Who Icon Roger Daltrey: The Charitable Rocker

INDIO, CA - OCTOBER 16: Musician Roger Daltrey of The Who perform during Desert Trip at the Empire ... [+] Polo Field on October 16, 2016 in Indio, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

The Who is one of the three royalty rock groups from Great Britain, the other two being The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Its string of hits spans several decades, way too numerous to list. A few: “My Generation,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Who Are You?”

While the songs were written by lead guitarist Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey handles the main vocal duties. Known for swinging his microphone and powerful, distinctive voice, he has fronted The Who for six decades.

Another side of Daltrey is his passion for giving back, in particular to youngsters with cancer. He, along with Townshend, have founded Teenage Cancer Trust, in the U.K., and Teen Cancer America, in the U.S., and have raised tens of millions of dollars for teens with cancer.

This interview with Daltrey, now 78, has been published in several parts over the years, but here, for the first time, it appears in its entirety. I found the man to be funny, humble, warm and articulate. As part of The Who, he was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1990.

LONDON - SEPTEMBER 18: The Who perform live on stage at Oval Cricket Ground in London on September ... [+] 18 1971 L-R Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend (Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

Jim Clash: You and Pete Townshend have been playing together for what, 60 years?

Roger Daltrey: And he’s as bloody difficult now as he always was [laughs]. No, we have a funny relationship. All of that stuff you read in the press about fights and this and that, you’ve got to remember: We’re like two old wrestlers. People are interested.

Clash: I once asked Art Garfunkel about his relationship with Paul Simon. The two, of course, have been doing gigs almost as long as you and Pete have. Art said that their history is like the weather.

Daltrey: What kind of weather [laughs]? Our relationship is a working one, and that's about as far as it goes. But when we get on stage, there's a chemistry that's created. When we're playing well, it starts to kick in properly. It's still as wonderful as ever. We never really had a strong relationship off of the stage, though. It's as simple as that.

Clash: You and Townshend wrote a song way back when called, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere." Townshend created most of your material over the band's life, so this collaboration is rare. What's he like to work with in a songwriting capacity?

Daltrey: It happened by accident. Pete had a sketch for a song, but didn't have a bridge for it. We were rehearsing, getting it down on stage at the Marquee Club. We were doing a show that night. When we got to the bridge part, I added some lyrics, and, if you add any lyrics to a song, you're one of the writers. But apparently that doesn't happen with everything you do, especially when jamming [laughs].

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - AUGUST 17: Keith Moon from The Who performs live on stage at Rai, ... [+] Amsterdam, Netherlands on August 17 1972 (Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

Clash: Let's go back to 1967 and The Who's infamous appearance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Your late drummer, Keith Moon, had loaded his bass drum with more than enough explosives to create drama at the end of your song sets. What are your recollections of that?

Daltrey: My memory of the whole day is extraordinary. How could anyone forget it? On that show with us was Mickey Rooney, someone we had watched on film as kids, and Bette Davis, the legendary film star from that golden period of Hollywood. She was dressed in her most famous role as Elizabeth I, a great medieval Queen [laughs].

When the drum exploded, Bette nearly dropped dead of a heart attack. I can laugh about it now - I think she fainted - but there was a huge kerfluffle on the side of the stage. All I know is that it blew me out of the way. If you watch it [on YouTube], I completely disappear off camera. It knocked me flat on my face.

Pete was standing there to the side, and you see the camera go over to him because I had disappeared. He's banging his head. You think, "What’s he doing?" He wasn't trying to make his hair look good, he was trying to put it out! It was on fire, smoldering.

Clash: What did you say to Keith after that happened?

Daltrey: It was a typical day on the road with Keith [laughs]. You just had to love him, although it was incredibly serious at the time. The Smothers Brothers nearly got fired from CBS, and, if that had happened, we would have been mortified. We never would have wanted that.

It involved all of the fire marshals, too. You know what the Hollywood studios are like. For a good 24 hours, it was a pretty bleak scenario. But when word got out and the show aired, we couldn't have done anything better to get The Who known in America.

circa 1975: American comedians and singers Tom Smothers (L), playing a guitar, and Dick Smothers, ... [+] playing a bass, perform in a promotional portrait for, 'The Return of the Smothers Brothers,' 1970s. They wear similar shirts and vests in contrasting colors. (Photo by NBC Television/Getty Images)

Clash: At what age did you know that you could sing?

Daltrey: I think people who sing know they can from very early on. I was born with perfect pitch, which most singers have. I used to sing in the church choir when I was six- or seven-years old. It went from there. I started singing in youth clubs and things like that at the age of 12, and then went on at age 16 to start what became The Who.

Clash: You built a guitar, too, right?

Daltrey: Yes. We couldn't afford to buy them back then. Remember, I come from the post- WWII generation. We had very, very little when I was a kid. But that really did us good [in the long run].

Clash: I read a lot about you over the last few days. You're an amazing guy, done so much in your life.

Daltrey: I'm just a bloke, Jim [laughs]. Everybody is amazing if they can find the thing they love to do, and have the breaks that allow them to do it. Most people - 99.999% - are really good people, with lots of talent. It's whether they discover it and use it, have that opportunity. That's all. I do have a lot of energy.

MIAMI, FL - JULY 07: Sir Paul McCartney performs in concert at American Airlines Arena on July 7, ... [+] 2017 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images)

Clash: A number of British musicians have been knighted - Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Elton John. Does that interest you?

Daltrey: I don't care about things like that, it's not important in my life, Jim. I've probably been too political, too critical of our leaders to ever attain that kind of position. But I don't give a crap. I say what I feel at the time. If I'm wrong, I'll stand up and say, "Sorry, I was wrong."

I don't really do social media. I don't care what people say about me. Nobody's going to like you all of the time. Some people will like you, some not, some will dislike you a whole lot, some will like you a whole lot [laughs]. I'm a human being, and none of us is perfect.

Clash: You used one of your old teachers in the title of your 2018 memoir, Thanks A Lot, Mr. Kibblewhite. He evidently threw you out of grammar school when you were 15 because you and some friends were caught shooting air rifles. Is Kibblewhite, by chance, still alive?

Daltrey: No, but I have been in touch with his daughter. The title of my book wasn't a put-down, it was a real thank-you because maybe if he hadn't said what he said, "You'll never do anything with your life, Daltrey," I wouldn't have done the things I've done. It made me fearless in a way. I thought, ‘Well, I'll show you!’ It became that little thing in the back of my brain driving me all of the time.

Clash: Did you ever see Kibblewhite later, when you had become famous in The Who?

Daltrey: No. In the early days, I was too full of hatred of the school, and I was still suffering from a sore ass [laughs]. The caning he gave me, God did that hurt. It would take almost two weeks to heal up.

Clash: You always put the words "be lucky" at the end of your e-mails. Are you a lucky guy?

Daltrey: I do believe in that. It's actually a saying I got from a friend, John McVicar, when I acted in a film about his life. He was a criminal, a bank robber. There was this North London saying that, when you used to go into a bank to rob it, be lucky, get away with it. You can either be someone who has a negative outlook on life, or someone who has a positive one. In the back of your head, if you think lucky, be lucky, it's incredibly positive. And like attracts like, there's no doubt about that.

Roger Daltrey (L) and Pete Townshend of The Who perform at Reno Events Center on February 23, 2007 ... [+] in Reno, Nevada. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

Clash: How do you deal with fear, and what are you afraid of?

Daltrey: I'm afraid of the things that everybody else is. I'm not afraid of death, that's for sure. I've been close to that too many times [laughs]. Things that really frighten me are what might hurt my family. They are the most important thing in my life. That really terrifies me, that they'll have to go through a terrible time.

How my parents got through the war, losing brothers and sisters, I don't know. The pain must have been enormous. The pain never left them, I do know that. I regret not talking to them about it. But I lived in the ignorance of it. We all do when we're young.

Clash: So you're not afraid of death. Then I'll ask you: What do you want your epitaph to be?

Daltrey: "Gone" [belly laugh]. In my will, it should say to put me in a paper bag and take me down to the dump. I'm a farmer. I love all of my animals dearly. But when they go off to market, I'm aware of where they're going.

So I have this thing about death. I do not believe anything leaves. I think it just moves. The universe will remain constant, and you move on. Your physical being will change, but some part of you can never leave, even if it's just dust floating about in Nebula 1115XBXYZZ. You know what I'm saying? It's basically beyond my comprehension. Worry doesn't really produce anything anyway.

Clash: I know that you took a thrill ride in a two- seat Indy car with Mario Andretti at the Long Beach Grand Prix a few years back. What was that like?

Daltrey: Mario is one cool dude. That was such an honor. What can I say? I couldn't believe I was doing it. Needless to say, you want to puke at the time [laughs]. In the early 1960s, there was no speed limit in England. They had just started laying out motorways, and there was almost no traffic. We had Aston Martins, E types [Jaguar], Ferraris.

Everywhere we went, it was foot to the floor. I've also been around the Atlanta speedway in a stock car. I overtook the pace car, which upset them a bit. Mind you, it was only us two on the track, but he was too slow [laughs]. I also went out in a detuned Formula One car, around a Lotus track. Sir Jackie Stewart gave me some tips - "keep the car balanced, keep the car balanced” - and I enjoyed it very much.

Clash: I take people around the Daytona International Speedway for the NASCAR Racing Experience. If you ever want to come down, I'll take you out at 170 mph. We'll let you drive, too. We can turn it into a fundraiser for Teen Cancer America.

Daltrey: I'd love to do it, love to do it [laughs].

Clash: What is it about The Who that makes the group so enduring?

Daltrey: There’s something about the way Pete wrote those songs, the foresight and maturity. It’s music like no other out there. The fact that we’re still singing them now makes it even better. Pete wanted to be totally original. He found it, he stuck with it and we had that chemistry that made it work. We just got really lucky.

JC: In, “My Generation,” when you sing, “Hope I die before I get old,” and you’re now in your 70s, is there a sense of irony?

Daltrey: You’ve found the golden carrot [laughs]. No, I never sing it with that in mind. When I was 16 and Pete was 19, age was this immoveable object. It was never about age all those years. It’s about aging in the brain, and attitude. I’ve seen 16-year-olds who are like old people. And I’ve met 90-year-olds who have the spirit of teenagers. It’s what you give out.

LONDON - SEPTEMBER 18: The Who perform live on stage at Oval Cricket Ground in London on September ... [+] 18 1971 L-R Pete townshend, Roger Daltrey (Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

Clash: You’re a singer and an actor. Compare and contrast the two.

Daltrey: When I’m singing, I’m the most freed up, wherever I am. Acting is different. It’s a bloody-sight easier. Christ, you use a lot less energy [laughs]. With both, you use your imagination.

When I sing, I live in this world in my head. I try to live the songs for the first time every night. I might have sung the song 1,000 times, but at the time I sing it, in my head it is the first time. So that’s how I approach that.

When you’re acting, you get this character and you play him. It’s not quite the same but again, you’re trying to do things different than how you would be - more like the character - so you’re constantly digging into the garden you didn’t know you had.

Clash: What’s it like up there, being the focal point of the music performance?

Daltrey: When you go out there, you’re stark naked on that stage. Bits of muscle bounce together to create noise that has to contain all of this emotion, all of these feelings. The guy who writes the love song about broken hearts, he breaks his heart once when he writes it. A singer, well, he has to break his heart every night.

Clash: In your day, the sweet spot of the sixties, there seemed to be more of a bottom-up, grass-roots approach to music, whereas today it seems more top-down, marketing-driven.

Daltrey: That’s the business, not the acts. There are as many great ones out there as ever. I would hate to be a young musician trying to make it today. It’s so, so difficult to get artistic freedom, to plow your own field. Like you say, we lived in the sweet spot.

Clash: When Pete would break his guitar on stage, was that a marketing gimmick or was it from his soul?

Daltrey: It was part of our art form, destructive art. But equally, when you do it once, it’s art. If you do it every night, it starts to be a gimmick. And that’s what it became.

The Who album cover, Who’s Next.

Clash: When you shot the photo for the famous Who's Next album cover, did you really urinate on that monument, or was it just water?

Daltrey: It was some and some [laughs]. We did pee on it, but it wasn’t enough, so we fixed it up a bit.

Clash: You're wealthy, Roger. Why still tour?

Daltrey: I love it, I love it, it's as simple as that. I recently did a [solo] tour in England, for nothing, for the musicians who passionately care about our industry. They were quite poorly treated during the [COVID-19] lockdowns, and received very little help from both [British and American] governments. It's the road crews I was most concerned about.

Those guys, they're extraordinary people, incredibly skilled. Every day they arrive at 10 a.m., spend all day setting up the stage, putting lights up, all of that. As soon as the band comes off of the stage, they take it all down. load it into a truck, travel overnight to the next gig, then do the same thing over. To find those kinds of people again, to rebuild that business, would take years. I worried whether they would actually be there when we went back [to touring].

So me and my big mouth [laughs], I made a statement that the bands who can afford to, like us who've had privileged careers, should look after their own, try to give them some money and work to help replace what they've lost over the last couple of years.

Clash: At 78, touring and travel must take a toll on your body?

Daltrey: Yeah, but it's a good toll - gets you fit, keeps you moving - instead of just sitting on a chair watching TV. My summer solo tour was an absolute joy. As I had indicated, I took musicians, nine of them, out just to give them a month's work. We had no expectations, and I was hoping that the tour wouldn't get canceled. Some of us did get Covid, but we got through to the end, anyway.

Clash: Your Who concerts seem to attract all ages. I saw as much at a Madison Square Garden show in New York.

Daltrey: I was lucky enough to be in that generation of bands who believes rock music can be much more than just a three-minute single appealing to teenagers. Here we are at this grand old age of 78, 79 - like Mick Jagger - where people bring their grandchildren to shows, some of them eight years old. Eight 'til 80 [laughs]. To know that rock music has achieved that, and that The Who was part of it, is the thing I'm most proud of.

Clash: What's the future hold for you, The Who, etc.?

Daltrey: The Who is getting near retirement age. I would like to stop while we're still doing it well. When I can't sing the notes anymore, sing to where it touches the audience, then it's time. The Who's music is very different from most rock. You're dealing with words from a deep innerspace within us all. They [the words] have to connect, the singer to the audience. If I lose the power to do that, well, I will stop. I don't want the downward slope where you're not quite as good as you used to be.

The Who pose for a group portrait, London, 1965. L-R Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and ... [+] John Entwistle. (Photo by The Visualeyes Archive/Redferns)

Clash: Was that possibly the case when you had a voice-cancer scare a while back?

Daltrey: Yes. I sang through so much crap. I really should have stopped. I hated it, will never do it again. I thank my audience for staying with me. Fortunately, it wasn't cancer, but a pre- condition. Mv throat doctor, Steven Zeitels, has given me a voice that's better than ever. I think I'm singing the best I have in my entire life.

Clash: Have you seen, "Top Gun: Maverick," yet? There's great placement of, "Won't Get Fooled Again," early on in the flick.

Daltrey: That’s the beauty of Townshend's writing. You can put any kind of action film behind the pulsating music. Then there's my scream in that song. I can only imagine where that [placement] might be.

Clash: Where from inside of Roger Daltrey did that scream come?

Daltrey: Pete had indicated a scream in that part of the song, and I thought, ‘This needs to be completely and utterly primal.’ I've always been into the primal shock connection to the audience that a voice can have. "Love Reign O'er Me," has the same kind of thing with the last, "love."

Clash: You still throw the microphone in the air at concerts. Ever drop it?

Daltrey: I can't see anymore, so yes [laughs]. But I don't do it hardly at all now. I used to be so good with that bloody thing. I suddenly realized I'm not in a circus.

Clash: What made you start doing it?

Daltrey: Boredom, long heavy-metal-type guitar solos. Even worse, bass solos. I'm ribbing, of course.

Clash: You say boredom. When they do that long introduction to the rock opera, "Tommy,’’ with the big orchestra which opens some shows, you have nothing to do on stage. What are you thinking up there?

Daltrey: What the f… am I doing here [laughs]?

Clash: "The Real Me,” a podcast for your charity, Teen Cancer America, is a song that you sing off of the Quadrophenia LP. Who is the real Roger Daltrey?

Daltrey: He's a very simple guy, to be honest, complicatedly simple. I like to look respectable, not like a bag of laundry, though most of the time on my farm I do [look like a bag of laundry]. I don't want for much. I'm very quiet. I've had to live so much of my life being quiet. Singers don't talk much, especially when they do three-hour shows. You come off of the stage with not much of a voice left. You just shut the f… up until you get back on stage [laughs].

NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 28: Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who perform during the Who ... [+] Cares Benefit For Teen Cancer America Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on February 28, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Larry Busacca/FilmMagic)

Clash: Of all the charity groups out there, what made you want to focus on teenagers?

Daltrey: I remember that period myself as being upside-down and sideways, with huge emotional shifts and isolation, not quite fitting in here, there and everywhere. It’s an incredibly difficult period in everybody’s life. I was lucky to get into a profession where the backbone was totally that generation. Without adolescents and teenagers, the music business as we know it would not exist.

Clash: How did you pick cancer as the teen disease to back?

Daltrey: I was involved from day one because the band’s doctor started Teenage Cancer Trust in [Great] Britain. I thought it was such a good idea because cancer at that age is particularly brutal. They are too old to be treated as children, too young to be treated as adults. They also suffer with late diagnosis because they're so active, and the cancers they get are so rare. Doctors often miss them. And, at that age, the disease is particularly aggressive because of hormone changes.

Clash: How prevalent is teen cancer here in the U.S.?

Daltrey: In America, a person aged 13-25 is diagnosed at least every hour. One in 360 boys, and one in 420 girls, will die from it. It just makes sense that if we, as a society, feel it’s right for children to go to kids' hospitals with teddy bears and nurseries, and adults have hospital lounges where they can socially interact, teens should have somewhere, too. But there’s been basically nothing in your American system. They either are dumped in with children or with adults.

LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 28: Hosts Rebecca Rothstein, Roger Daltrey and Darren Strowger attend the ... [+] Teen Cancer America Fundraiser hosted by Darren Strowger, Roger Daltrey and Rebecca Rothstein on October 28, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David M. Benett/Getty Images)

Clash: Teen Cancer America is relatively new compared to Teenage Cancer Trust, your counterpart charity in the U.K.

Daltrey: Yes. TCA has been going for 13 years now, TCT since 1990. TCA works with more than 50 hospitals and medical clinics, some of your most important cancer institutions. One of our firsts was Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York. For that, we raised $1 million doing a concert with Elvis Costello to build a special area there for teens with cancer.

Clash: When you meet the afflicted teens, what are they like?

Daltrey: They’re fantastic. They truly are remarkable, considering the circumstances. You’ve got to remember that children with cancer, although they may suffer terribly, don’t really understand what they’ve got. A teenager knows what horrors can come to them. So every way around, it’s tough for that age group.

Clash: How about the parents of those teens?

Daltrey: If you ever want to see terror, go and visit a teenager with cancer’s parents, the mothers with the sons and the fathers with the daughters. It’s incredibly touching.

NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 28: Elvis Costello and the Imposters perform during the Who Cares Benefit ... [+] For Teen Cancer America Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on February 28, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

Clash: I’m sure this is hard to quantify, but other than quality-of-life improvements, do you have data that your efforts help medically?

Daltrey: What we do know is that within the teen hospital environments we’ve created, we have greater success rates than in others. It’s common knowledge that mental well-being has an enormous effect on the success of any medical treatment.