Who Is No Longer the Question

The Who Lead Singer Roger Daltrey Asks Himself Whether He Wants the Fame that Comes with Being A Music and Movie Star in the Rock Opera, Tommy

December 15, 1975, Vol. 4, No. 24
Roger is the lead singer of Britain's The Who, the established purveyors of musical mayhem and the single supergroup in all rockdom that has survived a full decade with its charter members intact. Daltrey has himself become a movie star as well, having ingratiatingly played the "deaf, dumb and blind" title role in Ken Russell's adaptation of The Who's landmark rock opera, Tommy. He also currently stars in Russell's even more outrageously indulgent follow-up, Lisztomania. Unfazed by the criticism that the film was "Lisztless" or that the late Hungarian composer emerges as merely a horny Cockney, Roger facetiously calls the picture "Blazing Piano Stools." Besides, he adds, "Who wants a bleedin' Oscar? Not me."
John Entwistle, a schoolmate who was to become The Who bassist, recalls Daltrey as a "peroxide teddy boy, the sort of person you'd prefer to stay on the other side of the street from." Roger wielded a bike chain attached to a ball with a six-inch nail through it. The duo joined up with guitarist Pete Townshend, a would-be street fighter jealous of Daltrey's swagger, and later to emerge as the creative force behind The Who and composer of Tommy. Pete, says Roger now, "was a very mixed-up guy. You do need a lot of hang-ups and frustrations to do really good writing, and to me he is the best rock writer there has ever been." Finally, a few group names and images later, the three pub musicians picked up prankster Keith Moon on drums, learned some Chicago Blues music, and hit the road as The Who, or The 'oo, as they pronounced it. >By Fred Hauptfuhrer, Jim Jerome>Source: http://www.people.com (By Fred Hauptfuhrer, Jim Jerome)