The Who talk about ROGER DALTREY

JOHN: Just before I left school I met Roger walking down the road and I was with my wife - who was my girlfriend then - and I had this home made bass guitar under my arm. I was walking along with this bass guitar and Roger came up and said "I hear you play the bass guitar". So I said yeah so he said “well d’you wanna join my group” y’know. So they arranged an audition and I’ll always remember his words from when we finished playing a couple of numbers, he said ah "d’you think we’re good enough".

PETE: I think Roger is a much greater driving force in the band than anybody ever really realises. I mean I get a fantastic amount of credit for controlling the direction of the group, you know, and stuff. I want the man whose going to be up there saying the words I’ve written - i.e. Roger Daltrey - to mean what he’s singing. Ah, obviously to a great degree I’ve got a knack now after twenty years, of being able to write things which Roger can get behind. But occasionally I make mistakes, so obviously the very important thing about my relationship with Roger, over and above you know, personal relationships in the street or whatever, are concerned is that as a writer I should be able to write things that he can identify with. Ah, thus perhaps we come to one of the greatest secrets of The Who. Which is that Roger is a very ordinary bloke, right, so by writing things for this ordinary bloke I happen to be getting a lot nearer the man in the street. Getting a lot nearer to the kind of things that they want to say. And it’s only really recently that Roger and I’ve really sort of, that this has sort of dawned on Roger and I in this sense. You know we’ve only just really realised that this is really where Roger’s power is you know in the band, where his driving force is in the band, and in a sense where his modifying force comes in the band. So it’s, in other words, his role in the group is a negative one in a sense it’s an anchoring one as he says, you know, often. John Entwistle might be the visual anchor on the stage but Roger is the actual anchor.

JOHN: While listening to the demo we work out the chord structures and Roger does an awful lot as far as the arranging, like verses, middle eights, choruses etc.

PETE: Another reason why, say, somebody like myself might find it very frustrating working with Roger, it’s got nothing to do directly with Roger but the fact that you are writing solely for one person all the time. And I think both he and I found it incredibly refreshing, an amazing experience, when the Lou Reisner Tommy introduced us to other areas of work. Roger for the first time singing with somebody other than The Who, and me for the first time hearing someone other than Roger Daltrey singing my songs, or a good lump of them. And it emerged into a film involvement with Ken Russel for me, and solo albums for Roger and a part in the film for Roger… But in another sense it was a great thing, the Reisner Tommy, because of the fact that I suppose had it not been for that, the revitalised interest in Tommy wouldn’t have come along which allowed this picture to be made. I mean getting back to Roger, it wouldn’t have allowed him to have this film part. I mean that’s another thing, you see it’s so easy for somebody as close to Roger as I am to underestimate him. You know, I didn’t think for a minute that he would be able to act as well as he is able to act. In fact the first time that I saw him, ah, Keith Moon is an obvious actor, you know what I mean. Roger you don’t imaging acting, you imagine him singing and maybe doing a few arm movements. The first time I ever saw Roger from the front of a stage, you know in other words from the audience, was when he sang See Me Feel Me in the second production of Lou Reisner’s Tommy at The Rainbow.