This is just one of many digs at his professional partner of all this years. Mr. Townshend, the author writes, “lives on a different plane to the rest of us and it’s not linear.”
He thus “can come across very mean . . . even spiteful.” Yet Mr. Daltrey recognized his bandmate’s talents early. “I made the conscious decision that if my job was going to be the singer of Pete’s songs, and if Pete’s songs were genius, which they were, then I would be happy with my lot, thank you very much. . . And, whatever happened, I knew that we were never going to split up because of money.”
The angry man of rock is as angry as ever, and he doesn’t like being called old.
‘We tend to think of age only in time, but I don’t think it has much to do with time at all; there’s a whole load of other things . ‘I’ve met 16-year-olds who are old and 90-year-olds who are young. Yes, I’m a grandfather, but in some ways I feel the same as when I was younger.’ (This article is an extract from Dailymail by Nicole Lampert, to read full click here)
‘You have to keep fit being a singer — that’s part of the job,’ he says. ‘You can’t do it unless you have incredible stamina.’
By this, Mr. Daltrey means he didn’t contest Mr. Townshend’s claim to all songwriting royalties. But he kept a close eye on the rest. With Mr. Townshend allegedly treating the Who’s shared income as “pocket money,” and with Entwistle and Moon both profligate addicts, the responsibility fell to Mr. Daltrey to check the royalty and bank statements.
Where Mr. Townshend’s autobiography, “Who I Am,” delved deeply into the creative process, Mr. Daltrey, the first to admit that he is not a natural songwriter, skips over swaths of the Who’s vast catalogue to detail instead his battles with the Who’s (also profligate and addicted) management team of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who were eventually fired in the mid-1970s.
On the domestic front, Roger was also always the most settled, and recently celebrated his ruby wedding — although that is not to say there weren’t plenty of groupies. He had a four-year marriage to model Jackie Rickman, which produced his first son Simon. They were divorced in 1968 shortly after another son, Mathias, was born as a result of an affair with model Elisabeth Aronsson.
When I married American model Heater Taylor
(she was the inspiration for Jimi Hendrix’s Foxy Lady), it was with the proviso that I was allowed to stray
‘It’s not an open marriage, but in the early days of our relationship she never put restrictions on me,’ says Roger. ‘I was in one of the biggest rock bands in the world, going out for four months at a time. At that age do you expect me to come back and say, “Oh yes darling, I was a good boy?”
‘Over years we have developed something a lot deeper than that — she is the most extraordinary woman I know.’
Today Roger is as well known for his charitable work as his music. His annual week-long series of gigs at the Albert Hall for Teenage Cancer Trust has helped many young kids.
