Roger interview in Sacramento Bee

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

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Who's back: Long live rock -- the legendary english band reforms
By Chris Macias
Bee Pop Music Writer
(Published August 20, 2000)

Meet the new Who, same as the old Who? After all, what is the band without
Pete Townshend's electric-guitar fury and Keith Moon's thermonuclear
drumming? Moon's death in 1978 silenced the group's reckless spark, and in
recent years, Townshend has toned down with a focus on the acoustic guitar.
For longtime Who fans, the group was a fizzling smoke bomb compared with its
TNT-like rock from days of yore.

But the latest version of the Who, which will perform Tuesday night at the
Sacramento Valley Amphitheatre, is a rock-'til-you-drop outfit that may
recall the group's explosive salad days. Extravagant theatrics, which marked
the 1996 "Quadrophenia" tour, have been nixed for a bare-bones rock show.
Also gone are the backup singers and horn section from the band's 1989 tour,
a bloated outfit that some lamented was a "Who revue."

Now, the band's a lean quintet featuring founders Townshend, bassist John
Entwistle and singer Roger Daltrey along with drummer Zak Starkey and
longtime keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick.

"It's near to the original band," says Daltrey in a phone interview from
London. "It's back to drums-bass-guitar-organ-vocals. And Pete's back on the
electric, playing like only he can."

That's right, Townshend is once again cranking his electric guitar, windmill
strums and all. Though Daltrey says his hearing has survived intact, years
of high-wattage rock -- including a 1976 concert which landed the band in
the Guinness Book of Records for loudest concert -- led to permanent hearing
damage for Townshend. A nagging case of tinnitus (excessive ringing in the
ears) required Townshend to mostly ditch the electrics and instead strum
acoustic guitars on the Who's 1989 tour.

"He seems to be managing fine," Daltrey says of Townshend's switch back to
electric guitar. "Of course, we're nowhere near as loud as we used to be in
the '70s on stage. But you wouldn't notice from the audience. You don't need
to (project volume directly) from the stage anymore.

"You can crank it up through the PA, so the band keeps its hearing while the
audience grows deaf," he says with a laugh.

Though Townshend's guitar is roaring once more, filling the Who's drum chair
has been hit-and-miss since Moon's death from an overdose of prescription
sedatives. Moon's adrenaline-fueled fills were the rhythm section's spark
plug, though the band carried on with the relatively restrained Kenney Jones
after Moon's death. A few notches higher on the excitement meter was
power-rock drummer Simon Phillips, who joined the fold on the Who's 1989
tour.

Current skin-basher Starkey, the son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, has
performed with the Who since the 1996 "Quadrophenia" tour and can be heard
plowing through the band's greatest hits on "The Blues to the Bush," the
Who's latest live CD.

But there's no beating the legendary antics of "Moon the Loon," who was
known for driving cars into swimming pools and destroying hotel rooms with
such ferocity that the band was blacklisted from Holiday Inns.

"Obviously, no one can make up for the personality of Moon," says Daltrey.
"But if you shut your eyes, (Starkey) can almost be Keith. And I wouldn't
ever attempt to say that Zak is as good as Keith, but Zak knits the band
together in the same way that Keith did. It's really working fabulously.
He's very dangerous; he's not just a copy (of Moon) at all."

Moon's persona is also set to be captured on celluloid in a long-awaited
film treatment. "At the moment we're negotiating with Alex Cox ('Sid &
Nancy') to do a new screenplay for us," says Daltrey. "We've got several but
we're not happy with any of them. But it'll go on as long as it takes to
have a good script and a good film, or (there'll be) no film at all."

Traces of Moon's rambunctious spirit can be seen on the Who's latest outing,
with Townshend and company occasionally smashing equipment. Such reckless
revelry began when the band was a bunch of misfit Mods during the heyday of
England's 1960s rock scene. With Moon often the instigator, many
performances ended with a whirlwind of splintering drum kits and crunched
guitar headstocks.

The upstart band was aided -- sometimes unwittingly -- by a host of London
music stores, notably one owned by Jim Marshall of Marshall Amplifiers fame.

"We had lots of shops that would give us credit. And thank God for Jim
Marshall. We used to just run and say, 'Hi Jim,' and two of us would keep
him talking at the counter while someone else would take a guitar off the
wall and run out," Daltrey recalls, laughing. "He got paid in full in the
end, though."

The Who is on the road this summer with Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes,
sharing a road crew and staging, though they are appearing on different
nights.

Both the Who's "Live at the Bush" and Page and the Black Crowes' "Live at
the Greek" were also released on the Internet label musicmaker.com.

However, there's an even deeper Page/Who connection: Page played the guitar
solo on the Who's first hit single, "I Can't Explain."

"He was brought in by the producer of that record," says Daltrey. "We were
aware of him, I mean his name was known around town then. But I think Pete
could have played the solo just as well. I think it was down to cutting
corners on time. We literally made that record in an hour."

The Who will certainly spend more time on its next album, which the band
plans to record next year. It would be the first album of new material since
1982's "It's Hard."

"I'm really happy with fact that we are attempting to come up with
material," says Daltrey. "Pete and I are conversing all the time. He sent me
a song the other day which I think is great. I've got a song now that I'm
going to put down on tape for him, which he's going to laugh at because I
can't play guitar and sing at the same time."

New material or not, the band is using its meaty musical chops to
reinvigorate its familiar hits. Fans will rejoice that The Who's latest tour
harkens to the gargantuan jam-rock captured on its 1970 album "Live at
Leeds," which featured "My Generation" stretched into a 15 minute tour de
force.

"There's lots of free-form and things are different every night -- a lot of
improv," says Daltrey about the band's current musical approach. "And I
think we're playing probably better than we have done since Keith died."

CHRIS MACIAS is The Bee's pop music writer. Write to him at The Bee, P.O.
Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852, send e-mail to cmacias@sacbee.com or call
(916) 321-1253.

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