the new live album, Blues to the Bush, to Live at Leeds?
In a way, it’s not really fair to compare the two. Because on Live at Leeds we were shit-hot. We’d done a whole bunch of touring, and we were extremely confident and our sound was perfected and everything was real smooth — we could do a great show every time. This live album is basically where we are now, after four days of rehearsals. We played a lot smoother on Live at Leeds, but I know damn well that I’m playing a lot better than I did on Live at Leeds. So you’ve got the better musicianship to balance it off. But it’s a lot more raggedy. We could have gone in and overdubbed like crazy and made it sound wonderful, but we didn’t want that. We wanted people to know bloody where we were even down to our mistakes. We did do a couple of repairs, but at least we didn’t replace everything like the Eagles — you know, “New live in the studio album!”
What are your thoughts on the prospect of recording a new Who studio album?
The hardest thing is trying to figure how it’s going to work out. I think because we’re jamming a lot more on stage a lot of songs will come out of the next tour. We’re recording every show on DAT so we can refer ourselves to what we’re playing, because we never remember what we played. So I think a lot of song ideas will come out of jamming, and obviously that will make the album a lot easier to do — it will help us find a new direction.
You were spotted in the audience at Pete’s “Lifehouse” concert in December. At any time while watching it, did you imagine the Who playing it?
Not really, no. That’s Pete’s baby. I have no comments on it.
What were your thoughts about the concept albums you did record together? Did you ever have difficulty sinking your teeth into those?
They were kind of a lot different. With Tommy, we started out doing what was basically a single album, but it didn’t make sense. We realized the only way to make it coherent was to make it a double album, because a lot more things happened to Tommy than could be put on one album. We eventually got the double album finished, but we were recording during the day and playing concerts during the evening to pay for the next day in the studio. We knew it was going to be different because it was the first full concept thing that we had done, besides a nine-minute mini-opera thing [“A Quick One While He’s Away”].
When it came to Lifehouse, it was like, here we go, another concept album. It kind of fell apart on Pete, and he did the opposite, making it a single instead of a double album, and it became just a normal album [Who’s Next]. But then Quadrophenia came and I went, “Oh God, yet another!” Why can’t we just do songs that stand on their own? But Quadrophenia was a lot easier because Pete had actually done most of the demos, so it wasn’t anywhere near as hard work as Tommy. But I always prayed that the next album wasn’t going to be a concept album. [laughs]
By the time of the farewell tour . . .
Which one? [laughs]
The first one, in 1982. Were you ready for the band to end at that time?
Yeah, I wanted to get on with my solo career. I thought there were much greater heights to go on to. And after four years of that, I realized that there weren’t any heights to go on to. You’d always get dragged back and have the Who thrown at you. “When are the Who getting back together?” We all realized that the Who would have to get back together again, because they wouldn’t let us do anything else. But yeah, I was full of grandiose ideas when the Who broke up for the first time. But it doesn’t take long to spend five million dollars! [laughs]
These days, whenever you have to stop touring with the John Entwistle Band for another Who reunion, is that at all like having to go back to work for you?
Not really. The John Entwistle Band is a lot harder work. Playing with the Who after that is like a holiday. I don’t have to save my voice because I’m not singing, I’m not having to go to the mic to make announcements, trying to keep the whole thing going while somebody’s changing a fucking string. It’s a lot harder work, and touring with the John Entwistle Band is a lot more Spartan. We travel by bus, and the Who by private plane with big hotel suites. I’m lucky to get a hotel room with my band over $60. It’s a cheapo, cheapo production. So the Who is a vacation compared to that.
What was the origin of your nickname, “The Ox”?
I think it came from Keith Moon. He started by saying I had the constitution of an ox, because I could drink. And then I started putting weight on, and it became a physical thing. I hate it.
Last question: Were you ever clocked in the head by Roger’s swinging microphone?
Nah. If it ever gets close to me, it usually just goes around the head of my bass and puts me out of tune. He has hit a couple of people, but they were both on purpose [laughs]. I’ve seen him even knock someone out for throwing pennies at him. We did a gig with Chuck Berry and there were a whole bunch of rockers there making a lot of noise because we had actually pulled the plug on Chuck Berry because he was running over time. We were contracted to play an hour and a half, and we only had an hour and five minutes left. But we kept playing until they pulled the plug on us, and this guy was throwing pennies, and Roger saw the guy throw it when one hit him on the head. So Roger just pointed to the guy, aimed, and . . . phwump!
SkanseLand: The Richard Skanse Archives 