Thursday, 12 March 2015

Music needs more anger: The Who's Roger Daltrey’s talking about the iPhone generation


The Who singer Roger Daltrey has attacked the modern music industry for being too money-driven, saying artists do not have enough anger. 

The singer, 71, sold more than 100 million records with his band, who will start their last world tour at the end of the month. He told the Standard: “The music business … it’s been stolen. Nobody wants to put in any money on nurturing artists - if you don’t have the first hit, ‘Goodbye!’  In our days, people wanted to take chances and we were allowed to. The artists ran the business. Now, business runs the artists. You get accountants and lawyers basically deciding who’s going to make it and who’s not.” 

He said “unexpected” stars do crop up, such as Royal Blood, and “it won’t be long until we have another Sex Pistols”. But he added: “There’s not enough anger out there in the music. And there’s not a lot of contemplation in the lyrics, it’s all very sweet ... But that’s the iPhone generation.” 

He said The Who would not hit the road again after their Hits 50! Tour: “We will always do shows for charity, when we can, because it’s of enormous value to people and Pete [Townshend] and I love to play. But we won’t do long, schlepping tours. It’s killing us.” 

Daltrey was speaking as he helped launch Into Sport, a National Lottery-funded partnership including Inclusion London, Interactive and Southwark Disablement Association, that aims to help disabled people into sport in Southwark. Daltrey was inspired to help after a Who road manager was injured.  

He said: “He was in a wheelchair from 1965. So I’ve always been aware of how hard it is for people who are disabled. You talk to people and they say, ‘The world don’t care about us.’ Well that’s not true - the world does care.”

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