Roger Daltrey AOL chat transcript

[Phil McRevis <legalize@xmission.com>]

Haven't seen this on here yet...

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Host: Well, it's not very often we are joined by a legend here in studio.
I'm Matt Wagner from America Online. Today I'm pleased to be joined by Roger
Daltrey. Thank you very much for being here.

Roger Daltrey: Good to be here.

Host: And we are going to be talking about =93The Who: The BBC Sessions,=94
which is released very soon. Is that right?

Roger Daltrey: Yes. It took forever to get out. It's being released this
week, I think.

Host: Yep. And we're going to take your questions. I know there are a lot of
you out there. We're going to get right to your questions right away.
N-suity wants to know: Tommy, or Roger, can you hear me...?

Roger Daltrey: Tommy?

Host: During the heyday, you were called Tommy?

Roger Daltrey: It was weird times. Today, it's a period of my life that I
cannot -- that I can barely remember.

Host: Really?

Roger Daltrey: It was so surreal. I was put in a world so different from
rock & roll, the film world. I wasn't ready for it. It was terrifying. It
was like I was on the strongest drug you could ever take. I was drowning all
the way.

Host: Are the fans different, movie fans versus rock fans?

Roger Daltrey: I was used to being famous. I was not prepared for the
difference in film fame. It's like being unknown. It was extraordinary. All
of a sudden I felt I don't want to be part of this. I just want to be in my
band.

Host: Right.

Roger Daltrey: It was weird.

Host: Wow.

Roger Daltrey: It was a weird period. Now, like I say, it just seems like a
dream. I did -- did I really go through all that? I find it quite difficult
to even remember, remembering much of it, because I was really completely
and utterly out of my depth. And the part, you know, not being a trained
actor, I just kind of had to do it method.

Host: Right.

Roger Daltrey: Because I was deaf, dumb and blind. I virtually became it.
And I had this gorgeous woman, the beautiful Ann-Margret, as my mother. The
only way I was going to get through doing anything with her as my mother was
to be deaf, dumb and blind.

Host: That was a brilliant move to have her as your mother. The next
question is from Tom: Do you remember your first guitar? Do you still have
it? Can I have it?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah. My first guitar, I do remember. It was made out of
plywood and it was an acoustic guitar. And it lasted about two weeks before
it just went. I wasn't very good at connecting the neck to the body. But it
worked. It did work for two weeks. It literally sawed through the ends of my
fingers. But the action, I think -- I think it was about an inch off the
board. I got a few tunes out of it.

Roger Daltrey: Then the next guitar of mine, another acoustic, an uncle of
mine who was a carpenter helped me make the neck. And that lasted for a long
time. Then I went on to start making electric guitars with solid bodies.
I'll never forget it. Because a guitar at that time, you could buy a house
in London for the same price of a Fender guitar. When we first saw our first
Fender guitar, it was like out of outer space. What is that? You know. And
there was one in London. There's a group called The Shadows had them. They
were the first -- that was the first time we ever saw them. And there was
one in a shop in London, in an English shop in Crossroads, hanging in the
window. I spent hours outside that shop looking at that guitar. We measured
it and copied it, made my first electric. It's lasted quite a long time. I
think I had it about three years. I wish I still had it.

Host: Do you ever still make guitars?

Roger Daltrey: No. No. No, no, not now. It's quite a funny period of my
life, because I was a sheet metalworker apprentice, and I was working in the
sheet metalwork factory, and it was really difficult to hide all the wood
shavings, because I used to make guitars behind the carpenter's back. And
wood shavings and metal shavings don't quite look alike. He put up with a
lot.

Host: Our next question is from who babe 1: Hi, Roger. Erica here. Wanted to
know how much input you had for the =93BBC Sessions=94 CD.

Roger Daltrey: Well, nothing. The input on this album really was put in,
apart from playing on it -- how long ago is it now? God, a long time ago,
anyway. The only input is in the early songs we used to cover, like the
James Brown stuff. I used to do all those song selections in those days.
That's when we were a blues band. I mean, this album is dictated by what was
recorded. This is the BBC archive, and that's what's on the album.
Whatever's there, I think it's interesting to be out there for the public as
part of history.

Roger Daltrey: What people don't understand with the =93BBC Sessions,=94 at=20=
that
time in England we didn't have any pop radio at all. We had ships offshore
beaming in stuff. But the BBC did this kind of gratuitous thing of having
the occasional rock group on a variety show, which would be usually at
12:30, at lunchtime, and it would be from 12:30 to 1:00. It would be like
"The Jerry Ross Big Band Show," and it would be a live show in the West End
of London. Jerry Ross' big band would be copying what would be in the top 20
at that time. Extraordinary. Really dreadful copies.

Roger Daltrey: Then they used to, like, have a guest group. And a lot of
these songs -- when we happened to have a record in the charts, and we got
invited that week to be on the show. And you used to have to play two songs.
It was extraordinary. Usually we were playing some God-awful type -- for us,
that was a God-awful time of day, because we'd usually been up the night
before at a gig at the other end of England and didn't get back till sort of
5:00 in the morning. To get up at 12:30 to do another show on the radio in
front of a bunch of old ladies, usually, and men in [bowler] hats, not rock
& roll at all. It was extraordinary.

Host: That's a surreal experience. I mean, you've had a lot of them, from
the beginning all the way through.

Host: Theodorekmd: Dear Roger, The Who long ago established themselves
individually and collectively in the Parthenon of rock music. There's a huge
crescendo building for a tour. What can you tell us fans?

Roger Daltrey: Yes, there's going to be one. We're going to tour this year.
It's not a big tour. We're doing arenas, and it goes -- there's some shows
in late June, early July. There's shows in August. And there's shows late
September-October. And hopefully in between then, we'll be doing some
benefit shows.

Roger Daltrey: We did something last year which we really enjoyed. We did
one show that we got paid for, which was an Internet show, which we did in
Vegas. And we got very well paid. But it allowed us to do four benefit
shows, where we raised more money than we actually got paid. And it went to
great causes. So we thought, well, this is how capitalism really should
work. This is a great way of doing it. So we're going to attempt to keep
that going. And we played as a five-piece band again, and it was -- we just
had the time of our lives. I mean, there is an album coming out. I don't
know what it's called. I don't think it's been announced yet. It's one of
these things that you download.

Host: MP3, perhaps?

Roger Daltrey: It might be. I don't know. It goes beyond me. But we haven't
got a title for the album now. I've heard the tracks. Some of them are
extraordinary. They sound fantastic, this new version of =93Magic,=94 "Getti=
ng
In Tune," songs that have never been out live before. And we hope to, in the
summer when we're touring -- we don't want to have an album out before we
tour. We would feel like we were being salesmen, or we've going something to
sell, let's go do a tour. But we're going to do new songs within the show,
which will be interesting.

Host: Our next question is from killian's 090: How old were you when the
band really took off? Do you think you were too young?

Roger Daltrey: Can you ever be too young? You've got to remember that when
the band took off I was 19, but 19 all those years ago. We were very much
more immature than a 19-year-old today. Far more sheltered. Although, we
were -- it was strange, because it was post-war -- post-war England. We had
nothing. We really had nothing. We had our asses hanging out of our
trousers. We just got roofs put back on our houses, and windows. Really, it
was that bad. So you can't just measure the age in years. We were very
naive. I look back on it, I look back at myself in horror. I look at Pete
with absolute admiration, because he was so articulate, and how -- how was
he so together and we were so shaky and flaky? But it worked. What a life.

Host: How fast of a transition was it for you?

Roger Daltrey: Well, we were a band from -- I started the band when I was 14
with John Entwistle. Pete joined a year later. I think Keith joined when I
was 17, and then within two years it had taken off.

Host: Wow.

Roger Daltrey: It was weird. And Keith was 21. I think he used to lie about
his age. He took a year off. He wanted to be the baby of the band. We let
him get away with it. He had his 21st birthday on our first big tour of
America in 1967.

Host: That's quite a way to celebrate a birthday.

Roger Daltrey: Yeah, he celebrated, actually, and we paid the bill. With the
whole of the tour money.

Host: RDaltreyyeah wants to know: Hey, thanks for all the great music
through the years. Loved the show in Vegas. Any plans to release the 1999
music on CD or video? Thanks again, Larry Gibson from Phoenix, Arizona.

Roger Daltrey: Yeah, it will be on downloaded -- I don't know what you call
that. I'm not very up on this. I should get one, shouldn't I? I try to be
free of computers. I've got enough problems in my life without adding
another one, you know? I've got a large family. I don't think we need a
computer as well.

Host: Will there be a video version of any of those concerts?

Roger Daltrey: I don't know if anybody videoed them. One of my great
sadnesses is that we never videoed the =93Quadrophenia=94 tour. It would hav=
e
been so easy to have made that show, because it was a theatrical arena show.
It would have been so easy to have made it into a really interesting video
production of a rock & roll show, and we never did it, mainly because we
didn't make any money off the show, because the show was so expensive to put
on. Typical. As usual, we toured just long enough to pay the start-up costs.

Host: Right.

Roger Daltrey: It's the craziest band ever. Everybody else has Learjets.
We're still running around on bikes.

Host: Next question: I heard you once got kicked out of The Who for starting
too many fights. Whose ass did you kick? Pete's?

Roger Daltrey: We used to fight a lot. And I mean a lot. We really did. The
band was built on friction. That's what made the -- that's what made The Who
interesting. But I got kicked out of the band because of one fight in
particular, and that was a fight I had with Keith Moon. We were touring in
Europe, our first tour of Europe, and in those days we used to take a drug
called purple hearts, which was a kind of speed. I took it further along. I
wasn't against taking the drugs, but as a singer -- it used to dry your
throat out, and you'd end up chewing your lip so much, it got really sore. I
used to find it -- I just couldn't sing on it. So I stopped doing it.

Roger Daltrey: Of course, when one person's straight and everyone else is
out there boxing, it starts to become very difficult. On this particular
tour of Europe, the drugs were flowing thick and fast, and we did one show
in Copenhagen, and I was just getting so upset because the band were playing
so bad. It was nothing to do with personality. It had nothing really to do
with the drugs. I didn't mind the drugs, but what I did mind was the way the
drugs were affecting the band.

Roger Daltrey: One thing I cared about more than anything was the way my
band played. I always felt it was my band. Pete felt it was his band. Keith
felt it was his band. That's great. That's how everybody should feel about
it. The musical quality of the band was going down and down and down and
down.

Roger Daltrey: I came on stage and I said, we won't have any of more of
this. I flushed them down the toilet. I wasn't looking for a fight, but Moon
just actually came at me with a fire ax or something, a tambourine or
something. He smashed me in the face with it. I used to be brutal in a
fight. I used to be a growler. I used to love to fight. That's how I was
brought up. I was very inarticulate. I found it very difficult to express
myself. I was a little guy. I was bullied a lot. By being bullied, you learn
to protect yourself. Of course, everybody else came out worse from that
fight. And they fired me.

Host: For beating them up?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah. Fired me for being the mother. I was heartbroken. We
got back to England, I thought that was it, I'm out of the band. I was very
lucky that the management, you know, they realized the value of what the
band was. It was chemistry. And they managed to talk the other guys -- and I
promised to be a good guy. And I went from being this raging, growling
lunatic, and I became peaceful. I spent my four years in the doghouse. I
mean, and I became the butt of all their jokes, and I just had to swallow
it. And I took it, and I deserved it, I suppose, in a way. That was a --
those were very miserable years for me.

Host: But you've come through it.

Roger Daltrey: I've come through it. And The Who came through it. And we
went on to do our best work. That's the irony of my life, the relationship
with Keith. It was very weird. We started off with these terrible,
terrible -- really good friends at the beginning when he joined the band.
Everybody was good friends. Because he wanted to be in the band. We didn't
know him. Then, of course, you know, Keith would have hated anybody standing
in front of him. Keith had this thing, the singer shouldn't be at the front
of the stage, the singer should be behind the drummer. Of course, my
relationship with him was one of pure, utter animosity, for such a long
period.

Roger Daltrey: But then towards the end, as he straightened up, because he
did start to straighten up towards the end. That's what interested me about
his life and why I'm trying to make a film of his life, is because he did
straighten up. The tragedy of Keith Moon was that the drug that killed him
was a drug that was prescribed. It was alcoholism. So I mean, it was --
towards the end we were, in some ways, the closest two of the band. I was
trying to help him through that. It was a very weird relationship.

Host: Right. Wow. Sets 515 says: Hi. I'm a 16-year-old girl and I've loved
The Who for three years. Roger, if you're even reading this, I want to tell
you that you are my idol. I love The Who.

Roger Daltrey: A 16-year-old? Ought to be arrested.

Host: I have 25 Who CDs. I'll have 25 when I get the BBC one. I want to say
thanks.

Roger Daltrey: Thanks. Thanks for being a fan. We get a lot of the accolade,
but we've only been around for so long and been able to do it because we've
had incredible fans. I mean, our fan base is amazing. And we do appreciate
it. It might seem sometimes that we don't, simply from the pressure of the
road. You can't assign all your -- I saw a thing on Tiger Woods yesterday on
the golf course, where he was saying if you have your photo taken with
everybody, you'd never strike a golf ball. And when you're on the road with
the band, you know -- but believe me, we do appreciate our fan base very
much.

Host: What's it like when you hear from a 16-year-old who's now a fan?

Roger Daltrey: It's fabulous. And it just proves what I've always thought
about Pete's -- I think why young people like The Who is down to the courage
of Pete Townshend's songs. The fact that he was above being a teenager, but
he knew how to write about the angst and the problems and the passions and
all those things that you go through. That will never, ever change. It's
always going to be the same. But that's what makes it timeless, because
there's always another generation. All of a sudden, they hear this music and
think, that's how I feel at the moment. Then they identify with it, and it
helps people through their lives. And I think that's -- but that was down to
Pete's genius. And obviously, some of it was to do with the way we presented
it, but without the songs, who knows? But there again, without the way the
chemistry made them work, who knows it as well? You....

Host: Next question is: What do you think of all the nonsense that went on
at Woodstock this year?

Roger Daltrey: Well, don't get fooled again, that's all I can say. It is
nonsense. What these people keep trying to redo Woodstock fail to understand
is that Woodstock wasn't the wonderful event because of the bands. We were
just the catalyst that brought the event together. Woodstock was the event
that it was because of the people, the audience. They were much more
important than the bands. These stupid promoters can't get this together.
They think you just get bands together, you get this happening. It doesn't
work like that. Woodstock was all the very extraordinary time.

Host: Right.

Roger Daltrey: We, personally, we had a bloody awful time.

Host: You played at 4:00 in the morning, didn't you?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah. We were supposed to go at the -- go on at 10:00. We
hadn't eaten for, I don't know, 12 hours or something. We didn't get there
until the day before, from England. So we were kind of jet-lagged. So by the
time we got on the stage, what with all the drugs that laced every drink you
drank there -- it was laced with some kind of drug, you know -- we were the
worst, to be honest. I always felt it was one of the worst shows we ever
did. But the film, when we saw it, we were completely blown away by it.

Host: Jan dafy wants to know: How did you get the name for your band?

Roger Daltrey: Just one stupid night of being drunk and disorderly in Pete's
flat, shouting out stupid names, from The Hair... oh, lots of ridiculous
names. Merwin. Ladies and gentlemen, No One! And then Pete's art school
friend came up, who said The Who. There's just a sound. It's a question, but
then it's a question. After a while, it doesn't sound stupid. When you first
hear it, it sounds bloody stupid. After a while, it's a noise, just a sound.
And it stuck. So we became The Who. Then we changed it to The High Numbers.
Then went back to The Who.

Host: The High Numbers?

Roger Daltrey: Yeah.

Host: Next question: Will you do any more live theater? You were terrific in
"A Christmas Carol."

Roger Daltrey: Thank you. Yeah, but it's a matter of finding the right
thing. I love to play characters. I really enjoy the theater experience. I
didn't enjoy the Madison Square Garden experience very much. I mean, a
5,000-seat theater is a tall order. And four shows a day, or 15 shows a
week. It nearly killed me. Let's put it this way, I just haven't got a
cruise button. I either have to do it right and give everything, or not do
it. And I think that's -- that again comes from the way The Who are. That's
the way The Who have always been. That's why The Who have very rarely been
dull. They haven't got a cruise button, either. That's why it might explode
at any minute, you know, full in your face.

Roger Daltrey: And I suddenly realized that the only reason that other
people had done 15 shows a week was to cruise the part. And the part was
playing Scrooge, so it would have been very easy to play it, just watch what
was going on and say your lines. But for me as an actor, the challenge of
the show was -- is to show the audience what watching your life would do to
you. Now, that takes an awful lot of energy, especially to 5,000 people. And
I just haven't got a cruise button, and it nearly killed me.

Host: Last question here: Can you see for miles and miles, or has your
eyesight diminished?

Roger Daltrey: I haven't got any eyesight left. I have absolutely 20/20
vision, until we did a charity show about four years ago in Hyde Park, and
we had a guy on the show called Gary Glitter, the infamous Gary Glitter now,
and he's a lunatic guy. He was playing the godfather of rock. And he spins
the microphone stand on his head. Of course, we were doing a sound check the
day before the show in Hyde Park, and it was for the Prince's Trust charity.
There was going to be 250,000 people at this show. And we -- it was raining.
It was midsummer in England. Raining, freezing cold. We're just checking out
the sound, right? Having a sound check.

Roger Daltrey: This lunatic comes on, and I'm walking around the stage
checking so everyone can hear, you know, because we haven't been onstage for
six years. And we're going to play in front of 250,000 people. I'm walking
around checking the mikes, listening. This lunatic goes up to do his show,
he's doing it in front of 250,000 people who will be there. Then he fell,
for God's sake. I get behind him, right behind him, and he decides to swing
the microphone stand around his head and he -- the full of it locks me
straight in the eye and fractured all my cheekbone around here and my eye
socket. Since then, I've got pretty good vision from there around, but then
from there it's not. My eyesight has gone down very badly since then.

Host: Luckily you were --

Roger Daltrey: Since then I've been -- he's been arrested for pedophilia. If
I had known then, I would have backed him back.

Host: Next question: Did you really get in a fight with Jimi Hendrix at
Monterey?

Roger Daltrey: No. That wasn't true. Pete had a bit of an argument with him.
A lot of Jimi's act was stolen from The Who. He came to England and was
signed by our record company. He used to watch us. A lot of his feedback and
stuff, the guitar stuff, was stolen from Pete. Pete was doing it a long time
before Jimi. It built up a lot of -- not animosity, because Pete obviously
admired Jimi's talent. We were blown away by the guy. He didn't need what we
were doing. Just the way he played was enough. But a lot of the stuff, the
banging of the amps and all that, was stolen from Pete. So obviously, when
we got to hear that Jimi was literally on before us or after us, we thought,
well, he's going to just do our show -- and I think Pete had a few words
with us. It was no more than that. Of course, he didn't do our show, but he
did very similar. He burned his guitar, which was a masterstroke. Jimi was
far too quiet. He was a quiet guy.

Host: What project have you not undertaken that you would like to in the
future?

Roger Daltrey: That I haven't undertaken? I don't know. There's so much I
want to do. I'd like to write at least four to five songs on the next two
albums. And I'm right in the middle of doing it. I think -- I'm not certain,
but I think I've got a few good songs here. I think Pete's going to be very
pleased.

Host: Oh, great. Wow. Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight. That
was our last question.

Roger Daltrey: Really? Well, that's short and sweet.

Host: It was a half-hour. It went by very fast. Thank you. It was a pleasure
talking to you.

Roger Daltrey: You too.

Host: Be sure to get The Who's =93BBC Sessions=94 in stores this week. We've
been speaking with Roger Daltrey. I'm Matt Wagner. See you next time....

Host: Thank you, everyone, for all of your great questions!! What a great
chat!! Sorry we could not get to all the questions!!

OnlineHost: Copyright 2000 America Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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