1963 – The Detours play the Oldfield Hotel in Greenford

1964 – The Who play the Glenlyn Ballroom in Forest Hill

1965 – The Who play McIlroy’s Ballroom in Swindon, Wiltshire

1967 – The Who play the Locarno ballroom in Bristol and the third time The Who played here. Despite John’s broken finger (see yesterday’s post about this), the group did appear despite rumours to the contrary.

1969 – The Who play the Fillmore East in New York, New York. Jimi Hendrix drops by to catch the new rock opera.

1969 – BBC1 repeats the Omnibus: All My Loving special featuring footage of The Who’s Spring 1968 North American tour, this time in colour.

1974 – The Who appear as the final act for a day-long concert at Charlton Athletic Football Club. The supporting acts are Lou Reed, Humble Pie, Bad Company, Lindisfarne and Maggie Bell. At least 50,000 people attend. The original plan was for the concert to be filmed by Ken Russell featuring Roger singing “I’m Free” while running around the top of the stadium. Ultimately the concert is only shot by the BBC who broadcast it on a later television special. Four songs from the show are later included on the Maximum R&B video and selections on the View From a Backstage Pass and The Who’s Greatest Hits Live CD’s. One of those songs is a new arrangement of “My Generation” done as a slow blues. You can listen to the show on Youtube here

1974 – Melody Maker has an article on Pete written by Chris Charlesworth in which Chris claims Pete is the member responsible for elevating The Who to superstar status.

 

You can read it on Chris’s website here and part 2 here

 

If anyone has this issue, I’d love to get a bigger scan/photo for our archives

1975 – Roger is interviewed in The New York Times. He says their is no truth to a Who split.

 

Transcript:

The Rock Star Who Plays Franz Liszt

By WILLIAM HALL

LONDON

“Franz Liszt, now, he was such a randy old bloke. He really was a raver, did you know that? He was like a 19th-century Mick Jagger.”

Four floors above fashionable New Bond Street, in the business offices of The Who — possibly England’s most popular and irrepressible rock group — Roger Daltrey sprawled in an armchair, his bronze-buttercup curls flowing to his shoulders, his china-blue eyes wide open, his blue-jeaned legs dangling over the side of the chair. The pop idol, now packing predominantly youthful crowds into theaters showing Ken Russell’s noisily flamboyant film of The Who’s “Tommy,” ponders his surprising new role, that of purveyor of classical music in Russell’s “Lisztomania,” currently shooting here at the Shepperton Studios with a cast that includes Ringo Starr as a pop pope.

“I didn’t know anything about Liszt, I knew his music, that’s all. I’m not a fanatical music lover, but I’ve got a lot of his records. The film’s going to be like Tom Jones riding in ‘Blazing Saddles,’ you see if it ain’t. I call him Franz Lust because women were mad for him. To me, he’s the most interesting of all the composers because he was the original pop star.”

The news that the 30-year-old Daltrey would be playing Liszt struck a number of musical purists with dismay, especially those familiar with Ken Russell’s impudent cinematic portraits of such classical heavies as Tchaikovsky, Delius, Mahler and Richard Strauss. Russell, however, staunchly defends his offbeat casting. “Roger is a natural, brilliant performer,” he said recently. “He acts as he sings, and the results are magical. He also has a curious quality of innocence, which was why he was a perfect Tommy, and why he is the only person to play Liszt.”

Daltrey, on the other hand, seems a bit shaky about his thespic potential. “Look, I feel very guilty that I’m going in at the deep end. I mean, there are so many real actors out of work. I never realized how badly paid the acting world is, either, compared to pop. It’s disgusting!

“Before I made ‘Tommy,’ I said to Russell, ‘You know, I’ve never acted before in my life.’ I was worried sick, honest, I couldn’t believe it was happening And now, I still don’t feel I’ve done anything. I just did what Russell told me to do. He said. ‘Be yourself, and leave the rest to me.’ He hasn’t taught me anything about acting, you know, but he’s taught me a lot about me I’ve really learned what discipline means, disciplining myself.”

To his fans, Daltrey is the wild man of pop. Hypnotic, aggressive, he leaps about the stage in fringed suede outfits, belting out rock songs and climactically rending his guitar into splinters. “An old guitar only costs $500,” he says when questioned about this seemingly gratuitous carnage.

The offstage Daltrey is considerably more subdued, shunning publicity and living a quiet millionaire’s life on his 35-acre country estate in Sussex—a rambling mansion called Holmshurst Manor that was built in 1610 by a local ironmaster. It has 30 rooms, six bedrooms, a pool, stables, trout in the two lakes and a formal English garden. Daltrey shares Holmshurst Manor with his second wife, American-born model Heather Taylor, and their baby daughter.

Life has not always been so serene for Daltrey. Not many years ago, he was a brash Teddy Boy, complete with velvet collar, drain-pipe trousers and winkle-picker shoes who had been expelled from his west London county grammar school for being beastly to the other kids and annoying the headmaster by wearing his own gear when the school demanded a uniform of blazer and flannels.

“I was a real nasty, evil so-and-so,” he recalls now, with a trace of smugness befitting a millionaire who made it all on his own. “I felt so alone at school. What got me was the accents. I sat in class, and everyone was talking posh, and I thought: ‘What the ‘ell am I doing here?’ It just shattered me and I had to rebel. I couldn’t help meself.”

Before Daltrey had wiped the dust of formal education off his Teddy Boy suit, he had formed The Who, with his pals Peter Townshend (the guitarist and acknowledged “brains” behind the group’s rise to notoriety) and bass player John Entwistle. Drummer Keith Moon joined them later.

“I’d always strummed a guitar, though I didn’t do it well,” said Daltrey flicking his fingers to show what he meant. “I still remember how we began. It was after a fight in the school playground. Pete and I were having a go at each other, and we were wrestling around when he shouted, ‘Watch out you don’t break my fingers—I play the guitar!’ I said, ‘So do I.’ And that’s how we got started.

“Okay.” Daltrey continued “So I got kicked out of school, but I used to practice in pubs, so it didn’t impede my progress. Nothing else mattered in those days. The whole world existed for rock and roll. Come to that, it still does.

“When we first chose the name The Who, it sounded hilarious. But next day it sounded right. Funny, most people think of pop singers as super cretins. I say we’re super intelligent. My trouble is that I can’t put on an act for the public. I’m just myself, and I’ve always tried to be. I’m happy with the way things are going—I’m a fanatical optimist. We’re worth a fortune, right? And we make a fortune. But once you get back home it doesn’t mean a damn thing, any of it.”

Away from the gigs, the razzmatazz and The Who’s public assault on the senses, the members of the group have very little in common, according to Daltrey. “We don’t get on all that well with each other, yet we all have to admit that the main thing in our lives is the group. The two films I’ll have done won’t change that. Everything else is secondary. The Who has really become a monster—we sit around talking about it as if it’s something outside trying to get in. A bleeding, four-headed, eight-legged monster—and there isn’t anyone in the world like us.

“Once the music stops we go our own ways. It’s not that we dislike each other. Just that we haven’t got any communication except through music. It’s very weird: I’m a water sign, Pisces. Pete’s a Taurus, John’s Libra. Moon is Leo. We’ve got the lot. Ken Russell?” Daltrey grinned wickedly. “Everyone says he’s got all the elements, but as far as I’m concerned he’s usually water and fire, not too much earth — and quite a bit of wind!

“I don’t go around analyzing myself too much. Actor or pop singer, what’s it matter? I’m so many people, it don’t bother me. But I definitely don’t want to be thought of as a musician, because I’m not one. Look, they even gave me a dummy keyboard for Liszt.”

Rumors constantly circulate about Daltrey, as they do about the majority of rock stars. The most recent one had him dying of an incurable disease. “Yeah, I had the frights on my last U.S. tour. I thought I might have got throat cancer. It’s reasonable. I’m under continual strain. Singing for two hours at a time, and with the sort of notes I reach, it’s impossible not to feel sore afterward.”

When he’s on stage, Daltrey invariably works himself into a frenzy. “The main thing in my mind when I’m out there is drive, drive, drive! But we were never into that coarse sex scene, never. That’s why we’ve kept the fans from 10 years back and yet still have the new 16-year-olds with us. Our fans range from 14 to 45. They’re probably the longest-running fans in the business!”

Doubtless, these fans will be relieved to hear that, despite whispers of a split, The Who are set to stick together throughout the summer, and beyond. An album first, then back on the road. “That’s where we belong” said Daltrey, “on the road. It’s like the best drug in the world.”

Are there other drugs in Daltrey’s world?

“No I’m not into the drug scene. It’s a one-way ticket downhill, ain’t it? Most people believe we all do take drugs, but we don’t. I used to smoke a bit, grass and that. But the last time was seven years ago. Now I just drink — which is probably worse.”

Roger Daltrey—also known as Franz Liszt, Sexual Athlete of the Dummy Keyboard—reflected a moment. “Look, mate,” he said finally, “I own up I ain’t an actor. But I’m not blowing my mind out about it. Why should I let it worry me?”

1996 – Pete is a guest on Later With Jules Holland. He performs “Let My Love Open The Door,” “English Boy,” “Magic Bus” and even an electric guitar lead on “Chopsticks!”

1997 – The Who play Wembley Arena in London

1997 – Pete runs into his future wife Rachel Fuller for the first time since last October. He begins his pursuit.

1999 – Roger Daltrey appears on the ABC-TV (U.S.) show Politically Incorrect broadcast from London.

Does anyone have this recorded??

2019 – The Who play the Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana

2022 – The Who play the  TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts