Roger Daltrey
is opening up about how his legendary hell-raising with The Who provided him
with the greatest surprise gift imaginable: A bigger, loving family.
"When
three daughters arrived on my doorstep [unexpectedly in the '90s, the products
of relationships with women in the '60s], I accepted them and I love them very
much," Daltrey revealed to The Times on Wednesday. "I am very
lucky."
"I
wouldn't have been a good father when I was on the road," the singer added
about his hotel-hopping with bandmates Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and
Keith Moon in the '60s and '70s. "There's no point in wishing that I could
have. I couldn't.
"In the
early days there were lots of parties, booze, and relationships," he
continued about the band's extensive touring, which included a starring role at
Woodstock in August 1969.
"We had
no money, so we were sharing rooms and it was chaos," he said. "When
we got arrested [in 1973 in Montreal, for wrecking a room], I'd been ordered to
go to bed by the doctor, so I didn't do the smashing up. Some of those rooms
did need a bit of redecorating."
Daltrey, 77,
has a total of eight children and now lives a quiet rural life in Sussex,
England with second wife, Heather. Yet he still regularly tours with Townshend
(Moon and Entwistle died in 1978 and 2002, respectively) –— often in aid of the
Teenage Cancer Trust, of which he is a patron with Sarah "Fergie"
Ferguson, and her daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
Despite The
Who making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for playing the loudest
concert of all time in 1976 (hitting an ear-splitting 126 decibels), the
Pinball Wizard singer also has some surprising advice for a new generation of
music lovers: Don't do the same!
"Young
people should stop listening to such loud music. They don't need to," Daltrey
told The Times. "If your ears are ringing, you'll pay. Pete and I both
have to wear hearing aids and it's no fun taking them out; without them, life's
a mumble."
As for the
other trappings of rock 'n' roll success, Daltrey now firmly believes that nobody
over the age of 50 should own a Ferrari and describes playing with a rock band
as "like sitting on a stool and trying to maintain balance after four
drinks."
While he's
lent his voice to some of the most famous rock songs ever recorded, he also
doesn't "actually like" his own vocals.
"I love
voices like Joan Armatrading, Smokey Robinson, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Plant, Paul
Weller," he told The Times. "And Van Morrison — his voice is the same
as it always was."
On the
pressures of touring, recording, and performing, Daltrey once led with his
fists, these days the rock 'n' roll legend prefers to take everything in
stride.
"I roll
with things," he says. "What's the point of worrying? An Austrian
physio I had in the Eighties would say, 'What are you holding on to pain for?
When you let go, it will be alright.' That's how I approach everything now.
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