Pete Townshend Explains Roger Daltrey ‘Was A Bully’

Pete Townshend recently recalled how The Who started out as a “gang.” He noted how he was glad to play with the “school bully” Roger Daltrey, as it meant having physical “protection.”

The Who emerged in 1964 from the suburbs of London and brought something different to the blossoming rock scene of the era. According to Deep Purple’s drummer Ian Paice, Pete Townshend & Co. “were the first to push rock ‘n’ roll beyond pretty little pop songs.”

Pete Townshend recalls origins of The Who

The intense artistic direction The Who came to be known for makes all the more sense as the band started as a “gang,” Pete Townshend explained during an interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Reflecting on his band’s origins, Townshend said:

“The who were a gang. I was at school. I was 16 years old. I was doing art classes in the summer, doing the eighth grade, or whatever you call them at 16. I was doing the final exams, and this guy, Roger Daltrey, who was the school bully, came in. He’d been thrown out the year before, and he came back. He’s a year older than me. [He] came up to me in the corridor, and said, ‘I hear you play the guitar.’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Do you want to be in my band?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And I thought, ‘I’ve got protection.'”

Townshend further recalled how he hid his new project from his art school friends, until an unexpected gig made him accept his newfound calling:

“I was still an art student in the summer. I went to his house. We put the band together. John Entwistle, the bass player of The Who, was already in his band, and we started to work. But I kept it a secret. I didn’t tell my smarty-farty art school friends I was in this band until one day, there was this college dance thing, and we were hired to do the bat. All these fabulous-looking hippie art school girls were pretending to be Beatles fans and were screaming at me. And I thought, ‘This is great!’ [laughs]. And then, it began, really.”