Billboard Artists Of The Day

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@yahoo.com>]

>From Billboard Online at:
http://www.billboard.com/billboard/feature/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1282018

The Who: Together Again, For A Good Cause
By Sean Egan

Almost 40 years after its members declared they hoped
they died before they got old, the Who -- vocalist
Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend, and bassist
John Entwistle -- is about to hit the stage again. The
band -- widely considered to be only behind the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the stakes of rock
history's most important -- is, refreshingly, planning
a series of live events not as a money-printing
exercise, but in support of its favorite charity.

The gigs -- London's Royal Albert Hall on Feb. 7-8,
and preceded by three late January warm-up shows in
London suburb Watford and U.K. coastal town Portsmouth
-- will benefit the Teenage Cancer Trust. "We've been
involved in them for years because the charity was
started by Pete [Townshend's] and my own doctor and
his wife," explains Daltrey. "When we started getting
back to work two years ago, I said to Pete, 'Rather
than do loads of diverse charities, why don't we focus
on one?' We picked on this one because it's got a
target that is attainable." 

For Daltrey, the suffering of teenagers with cancer,
leukemia, Hodgkin's, and related diseases is in many
ways worse than that of young children and adults.
"Teenagers [are] very visible in themselves, the way
they dress," he says. "People tend to notice them a
lot in that respect. But they tend to suffer in
silence because they bottle things up so much and the
problems get overlooked. [It's] very easy to get
people to feel sorry for young children but teenagers
seem to be the ones stuck in the middle. They're
neither here nor there." 

Continuing, he notes, "If they get cancer they're
either put in a ward with young children with bunnies
on the wall or stuck in with old people dying of the
disease. Now that is completely unsatisfactory.
They're dealing with enough problems in their life
without having the disease. Going through adolescence
is incredibly traumatic, as we all remember." 

The figures tell the story of an almost unnoticed
epidemic. "It was one in 360 boys and one in 420 girls
but those figures have gotten worse," Daltrey says.
"So you could say that in every secondary school in
this country, in any given year, there'll be one of
each gender with cancer."

To provide appropriate treatment, the Teenage Cancer
Trust is aiming to ultimately provide 20 hospital bed
units in the U.K., with the salaries of the staff also
provided by the Trust. Daltrey points out a
frightening statistic that illustrates why specific
treatment units for teenager cancer victims are vital.
"The evidence is that if teenagers go into a unit
there is on average an up to 15 percent improvement
rate on the success of the same treatment [in an
ordinary ward], which is quite astonishing," he says.
"It's because of the environment and the support they
give each other. So for a very small input it's an
incredible outcome." 

Regarding the pre-Albert Hall warm-up gigs, Daltrey
insists they are necessary even for a band of the
Who's experience. "No matter what you do -- you can
sing around the house, you can rehearse -- it's not
like being on a stage," he explains. "The Who's a
weird band. It's to do with energy and things that
happen in the spur of the moment. A lot of what we
play is actually made up on the spot. The song's the
framework for a lot of other things that happen."

As he has for the past few year's worth of Who reunion
performances, Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) will be
behind the drum kit. But can the group ever truly
replace original drummer Keith Moon, whose hyperactive
sticksmanship -- and life itself -- was brought to a
tragically premature end by a sleeping pill overdose
in 1978? "No, of course you can't," says Daltrey
simply. "He was totally unique. Moon was much, much
more than just one of the best rock drummers ever. He
was an enormous personality. He's always missed." 

Recalling the very beginnings of the Who, Daltrey says
he had difficulties finding the proper narrative voice
for Townshend's burgeoning songs. "I'd been a soul
singer," he says. "James Brown, Howlin' Wolf -- I sang
all this black music. When I was presented with these
first Townshend songs, I just didn't know what voice
to give them. It was a complete mystery to me, that
whole period; 'where do I find the voice to these
songs?' I found them very difficult to sing, even
though they're very, very simple songs. 'Tommy' was
the making of that. 'Tommy' was the thing that did
it."

Presented in that rock opera with a storyline that
gave rise to multiple nuances of expression and
character, Daltrey found his vocal footing and never
looked back. Neither did the Who, as "Tommy" turned
the group from mildly successful pop stars to
superstars almost overnight. The production itself
virtually has a life of its own, with multitudinous
variations on the original template created by
soundtracks to stage shows, a movie, and the Who's own
live versions such as on the infamous "Live At Leeds"
album.

Asked whether he has a preference for any one version,
Daltrey declares, "I never listen to 'em!" However, he
adds, "I'd like to get a DVD done of it one day. I'd
like the Who to actually play it all the way through
and film it."

The Who's back catalog has been the recipient of
possibly the most thoughtful and
value-for-money-oriented reissue program of all its
contemporaries, with some albums now double their
original length thanks to bonus tracks. "Well, we
try," says Daltrey. "You are dealing in an area really
that is controlled by the industry, not really by us,
but we try and keep as much value in there as we can."

However, he has misgivings about the way that bonus
tracks spoil the drama of the original, carefully
considered sequencing. "The climax of 'Won't Get
Fooled Again' [on the 'Who's Next' album] went out
with the CD. Running order used to be important. It's
not anymore, unfortunately. Another artform lost."

The upcoming U.K. performances will not be the Who's
only shows of the year. "Basically what we're trying
to do this year is to stay in shape," Daltrey
explains, "because every time we have 18 months off
and then have to come back and do gigs, it's like
climbing Mount Everest. So the idea is just to try and
do enough shows so that we maintain a peak so that if
ever anybody asks us to do a benefit we feel we want
to do, we haven't got this great big ladder to climb.
We space our work out now; every time we do something
for ourselves, we do something for charity."

Daltrey asserts that a '70s-style lengthy Who trek is
unlikely. "I wouldn't want to go on the road," he
says. "I couldn't do it. The ideal thing for me is to
do 30, 40, 50 shows a year so that we're always in
peak condition. Voices aren't like guitars -- you
can't change the vocal chords like a set of guitar
strings."

He admits that his renowned voice is indeed changing
as he approaches the age of 60. "Some of those high
notes that I used to be able to just soar up to, it's
not quite as easy," he says. "But I think in some ways
I'm a better singer today. I think one of the problems
I've got is I'm singing songs that we became famous
for 20, 30 years ago. I think if we did do stuff,
people would suddenly think, 'f***in' hell -- Daltrey
is a good singer'."

By "do stuff," of course, Daltrey is referring to
making new recordings with his bandmates. The last Who
studio album was 1982's "It's Hard," and since that
widely ridiculed effort (including by some members of
the Who), there has been silence. The others are
willing, but as the main songwriter, Townshend has
been reluctant to accompany his colleagues into a
studio. "I think there's a lot of fear there," says
Daltrey of Townshend's concerns. "I think there's a
fear of failure and 'can I do that anymore?'"

Daltrey feels Townshend is too self-conscious about
what he imagines a Who song to be. "I don't think Pete
ever wrote Who songs," he says. "He wrote Pete
Townshend songs that the Who then recorded and made
them Who songs. But obviously two people are going to
see it from two points of view. If he could only see
it that he writes Pete Townshend songs and sometimes
the Who records them, then I think he wouldn't have
the same hang-ups about it."

Daltrey -- whose writing credits on the Who's releases
are nearly non-existent -- now composes fairly
frequently. "I've written a load of songs for the
Who," he says. "I still don't find it easy. The
musical side of it is not as easy for me as it is for
Pete, but lyrically I'm okay." He admits that if there
is a new Who album, he may struggle to get said songs
on it. "It's down to whether Pete will ever record
anybody else's material," he says.

Daltrey does dismiss the observation made by some that
as Townshend's songs became more autobiographical, the
sound of them sung by a different vocalist created an
uncomfortable consciousness of artifice in the
listener. "It's irrelevant," he says. "It's like
someone writing a book, a work of fiction. A lot of
writers write themselves into a book for another
person. The same thing goes on. I think it's whether
we ever sold his songs well and I think we did. I just
don't have the same hang-ups and I won't have because
I haven't been through the same thing. I do appreciate
how painful some of the areas that he wrote those
songs from must have been for him but I'll always
stand up [for] the fact that I feel the Who did Pete
Townshend songs a lot of justice." 

Daltrey expresses admiration for the Rolling Stones as
contemporaries who carry on without agonizing about
their craft as much. "They've got a good attitude to
it: it's only rock'n'roll but they like it," he
offers. "And I love that about them."

He does accept that doing justice to Townshend's songs
now is a different matter from having done so in the
past. Stating that the odds of a new Who studio album
are, "50/50," he says, "we're gonna try. We are
trying. We haven't given up. But who knows? We'll be
the judge of whether it's good enough. We're going to
go in the studio and we will do something. It's
whether we enjoy ourselves and we feel that what we've
actually recorded is worth releasing. I think we'll
have to have an adjudicator on that! We will know in
our bones whether it's any good or not."

Failing a new Who album, Daltrey has solo and acting
careers to keep him occupied. "If the Who don't do
anything, I might do something," he says. "I don't
know. I just like to sing. I'm a jobbing actor. I go
out and sing in all kinds of stuff and I have fun. I'm
extremely lucky. But I've written a load of songs. I
might put them into an album."

Even if the sessions yield nothing, it won't be the
end of the road for the Who by any means. For Daltrey,
the band's true metier has always been stage
performance, their many classic records
notwithstanding. "I think so much of what the Who is
just doesn't come across on a record [and] never has,"
he says. "There's an enormity of the Who that is very
difficult to capture on record. If you watch the DVD
of the [2001] Teenage Cancer Trust concert with
Surround Sound, you get some idea of it."

"Maybe it's getting better because I must admit when I
saw the New York concert that we did, albeit a very
short stab, the Who kind of blasted out of the screen
to me," he continues. "It's big -- and there's only
four of us." For Daltrey, the Who will always sound
best with a back-to-basics approach. "It seems to me
that we went through a period where we were adding
more and more and more and now we're stripping down
and taking things away," he says. "We're getting back
to more of what the Who really are and that in some
ways gives it more strength. Less is more."


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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