Roger Daltrey News

Roger Daltrey may be a fully fledged rock star these days, the exuberant voice of The Who, but during the band's early years he was the weakest link, a violent brawler briefly fired by his bandmates.

Guitarist Pete Townshend, bass player John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon were ingenious musicians. Daltrey, an Elvis wannabe, was merely the mouthpiece for the introspective songs that Townshend had written, struggling to inhabit such early U.K. hits as "My Generation" and "Substitute."

Daltrey, the band's nominal leader, dealt with his frustration the only way he knew how -- with his fists.

The former sheet-metal worker was a "bit of a yob, a bit of a thug," Townshend relates in a new DVD documentary, "Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who," which comes out November 6.

"I was just young, headstrong," Daltrey, now 63, explained in a recent interview with Reuters. "I came from a tough neighborhood, and that's how we solved problems. I was inarticulate, and over-testosteroned."

The bully was tossed out for four weeks in 1965 after he knocked Moon unconscious. He was allowed back into the band on probation, and continued to flounder, lacking the others' expressive power.

The shift in the band's dynamic echoed a transformation in the Rolling Stones, when initial leader Brian Jones was usurped by nascent songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But Daltrey's story has a happier ending.

'TOMMY' TO THE RESCUE

In 1968, The Who started recording "Tommy," Townshend's allegorical rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind kid. Daltrey, having endured "four years of isolation," empathized with the character. No longer confined to singing blues-based material, he unleashed a hitherto-unseen sensitive side.

"That's when I came out of my shell. It brought me home," Daltrey said.

The rest is history. The vulnerable tough guy solidified his status as one of rock's greatest vocalists with such tunes as "Won't Get Fooled Again," "Who Are You" and "Baba O'Riley."

Townshend says the two-hour documentary restores the "balance" between the two surviving members of The Who. (Moon died of an overdose of pills in 1978, and Entwistle of a cocaine-related heart attack in 2002.)

"He also becomes the story, don't you think? It almost begins and ends with Roger as the focus," Townshend, now 62, said via email.

Daltrey's not so sure. He has no desire to see the documentary, because he finds watching himself "very uncomfortable." Still he gave his blessing to producer Nigel Sinclair and directors Murray Lerner and Paul Crowder, participated in the interviews.

He also contributed what is perhaps the highlight of the project -- a previously-unseen seven-minute clip from a 1964 performance in a dingy London pub when The Who were briefly known as the High Numbers. Daltrey bought the film from a bootlegger for an undisclosed amount.

The pristine footage shows Daltrey -- who had just turned 20 -- belting out the American R&B of Jessie Hill and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles for a crowd of fashionable "Mods." He sounds like a 60-year-old bluesman.

"When I first saw it, I thought, 'My God, we were a good band!' If you saw that band in a pub today, you'd rush up to 'em with a pen and paper to sign 'em up, wouldn't you? Even today," Daltrey said.

Reuters/Nielsen