More About Daltrey's Extreme History

["Schrade, Scott" <sschrade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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The Who's Daltrey makes different rock music at Schiele 


By ALICIA MAYES, , The Associated Press

GASTONIA, N.C. (AP) - While they may look like roadies for a rock
band, actually they are the young minds behind a new history program
featuring a rock legend.

After writing music history with The Who, Roger Daltrey is trying his
hand at living history with a quartet of men behind the Discovery
Channel's "Extreme History." "My partner and I, David Leepson, were
approached by the History Channel to shoot a pilot," said director Matt
Ginsburg. "They said, 'We want to do a cooking show.'"

However, Ginsburg and Leepson decided it should have a sense of
adventure.

"The History Channel is looking to break out of the image it's all
black-and-white footage, to approach history with kind of an
irreverent approach," Ginsburg said.

They started looking for talent to star in their newly conceived show.

Leepson broached the idea of Daltrey to Ginsburg.

"What better way to look at history than through the filter of this
rock personality," Ginsburg said. "People know him as a musician, but
if there is this fish out of water context, this is the way."

The British native was up for the challenge.

"It just came through and looked like a chance to have an adventure
and see an America I've never seen before," Daltrey said. "I've only
ever seen inside of hotels, stadiums, the inside of airports. I've
seen very little of the rest of America."

So the men went back to the History Channel with their variation of
the cooking show. The pilot had a lot of food elements - Daltrey would
clean, gut, cook and eat a beaver - and the History Channel was
hooked.

"We went back with our cooking show but we also had elements that tend
toward survival," Ginsburg said. "We'd like to expand it so it's more
than just food, more adventure, more survival history."

That's how they found themselves in Texas, Utah and recently in North
Carolina at the Schiele Museum of Natural History, learning how to
track animals, craft primitive tools and sew clothes.

"I get the chance to do things I'd never dreamed I'd do and I am
expanding my knowledge of who I am and who we are," Daltrey said.

"I do things that I feel will keep moving my life forward."

Take for instance three weeks ago. "I was with a full-blooded Sioux
Indian in full war paint," Daltrey said. "I was dressed as me in jeans
and a T-shirt with a wolf skin on my head with a bow and arrow with a
rubber tip on it. We were lying on the plains of Wyoming with two,
three hundred buffalo no more than 30 feet away shooting at them with
bows and arrows and they were not happy to see us."

Now that's interesting history.

"The thing about it that's challenging, you've got to have a story
that lends itself to demonstrations," Ginsburg said.

Producer Mike Stiller has chimed in by generating story ideas for the
show so far.

"I'm a history buff, I'm interested in a lot of things," Stiller said.

"We just look for interesting stories you can illustrate, not just
with talk but experience."

After all, Daltrey said, history is more than just dates.

"I think everybody's interested in history when it's presented
properly," he said.

So the show is five guys (when you add in partner Pierre Takal) taking
a fun, hands-on look at man's past. While Daltrey is spicing up
history, giving it the old college try, he has knowledgeable people
educating him, and the audience, along the way.

"He's not a historian, he's not an expert, he has to glean this from
an expert," Ginsburg said.

"There's a thousand and one stories in history, but you've got to have
the experts to pull it off."

That's where Schiele prehistorian Steve Watts came in.

"Basically, one of the ideas was to do an island survival show,"
Stiller said. "Someone said you should check out those guys from 'Cast
Away.'"

While the island survival idea fell through, their idea for a show
with a primitive, caveman look found them needing Watts' expertise. He
and some friends are teaching Daltrey skills human ancestors needed to
survive and evolve.

"Some of them are easy, some of them are hard," Watts laughed.

"He'll be able to make basic stone flakes to cut through a hide and
butcher meat. He probably won't be able to make fire. Some of this
stuff is very specialized, takes a lot of time and skill. The story is
the skill development from the simplest things. It's all about one
thing building on another and developing intelligence."

On one afternoon, Watts had Daltrey crafting an awl from a bone and
sewing a deerskin garment, as well as using bits of rock to fashion
stone tools. As Daltrey pounded away, he paused long enough to hold up
his rock and proclaim, "Now, I'm a real rock star."

When he crafted the tool, he was presented with a large turkey and
Watts showed him how ancestors used their new stone tools to carve up
the bird.

"I'm going to become a fully trained butcher by the end of this show,
I tell ya," Daltrey laughed as he plopped a newly shorn turkey leg
down on the deer skin. "It's not much more difficult than a knife,
except for the joints."

Between scenes, when the camera was not rolling, Watts asked a
question about Daltrey's life and the student imparted a bit of
personally derived British history to the aboriginal teacher.

Daltrey and the "Extreme History" crew know it's difficult to make
history exciting for today's generation but are eagerly making the
attempt.

"I hope they get the same thing I do," Daltrey said. "I hope it's
informative to them, but I hope they get a laugh the same way we do
with the guys on the road. I hope they learn a bit about the country
and how we've evolved, but also that it's interesting."

If they do, then Watts will have done more than his job to educate the
public about primitive man.

"I think it's really a good premise to have him try it and fail,"
Watts said. "I think that's part of the lesson. Early humans weren't
just cavemen walking around bumping into trees; they were just like
us. If you took a prehistoric man from 30,000 years ago, he looked
just like us, he could walk the street and no one would know, but he
couldn't drive a car, but he could learn."

Information from: The Gaston Gazette
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- SCHRADE in Akron

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, 
every opinion.  Question with boldness even the existence of a God. 
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