Being a rock legend has many perks I’m sure, but it can’t protect you from everything. One such thing that being an icon doesn’t appear to guard against is “grumpy old man syndrome”, as evidenced by The Who frontman Roger Daltrey, who has directed his latest string of complaints at the very music he built is career on.
Having maintained an aura of dissatisfaction and aggression throughout his career, in the 60s and 70s Daltrey pretty much personified the romanticised definition of discontented youth – and was known for throwing a hard punch. In recent years, he has still found plenty to be dissatisfied with, from refusing to make another record, because the internet ruined music, to his caustic description of AC/DC’s recent tour (calling Axl Rose’s efforts a “karaoke show”), even his own fans disappoint Daltrey.
Image via Ultimate Classic Rock
But most recently, it’s rock music that has got Daltrey down. Despite his once upon a time cry of “Long Live Rock”, in a recent interview Daltrey appeared to have stepped down as a champion of the genre.
“The sadness for me is that rock has reached a dead end… the only people saying things that matter are the rappers and most pop is meaningless and forgettable,” he told The Times Magazine. “You watch these people and you can’t remember a bloody thing.”
His comments came off the back of The Who’s appearance at the Desert Trip festival. Despite the deaths of both Keith Moon and John Entwistle, and advancing age, Daltrey and Pete Townshend have continued to tour over the years. Also in spite of being “deaf as posts”, according to Daltrey’s typical pessimism, and possessed of bodies that “start to creak after the age of 65”.
Perhaps finding himself hard of hearing makes enjoying new music more difficult for Daltrey, as The Times suggested, but his comments strike more at the meaning of music today. He isn’t the first rocker to mourn the death of the genre; back in 2014 Gene Simmons claimed that rock had been “murdered”. Simmons blamed file sharing, but Daltrey’s words seem to suggest that bands have come to the end of the road with rock.
Whatever the reason, this comment seems to have resonated amongst the rest of Daltrey’s grumping. In the same interview he complained about travel, air pollution, his vocal nightmares and that the band still play the same set as forty years ago. But to seemingly put his faith in rap is something that not many rock fans would have seen coming – even from a grump old man, and especially not from a rock legend.
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Image: The Who Official
Rumoured to be on their last tour ever, The Who are currently bringing their iconic sounds across the US – and are definitely pulling out all the stops.
When Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey rolled into New York last week, they were joined on stage by none other than the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Together, they performed My Generation and Won’t Get Fooled Again at the MusiCares Benefit Concert.
Townshend was honoured at the concert with the Stevie Ray Vaughn award for his work supporting a charity that assists musicians with addiction recovery – the MusiCares MAP Fund. Springsteen gave a touching speech about him, recounting his first rock concert ever, which happened to be The Who. Ending the tribute beautifully with, “So Pete, I’m here to say, congratulations, well deserved, and thanks for not just Who’s Next and ‘Who Are You,’ but for who I am,” Springsteen gave an insight into just how much The Who, and Townshend himself had touched his life. You can read the full transcript below.
Read the full transcript of Bruce Springsteen’s speech (via NJ.com)
“The first American tour that The Who were on, and I was in a long line staking out Convention Hall down the boardwalk. The billboard read in big type ‘Herman’s Hermits and The Who.
“I was a young pimply-faced teenager who managed to scrap enough together to go see my first rock concert ever. Pete and The Who were young pimply-faced teenagers with a record contract, a tour and a rude aggressive magic. They were on this tour of all things opening for Herman’s Hermits and there was no justice.
“So I scrambled to my seat in the cavernous Convention Hall and I waited for the rumble to start. The first band out I think was a band called the Blues Magoos out of New York City … They came out and they had these electric suits and when all the lights went out in the hall, all the electric suits lit up and it was high-level special effects.
“The Who came out and they played for probably a little more than 30 minutes. Pete, in a cloud of smoke, demolished his guitar bashing it over and over into the floor and his amplifier. The audience was filled with a significant amount of teeny-boppers who were waiting for ‘Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.’ So they sat there with their mouths agape wondering: ‘Who are you’? Who are these guys? Whay are you doing? Why are they doing it?’
“All I knew, for some reason, this music and the demolishing of all these perfectly fine instruments filled me with incredible joy and I never looked back.
“So I went out and bought a smoke bomb and a strobe light and I brought them over to the gig. and as the night neared its end, I wasn’t able to smash my guitar – it was the only one I had! – so I lit the smoke bomb in the Catholic school basement and turned on the strobe light and I climbed on top of my amplifier holding a vase of flowers that I stole from one of the upstairs classrooms, and with this huge flourish I raised the vase of flowers as the flickering, blinding strobe lit me, with smoke all around me, and as the nuns looked on in horror, I smashed them onto the dance floor. I jumped off the amp and stomped all over the petunias!
“The vase of flowers simply failed to have the grandeur of a newly minted Telecaster being smashed to splinters, but we worked with what we had. I went home smiling, feeling a blood bond with Pete Townshend, and I never looked back.
“As I grew older, the Who’s music seemed to grow with me the sexual frustration, politics, identity. These things course through my veins with every concurring Who album. I always found myself there somewhere in their music,” Springsteen continued.
“‘The Seeker’ is the guy in ‘Born to Run.’ There’d be no ‘Down in Jungle …. LAND’ without Pete’s slashing bloody attack on his instrument. Pete is the greatest rhythm guitarist of all time. He showed you, you don’t have to play any lead. It’s an amazing thing to behold.
“Pete managed to take the dirty business of rock and roll and somehow make it spiritual and turn it into a quest. He may hate this, but he identified the place where it was noble, and he wasn’t afraid to go there.
“I took a lot of that with me as the years passed by. So Pete, I’m here to say, congratulations, well deserved, and thanks for not just Who’s Next and ‘Who Are You,’ but for who I am.”