Daltrey rationalizes the Who’s re-generation

BY MARK LEPAGE

SOUTHAMSTAR NETWORK

They did not die, but they did get old, so mortality has worked its ironic tricks on the surviving members of the Who.

Life’s compromises have been dealt out and played, and it is an amiable Roger Daltrey who chats from his Sussex home about the Quadrophenia tour, which arrives at the Molson Amphitheatre tomorrow.

Tonight, the Who play Molson Centre in Montreal, where they have not been since 1980, and Daltrey is surprised they were here that recently. “I didn’t think we went back after we were in jail,” he says with the first of the interview’s numerous explosive guffaws.

The Who had a hotel room party in Montreal in 1973. “It was one of those rooms with two beds and a television … but it ended up with nothing,” although it comes out as “nuffing.”

Several retirements later, the Who no longer strike fear in the hearts of night managers and hoteliers. One presumes they are perfect gentlemen,

ROCK SURVIVOR: Roger Daltrey leads the Who to Molson Amphitheatre tomorrow.

befitting their status (wealthy rock stars) and age (your mum or dad … definitely your dad). The announcement of their tour instead tolled the bell of terror, or regret in those fans who would rather leave history alone. The Who: Why? Why another version of My ReGeneration?

In 1997, the band is staging a “theatrical” rendering of Quadrophenia, the 1973 Mod rock-opera, complete with actors and five-piece horn section.

Crucial questions are raised. Can this be a dignified enterprise, and does dignity matter? Are a fan’s memories more valuable than a musician’s raison d’etre? Should the Who be waxed for the museum because its peak stage performances (the bristling, brawny Live At Leeds album, ’70) demolished the mid-’60s standards of ensemble rock playing?

At the very least, Daltrey lays to rest the predictable assumption that band members are touring because they handled their fortunes the way they handled hotels.

“We don’t need the money. The show costs us about $550,000 a week.” With tickets at $65, $49.50 $35.50, it is still assumed they will end in the black.

To Daltrey and, one presumes, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle, the issue is not “should we” or “how dare we” but “how do we?” No small rationalization has empowered the singer who declared his band “boring old geezers” 15 years ago, when they first packed it in.

“I don’t understand this criticism of old bands,” Daltrey says now. “My idol when I was 17 or 18 was Sonny Boy Williamson, and the man was 65 years old.”

Daltrey is 53. Sonny Boy Williamson, needless to say, never wore a Jesus fringed jacket or played arenas, although a detailed study of his hotel comportment is not available. How much of a ruse is this?

“It’s never been our intention to end up as a greatest-hits band. Pete and I feel very strongly that we’ve got no problems playing music together, just that it be something different.”

Surely they won’t only play Quadrophenia?

“No, no, no, we do some of the old songs, but we do them differently.”

On the deafness issue: “We were all a bit worried about our hearing. We were brought up in the days when, whatever the sound the audience heard you had to create on stage. We didn’t even have monitors. Now sound on stage can be kept to a manageable blare.”

If this is making allowances for age, the hiring of drummer Zack Starkey, Ringo’s kid, is accompanied by pure revisionism.

Keith Moon’s first replacement, Kenny Jones, “great drummer that he was,” is now regarded as a “mistake. He never knitted John’s busy bass playing with Pete’s very busy acoustic playing.”