The Who singer Roger Daltrey discussed leaving his family when he was young in a new The Big Issue interview (via Ultimate-Guitar).
“I was 20 when I became a father. When I left them, it was with the intent that I could do better for everyone – Jackie [Daltrey’s first wife], my son Simon, me, the band, my mum and dad, my sisters – if I followed my dream than trying to do something I couldn’t handle, which was being married with a kid in one room of a council flat in Wandsworth.
“I’d look down at the band’s van with the arrow and The Detours [the band’s previous name] on the side. It was luring me down. And as it happened, it worked out. I haven’t been a perfect human being, but I hope I have learned from the mistakes I have made.”
He discussed his youth.
“School ended on my 15th birthday. I was sent to the youth employment officer, who got me a job as an electrician’s mate on a building site, but I never saw a wire, I just bled pipes. I thought, ‘Fuck that, this is plumbing.’
“By 16, I was working in a sheet metalwork factory in South Acton. Calling it a factory is a bit much, it was more like an asbestos shed with 20 blokes turning out early computer cabinets, which were as big as tanks.
“They were some of my happiest days. Some guys were just out of Malaya and Korea, two wars we often forget about. The singing, laughter, and camaraderie was so much fun, even though it was hard graft.
“Those teenage years were full of angst, full of energy, full of testosterone and full of paranoia. I was bullied at school so my flight or fight switch was always on – if I ever felt threatened, I learnt to get the first blow in. Perhaps I was quite an aggressive bugger, but I don’t think I was a bully.
“My imagined future was nothing other than becoming a rock singer. It was already my drive and my vision. I was 11 when I saw Elvis, but it was Lonnie Donegan that really hit me.
“One reason I got slung out of school is that I didn’t want to know about anything other than music. And every night I was out playing with the band. We were just starting to get paying jobs in social clubs.”
“My generation missed National Service by one year, thank goodness. I don’t know where my life would have gone, but I would have been OK. I didn’t mind a bit of discipline – I’d been in the Boys’ Brigade.
“In those days we were all being trained up for the next war. I learnt the bugle and formation marches but they also taught us how democracy worked. I became the company singer. Because I am little, the sergeant used to sit me on his shoulders and get me to sing.
“We were a generation of builders who grew up with nothing. Everything had been destroyed by war. When you have nothing – if you want something, you fucking build it. I made my first electric guitar, a copy of a Fender, and we were building a band.
“John [Entwistle, bass] joined – we were different characters but got on and he was a genius bass player. Pete [Townshend, guitar] joined, and – fuck me – he was a different class altogether.
“He had the ability, through his writing and intellect, to write songs of a different caliber to anyone else. I happily gave up the guitar, it was completely incompatible with being a sheet metal worker.
“My hands were cut to shreds after unloading 10 tonnes of steel. So that was the gang. And when [Keith] Moon joined, it was the key to the starter. Vroom. Off it went, like a jet engine. Even then, our energy was different to any other band.”
He then discussed his advice for young people in 2018.
“The main advice I give youngsters is to be very aware of what you are getting into on social media. Because life is not looking down at screens, it is looking up.
“We are heading for catastrophe with the addiction that is going on in the younger generation. Your life will disappear if you are not careful. You are being controlled, and that is terrible.”
He said about today’s music scene, “Young musicians today are much better trained than we ever were. Occasionally you see the sparks, like when Ed Sheeran first played for Teenage Cancer Trust. He is a remarkable young man. To do all that on his own? People think it is easy – is it fuck! And he is a diamond of a guy. We’ve had them all play for us.
“Arctic Monkeys are going to be around a long time, and I wish the Gallagher brothers would get back together. My advice to them would be that all the verbal that keeps you in the press – it is today’s version of wrestling. It’s not real, get over it.”
