The Frank Skinner Show - Frank Skinner in Conversation with Roger Daltrey

Episode Date: June 5, 2018

Frank Skinner is joined by music legend Roger Daltrey.

So, welcome to Frank Skinner in conversation with, oh, I really want to sort of fanfare now, but Roger Daltrey is here in the studio. You don't need an introduction, but I am tempted to say that you are one of the seminal voices of rock and roll music in the world. And that's not bad, is it? Well, if you think that, that's okay by me. Come on, it's not just me. It's just, isn't it an idea I've come up with on my own? Well, it's been a good career, yeah. Oh, God. Don't talk as if you think that, that's OK by me. It's not just me. This isn't an idea I've come up with on my own. It's been a good career, yeah. Oh, God. Don't talk as if you're retired.

It's been a good career. The only thing you never know is being a singer. Voices tend to be the first thing to kind of start to give up. Yeah. As you get older, don't they? But that is true. I saw Charles Aznavour, the French singer, recently. And the first thing he said to the audience was,

look, I'm going to be straight with you, my voice isn't what it was. And I thought, wow, that's pretty upfront. But I've listened to your new album, As Long As I Have You, and I'm not giving you any ball now. Your voice just sounds as good as it did in 1968 or whatever. Thank you. What's the secret? I got lucky in two ways.

One, I was singing for a long time with a precancerous kind of condition. Oh, really? That's one of your lucky things. Well, lucky because it was precancerous. Okay. But it made my voice very gravelly for a while and singing was becoming hard work. also uh the second thing was i i got my hearing back by wearing hearing aids

and could actually hear what i was singing okay what did you think it's pretty good isn't it really seriously for the first sort of 30 years of the who's career, very often, I couldn't ever hear myself on stage. The volume was so much. Yeah. So I used to over-sing and all those kind of things. Thanks to hearing myself, maybe for the first time, I could actually use my voice with all the things that it's got in it. And that's what I wanted to do on this record.

Well, when you say the pre-cancerous thing, I don't understand why that was a plus well the vocal cords it's a tiny little piece of the body but it's an incredibly complicated muscle okay and if they don't collide perfectly together yeah to the two sides of it it allows air to escape and that's when people have raspy voices. So anyway I managed to get to this fantastic throat doctor, the guy who did Adele and who hasn't he done, Sam Smith. But I was one of the first ones to go to him and he lasered it off this precancerous thing and all of a sudden my vocal cords could meet And I had the voice I had before I started over-singing in 1964 with The Who. But you really have got that voice.

I mean, the new single, which is How Far, that is The Who voice, I would say. It's as high, as clear, as powerful. Well, yeah, I've got a big pair of lungs. You have. But the other secret is I work all the time. When The Who aren't touring, I've got a big pair of lungs. You have? But the other secret is I work all the time. When the Who aren't touring, I've got my own little band. I've got two bands. I've got one I go out and live in with,

and another little band I go out with that have got fiddles and accordions and all that kind of stuff that I do charity gigs with. And that's fun. Because that's a cheap show to put on, you know. Doing Who songs is a a cheap show to put on, you know. Doing Who songs is a very expensive show to put on because you need lots of equipment and musicians and all that stuff.

So I formed a cheap band for charities. I love that because that new single, it says I'm fed up of living out of a suitcase. I am getting sick of the travelling. Are you really? I love the singing and I love doing the shows, but the travelling drives you nuts, doesn't it? Travelling is...

Yeah, but Roger, it's took you about 55 years to get to this day. Yeah, but it used to be fun. I mean, do you remember when you could walk into airports in sort of half an hour? You'd be through and on the plane. Now it's two and a half hours and there are queues everywhere. You almost have to strip naked before you get on the plane.

It's all becoming a nightmare. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, it has changed a bit. In your days, it was fun. It's like getting a bus. I can remember travelling to America so many times and there was only the band on the plane. Yeah, but that's what happens when you get a private jet, right? No, no, no, no.

This was just ordinary BOAC in those days. OK. BOAC. And quite often we'd have a plane to ourselves. Fabulous. Incredible. Will you tour this album? Is that a plan?

I haven't got any plans to, because I'd have to, again, I'd have to start another band, I'd have to use the musicians from the record, and I'd also have to find another 40 minutes worth of similar material, because this wouldn't mix with Who material. No, but this is your ninth solo album, so you are a genre in your own right.

Yeah, but they're all very different albums, aren't they? I mean, the first album I did, the Daughtry album, that was all early Leo Sayer songs. Yeah. With orchestra. Oh, God, giving it all away, fantastic. That's a great song. Fantastic.

Yeah, I got lucky with that one. So, Tim, it's interesting to see you this close to a microphone without you swinging it round and round your head. I'm glad you haven't done that, because we don't have that much equipment. Do you still do that? I do. Very little of it now. But I can do it if I have to. It's a great form of protection. I bet it is. Has it ever gone wrong? You must have slapped yourself around the head with it. It's only ever gone... If it ever goes wrong, it's usually me that gets hurt. Okay. It whacks into me.

I've never hit any of the band ever with it. I thought that's why Townsend kept chomping. I've only ever hit someone once deliberately with it. That's a good story. Tell us about it. That was a good story. That was a teddy boy. We were playing with Chuck Berry in 1960,

when the Stones were in the park. Was it 69? Oh, yeah, yeah. The same day the Stones were in the park, we were in the Albert Hall. Okay. And we were on with Chuck Berry. We were supposed to be the headliner

and Chuck was supposed to be supporting us. But Chuck Berry, being Chuck Berry, threw a big wobbler and, oh, he wants to be the headliner we didn't care who goes on first we don't care about things like that so anyway we tossed a coin we were doing two shows that day

and Chuck won the toss and he chose to go on the first show so he was the headliner on that show we supported him on the second show he had to go on on the first show. So he was the headliner on that show. We supported him. And on the second show, he had to support us, of course.

Of course, Chuck Berry's audience was very different than the hippies that were supporting us at the time. Right. They were all teds and rockers. Yeah. So, anyway, Chuck did his show and left the stage and then we come on playing Tommy andy and all that stuff that was the early days of tommy and of course all these teds took umbrage to the lack of rock and roll music and stormed the front of the stage and they were throwing they had those giant um copper old

old-fashioned pennies yeah and they clipped the edges with... Oh, to make them sharp. Yeah. Okay. And they were... And I saw someone... I saw this guy throw something. And I didn't think anything of it. But the next thing I know, this guy's got warm stuff coming down over my eye.

And I put my hand up to my face, and it's just nicked my eyebrow. Yeah. Blood is streaming down. And I happened to see him throw it. Yeah. And he was stuck in the middle of this crowd of Teds all shouting and screaming, you know, terrible language.

Yeah. And I just pointed at him and started swinging the bike in an ever-arching loop. You know, it's got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I kept pointing at him. And I just let it go. And it happened to hit him smack on his nose, and he deserved it.

Fantastic. That's brilliant. That's like the old slingshots of yesteryear. It was. I was a good shot with that thing. I could take a cigarette out of someone who rode his mouth from about 20 yards. Well, for his health, it was a better thing in the long run.

It was. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't going to go into this this early, but you did have a reputation in the early days that if you had a disagreement with somebody in the band, you'd hit them. I was 18, 19, 20 years old. Yeah.

It's kind of that period of your life, isn't it? And I used to love a ruck I can't help it I was brought up in Shepherd's Bush it was a rough area and being a little guy I used to get bullied quite a lot so that kind of

sets off your fight or flight thing and I always chose to fight. Yeah, exactly. So if I ever felt it was coming down on me, and, you know, in a band, things can get quite heated at times. Yeah.

I would always attack first, because, as you know, surprise is everything. Yeah. I don't do a lot of fighting myself, but I'm going to take your word for it. Well, as I found out fighting, you know, because I used to get bullied, that surprise was everything. But you knocked out Keith Moon, is the story. Well, I found out because I used to get bullied that surprise was everything. But you knocked out Keith Moon, is the story, eh?

No, I didn't knock Keith out. You didn't knock him out? No. You just winged him? Well, he did attack me with a tambourine turned sideways, which had the bells kind of slashing at me. And I had to do something about that because, you know, he was in a raging temper.

But anyway, I didn't knock him out, but I did hit him. I knocked Pete out once. And that was, again, he was drunk. He'd hit me with a guitar. Holy!

Do you ever just sit around and have chats? And unfortunately for me, I was being held by the roadies because they knew what I was like so instead of jumping on Pete who was the drunk one being aggressive they jumped on me thinking oh god something's going to happen here and they're holding me

and he hits me but you're never at John Edwards let him go I'll kill him so they let me go and unfortunately Pete can't fight. No. He's not a fighter. And he was drunk, and I just hit him.

It was just the perfect timing punch, and he just went, his feet left the stage. It's true. The irony of this whole thing is that there was a film crew watching this and they never shot one foot of it. The whole thing. And it's just terrible. You could feel that on stage.

There was like an energy and a menace on stage. Just when you came on the stage, it felt like, you know, when you're in a pub and the guys come in it felt like that the whole tone of the place changed it was really exhilarating just before you'd started playing even well i've never been in the audience when we're playing but it did used to say you know being in the who was more like being being in a gang than being in a band. And I suppose we were in some ways, because he was bullied at school.

I was bullied at school. I don't think John was. John was very quiet. He never really got much, but he was a big bloke anyway, so I don't think he was. Keith was completely crazy. He was a great bunch of people. He was genius, but he was so out of control.

Well, I remember him coming on stage that night and he came over the speakers. He's like a big spider coming over the speakers. He didn't walk onto the stage normally. It looked very dangerous and probably was. But I always felt, and I had loads of albums and stuff, but I didn't really get The Who till the first time I saw them live.

And when you see them live, you think, oh man, this is why they call themselves the greatest rock and roll band in the world. It was just an experience. Yeah, I've always thought that, you know, we never quite ever got what we are onto record. I think the closest we got was Who's Next. Yeah.

But when you saw us live, there's no doubt that once people saw us, I think that's the reason why we're still going today. And the audiences keep coming. Now it's another new young audience because, you know, young people see us now and the audiences keep coming, now it's another new young audience because they, you know, they young people see us now and they're kind of they realise that this is something different than what's out there

I'll tell you something I was saying on the new album there are songs like the single How Far, when you sound like classy Roger Daltrey. But then there's other songs. There's a Nick Cave cover, Into My Arms,

and if someone had played it to me, honestly, I would not have known it was you, and I've heard you sing a lot. The whole album, really, it's about the voice and what the voice can do, and I wanted an album that touched people, so I found songs that touched me. And that Nick Cave song, Into My Arms, was always one of my favourites.

I've never thought that he sang it to the quality of the song. Nick has got this kind of dark quality to the song. I love it, the way he does it, but I thought, I can do something more with this. My early days, when I was a, the way he does it, but I thought, I can do something more with this. My early days, when I was a sheet metal worker in Acton in a factory, we used to sing a lot of Johnny Cash stuff.

So that part of my voice has always been there. I've just never had a chance to use it. Yeah. And I thought, well, I'm going to do, I'm going to imagine myself, you know, how would Johnny have sung this song?

And, so it is my low register, which you very rarely hear with The Who, because, you know, how would Johnny have sung this song? And, you know, it is my low register, which you very rarely hear with The Who, because, you know, Pete writes the songs and he writes for his key. Yeah. And I've always tried to sing in those keys. I don't quite so much anymore,

but that's what I used to do. There's a great... I remember watching a documentary about Tommy, and I think originally the See Me, me song was pete was going to sing it because they thought his voice was all sensitive and vulnerable and plaintive and yours was too much like a warrior and then he said he was on his way to this into the studio and he heard you singing it and he thought oh my god he's got it. He's absolutely got Tommy. That's the voice. He has to sing it.

And even telling it now, I get a real tingle from it. Everybody gets the impression I'm hard on that. I'm not. I'm a really sensitive bloke. Yeah, well, you've established that so far in the interview. But I'm a bit upset with the way voices are going in music at the moment, young voices. They're wasting their voices.

And I think a lot of it's to do with the in-ear monitors they use. They're starting to sing in their heads. They're not projecting. Oh, OK. I mean, when you heard that gospel choir at the wedding, for instance, they were singing. Yes. They were just, woo, that's a real voice.

Something about having your voice in your head and hearing it so loud, if you're not careful, it can stop you trying to project and the voices go up into the nose and everything comes up a bit squeaky. That's interesting. Have you not heard it in yourself? Have you ever thought about it?

I've never thought about it. Listen to people's voices. But you are a student of the voice, aren't you? You are, though. Because obviously you've given it a lot of thought over the years. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't like the trained voice, for instance. I mean, it's great in theatre because it needs to be. You've got to do it eight times a week,

night after night after night. You kind of have to sing that way. Yeah. But I think training voices sometimes knocks more out than it puts into the voice. I was reading an interview with Pete Townsend, and he said, well, first of all, he said,

I've written six or seven new Who songs, and I played them to Roger, and he didn't like them. That must have been a bit awkward, wasn't it? I can only be honest by what I heard I'm trying to remember what songs they were There was one that I thought had a lot of promise Okay But the other ones, they all sounded a bit Broadway to me

And I can't kind of put my head in that direction, you know But you and him can have, I mean Yeah, I'm always honest with him about, I mean, I have to tell him what I feel. Yeah. Because I've always told him what I feel. I'm one of the few people that haven't brown-nosed. Because writers like Pete, who's so prolific,

I mean, he writes all the time, you know, they can suffer terrible from sycophantitis. I bet. And it destroys them in the end because they there's no there's nothing coming back so everything is wonderful and of course not everything we do ever is wonderful no a lot a lot of it might be we need pointers when it's going wrong and you're his pointer well i hope so i mean i'm you know he can take it or leave it i have to be honest yeah about what i thought of them when I heard them.

But what he went on to say in this interview, he said he found it frustrating that you didn't write more songs for The Who because he thought you were a much better songwriter than maybe you thought you were. I did a thing in New York a month ago with Nile Rodgers, his foundation. I did some Who songs with Nile's band and they play by music. So they had Who Are You and Barbara O'Reilly all written out, you know, in the dots.

Oh, lovely. On music stands and things. And when they started to look at it, what they thought were easy, just three easy chords and they saw the complexity of what goes on within a Who song, they were astonished. But I've always known it's there. So, you know, I can write lyrics, but I'm not a great melody man. But you wrote Always Heading Home on the new album. I wrote the melody of that. I only wrote one line of the lyric.

Oh, OK. Come on, make your mind up, Roger. Well, I mean, that was a melody. That was something. I did that way back in 1992, I think. But that is a great song. Yeah, I love... I don't have a cigarette lighter anymore, but if I had them, I would have reached for it.

It felt like one of those anthems you get at the end of a gig, you know. What I thought about that song is that it's a spiritual song. It's not a religious song, but it's very spiritual. And it travels. I think, you know, what I like as an end of an album, it's kind of the end of a journey and it's travelling.

Yeah, but it feels like the end of a gig. That's why I'm asking if you're going to tour it. I could just see you doing that. I do that on stage now. I did it at the Albert Hall in March for the Teenage Cancer Trust. It sounded great in the Albert Hall. Yeah, I bet it did.

I've often thought it would make a great song for the Remembrance Day at the end of the First World War. Oh, yeah? Other than the religious song. Yeah. You know, because I find religion has suddenly become quite divisive, isn't it? Well, you've got to try.

I mean, that Nick Cave song, I think, begins, I don't believe in an interventionist God, which is one of the great opening lines of any song, I think. Well, I am an atheist. Yeah. I'm a Roman Catholic. But, hey, we can still get on, right? Yeah, I agree.

That's what counts. You're going to tommy with an orchestra is that yeah yeah it's the who band without zack starkey okay i can't afford him this is ringo's uh yeah yes he yeah he's a very expensive drummer but he's a very good drummer so i've got the cheap version but he's very good expensive drummer, but he's a very good drummer. So I've got the cheap version, but he's very good. Do you think The Who will ever produce another rock opera? Or is the rock opera genre just... has that gone now? Life's an opera, isn't it? Yeah, but... Don't you think it all adds up to be an opera?

If you think about The Who, and I don't know if you've ever stood back, they were, like I i say quite a sort of tough guy explosive band and then suddenly they took a turn and it probably began with who's next where they became more experimental more poetic and then you know tommy happened quadrophenia happened i don't know if i can think of a modern band who could do this. Well, Tommy Wood, to me, is the best opera ever written. I mean, I've been to quite a lot of operas recently, and, you know, there's not a lot of lyrics, is there? It's Italian, that's what it is.

It's a lot of repeated lines, and when I listen to Tommy, I think, well, you know, it's more of an opera than any of the others. I love you sitting there thinking, well, it's not Tommy, is it? La Boheme. Yeah, I mean, melodically it's wonderful, you know, and the melodies are wonderful, but, you know, I can only take one line repeated six times so much. Yeah. Now I can understand that.

You're a tough audience. In the 70s, when I was a young man, I, still at school, I always used to get NME every week and sounds every week and all those. I was obsessed and you were all over it. And in those days, you were often called Squire Daltry. I remember.

But that's some journalist being smart. But there used to be pictures of you in tweeds, like, because you had a trout farm and stuff like that. Yeah, I did, but I wasn't that person at all. No. I wore tweeds as a protest because everybody was starting to dress the same. And I thought, I'm wearing... If they're all going to wear leather, I'm going to wear tweed.

Well, it looked great. I remember those pictures of the big cap sitting on the curly hair and you. Yeah, but... Trout glistening in the distance. Well, the trout, that was all because I was interested in farming because I lived in the country. Yeah. We had to move out.

It became very difficult to live in London and have any privacy at all. So we moved out of London. And, of course, if you live in the country, the best thing you can do if you live there is to give someone a job. So then I got into farming, started to employ people. And then I got bored, me and a mate with a bulldozer, a couple of bulldozers. We built these enormous lakes. Yeah. And then decided we've got to put something in them. And all my mates from Shepherd's Bush came down

and they looked at all these lakes and the beautiful fishery that I built. And they said, you can't have all this to yourself. What about us in our council flats? You know, we deserve places like this to come to and get out of the house. This is socialism in action. Yeah.

And they were right. So I opened it to the public to come fishing. And of course, once I did that, all of a sudden I've got to have a supply of fish. Yeah. So I bought a trout farm. I found one that was for sale. Didn't know anything about it.

And then I suddenly found an industry that was in its infancy. There was such bad practice going on, chemicals being used and stuff going on it was terrible and they were producing fish with no eyes no tails they didn't even barely look like a trout and i thought i'm gonna get get involved in this and try and clean it up and i did i you know by the time i got out of it in 2000, I was producing perfect trout, and we got salmon back in the Thames,

all that kind of stuff. I was really proud of that, because that industry could have gone really badly wrong for the rivers. It's brilliant, because for me, you will always be synonymous with the trout industry. Because I have to put the other one in. No, you always... I don't know, I went to a trout... Everybody thinks I'm a mad fisherman. I'm not at all.

I'm not a mad fisherman. I was more interested in the science. I'm taking it that the Who don't smash up stuff anymore on stage. That's kind of gone, hasn't it? The last one went... The last guitar got broken in 2005 when we went to Japan for the first time in our whole career

really? and we played we were way down on the bill because we'd never played there and Pete broke a guitar at the end we were supporting Aerosmith. OK. So you did it for old time's sake, kind of thing?

Yeah, he kind of did it just for the Japanese. Oh, lovely. The sacrificial guitar. You know, there it was. And I've got that guitar, actually. That's the one he gave it to me at the end. Well, because it was broke. Because it was broke.

Yeah, he wants me to glue it back together, which I used to do in the old days. I mean, the thing was that it was broke. Because it was broke, yeah, he wanted me to glue it back together, which I used to do in the old days. I mean, the thing was that it was... Some people think that they kept, like, rubbishy guitars to smash up, but often you'd see him do a gig and then the guitar would go. They weren't rubbishy guitars, it was the real deal. I mean, hundreds of them. Did you have a meeting to say,

you know what, maybe it's about time we stop wrecking the equipment? It became a pain in the arse. Because you used to smash speakers up as well, didn't you? No, I used to use the cymbals on the microphone. Oh, okay. That was my addition. Because I don't think anyone really quite understood

what we were doing. The smashing thing was just the visual. Yeah. But the sound thing was what was, to me, more important. Because when that guitar was being broken, it used to scream. Yeah, the feedback. It was like a sacrificial... Yeah.

You know, it was really like a sacrifice. And it could go on for five minutes. So I used to just try things to do to add to the noise and the whole cacophony of this because it was like an abstract soundscape of the Vietnam War at the time that's what I was trying to create you know Wow and I used to you kind of rub the mic up against key symbols and kind of do that with a symbol on the mic. It's great, it's quite... You can get that chopper sound, you know.

Yeah, but as you say, it's art. That's what it is. But no one ever wrote about the sound. They always wrote about the visual. And he smashed the guitar. Well, it was much more than that, I'm afraid. Yeah, but they wrote about it, right, and that's what counts. But as you say, it's not the sort of thing you could do forever.

One of the great moments in rock and roll music, and I bet you can guess what I'm going to say, it's not the sort of thing you could do forever. One of the great moments in rock and roll music, and I bet you can guess what I'm going to say, it's the scream on Won't Get Fooled Again. What about that? Yeah, I just... Every time I hear that, it goes down my spine. It's just a moment. It's like you say, that thing about smashing stuff up.

It's like the frustration and everything of the modern world comes out in one go. I can't do it, and I'm not asking you to do it. No, I'm not going to do it. No, God forbid. I wouldn't ask you that, Roger. But it's... It was supposed to be primal.

It was supposed to be the primal scream. Was it scripted and planned? No, Pete did a little yell. Yeah! And I thought, Pete did a little yell. Yeah! Yeah. And I thought, this yell could be better. So, yes, it got a bit OTT, really, didn't it?

And what about the stammering on My Generation? Was that, whose idea was that? Is that something that just happened? Well, I used to have a stammer, on my generation was that whose idea was that is that something well i used to have a stammer i still do and i kind of swallow it but i still stammer okay um and it was something that came out when we're trying to read the lyrics i can't read lyrics and sing i have to know the lyrics and sing from the head to the heart oh so you so you have to learn them by heart first. I just... I can't get them off the page and make them mean anything. OK.

And it was when I was first running it through that I started on the first line. Kit said immediately, Kit Lambert, our manager, who was our producer as well, oh, we've got to keep that in. The fade away was inferred on Pete's original demo. Yeah. The long F.

Yes. So it was kind of like a stammer, but then stammered the beginning. And it works perfectly, because it's about a sort of a teenager and all that. It's perfect. Insecurity and all that. It's the perfect opening line for that kind of arrogant song.

It's wonderful. I love for that kind of arrogant song, and it's wonderful. I love the way you love The Who. I heard you talking about this album, and you said to someone, well, you know, it's a bit of a sideline with me, the solo stuff. The Who always comes first. And I thought, he's such a team player, Roger. I love that.

Well, I believe in the team. I'm a great believer that the team is always better than just the solo. The great bands, it's the chemistry between the players that make them great. Like Oasis, for instance. I mean, they're both good on their own. Liam's good on his own. Noel's good on his own. But together, they're much better.

Yeah. And I wish they'd get back together, and I wish Liam was shut up on Twitter. So give it a chance, Liam, because we all love you. The chemistry of those two together is magical. I interviewed Ringo Starr once and we got in the lift to go up to where I was interviewing him. And he said to me,

you're not going to talk about the Beatles, are you? And I thought, this is going to be tricky. And some people are like that. They don't even, you know, they don't want to talk about stuff they did in the 60s or 70s. And I think probably it's because you've carried on that it's not a threat to you, if you know what I mean. It must be different for him.

I don't know how they ever survived what they went through. I mean, that level of fame must have been extraordinary to live through. Can you imagine? Roddy, you were in the home, mate. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was just... They were more... You know, John Lennon was right.

They were more famous than Jesus. You know, it was like worldwide hysteria. But you must have had a fair chunk of that stuff. Well, we had a bit of it, but, you know, we used to frighten people to death, so... Yeah. No-one's going to mob the Who. They get their heads slapped up.

When I thought about you guys, I was watching the Eurovision Song Contest, I'm going to own up, and there was a stage invasion, and this bloke just come and took the microphone of this singer, the UK singer, and took it. And I thought this wouldn't have happened with The Who. I remember it would stop.

No, it did happen once. It happened on stage at the Fillmore East. Right back in 67. When someone ran up and I was singing Pinball Wizard. He snatched the microphone. He was just standing there in jeans and a shirt and an old jacket. He snatched the microphone off me and went, I'd like to do that to try and talk into it.

I snatched it back and kept singing. Pete Chuck Berry duck-walked across the stage with the guitar and promptly kicked him in the balls. And it turned out that the guy was a plain-coloured cop. Oh, wow. And he was trying to make an announcement. The building next door was burning down. Could we please evacuate?

So we were on the run all night, no doubt. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Please tell me no- one perished in the fight no one perished we got out but i mean it was very serious wow what about the acting because you are one of the few rock stars who really made the acting a legitimate career in its own right or did you see that as a sideline as well it was a sideline it was better than painting and decorating yeah when who weren't working um i don't think you needed to do that no but uh no

but the missus wanted the house baby you know uh no but um i can't i'm in list of mania i i it was all happened because of ken russell he got me into to into Tommy and I fell in love with the whole process. And, of course, Tommy was easy for me. It was music, something I knew, and I invented his character. I didn't have to say anything. It was all singing. Yeah. Natural to me.

But then I did, you know, when I did Listermania, I suddenly realised I didn't know how to deliver a line of dialogue. I had no idea. You know, I literally had to move around a film set and hit the spots and all that stuff. Yeah. So I thought, well, I'm going to just take every job that comes through the letterbox and go out there and work.

And that's what I did. I did all kinds of little stupid things and I loved it. I remember when you played McVicar, you were great as John McVicar. Yeah, that was something I wanted to do because it was a reflection of a lot of friends that I grew up with who did actually become bank robbers.

And they all ended up with nothing. And John was very honest about his life that, you know, it's a mug's game. It's a mug's game. And. It's a mugs game. And he turned out to be a good'un because he came out from prison. He did a sociology degree and all that.

He did a sociology degree, became a really good journalist, really good writer, and never been in trouble since. But you did a great job on him in the film. You did Shakespeare. I mean, you know... That was fun yeah that was

that was good fun you've had an acting career that a lot of people would be happy with as actors you know what i mean without yeah i suppose yeah let me ask does it help because i have spoken to singers who say you know there are songs that you feel you have to do on stage and there must be 30 that the hoof feel maybe that they have to do, and they say, you know, you sing, you've sung a song a thousand times, it gets hard. And I wonder if, with your acting experience,

that helps you. You know what actors say, you have to say every line like you've never said it before. I wonder if that helps you to keep those classic, if you have to do My Generation of Barbara O'Reilly. Well, that is true, because I always try and sing the songs, I'm singing it for the first time ever. There's only one song, and you'll be surprised what it is,

that I actually do start to get a little bit bored singing it. And I find it difficult, and I'm, I shouldn't really say all this, because people will never hear it the same again, will they? Go on, tell us. Won't get fooled again. Oh, right. Wow. I don't know why, I don't know why, but I'm just being really honest

and saying that's the only song. All the others I can inhabit and it's really strange. Have you ever wondered why what it might be? Yeah, I'm wondering why now, but it is that song. That's not bad, though, just one. No, and all the others, like Barbara O'Reilly and all that, it's immediately back in the first moment of it.

Yeah. And it's wonderful. That is an anthem worldwide. You can play that in any arena and everyone knows the words. They all sing that chorus. It's only a teenage wasteland. It's a bit like when kennedy got shot i remember the first time i heard that song and and you it's one of those rare ones often with a brilliant album i think you don't really get it till four or five plays in but that one was like an instant hit. He just knew there was something special about that. Well, I mean, just the quality of Pete's...

You know, the backing track that he put to it, it was all tape loops working together. Which, at the time, I hadn't really heard anything like that before. No, no-one had. It didn't... I mean, at the time it came out, sorry, Who's Next didn't get to number one in the charts. It didn't actually... It was extraordinary.

Because it was so new at the time. People hadn't heard those sounds before. All this weird stuff that Who are doing. But in the fullness of time, it's been our most successful album. That and Quadrophenia. Am I right that Who's Next was a sort of a... It's not what it was going to be.

It was the remains of an album that never quite happened or a live show or a movie. It was the remains of what Pete envisioned as a movie. OK. And it was going to be called The Lifehouse. It was Kit Lambert, because Kit Lambert was the son of Constant Lambert, who was the founder of Sadler's Worlds,

the composer and conductor. And so Kit was always saying, you know, rock music can be much, much more than it is. We should be doing rock operas. There should be bigger pieces of music, not just the three-minute single is great, but together, you know, in a group of songs, it can add up to much more.

And he was so right, of course. So Pete was always kind of looking for the next big story to tell. Yeah. And it was always about the human spirit, the human journey. That's what it was all... You know, very psychological stuff. I mean, listen to Quadrophenia, for instance. Cool.

I've got to end up with, we have three things in common, Roger. People wouldn't think we have much in common, but we were both expelled from school. You too?

Yeah, me too. Oh, I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. What for? I was embezzling the school meal service. At two dinners? No, I recycled,

I found out where they threw the old dinner tickets and I sold them to kids a half price and it threw the system

completely as you can imagine you were for smoking I think was that right well I don't I don't no

there was all sorts of things yes I bet it was we better not go into the detail here I did it was yes okay we'll leave it there but it's one of the best things,

better things that happened to me in my life, to be honest. Being expelled. Yes. There you are, kids. Yes. Like a lesson to be learned from that. No, well, you know,

I kind of feel sorry for so many, probably, it's probably something like 60% of the youngsters out there today who'd be driven to go to university and get some stupid degree that there's never going to be any good to them in their lives. And the ones that are being successful are the ones that leave school and go out and get a job and graft.

Not everybody's good at being academic, are they? Not that we should all be stupid. No. But I just think it's completely lost at the moment. I just want to tell you I've got two degrees. Have you? Yeah, sorry mate. Have you really? Well, I'm an honorary doctor. Oh, well there you go. I saw the bag

you brought in. Also, the second thing we've got in common, we've both played Alfred P. Doolittle on stage in My Fair Lady. Have you done that? Yeah. Oh, lovely. And thirdly, we've both done a football song. Oh, lovely. And thirdly, we've both done a football song. Oh, right. I don't know if you knew I'd done one.

I did one for England called Three Lions. Oh, right. Okay, I'm sorry that passed you by. What's your team, though? My team is West Brom. Oh, commiserate. Thank you very much, yes. We do a funeral march for them at the moment.

Yes, that is a bit sad. But you did Highbury Highs, which was a celebration of Arsenal leaving Highbury, which I didn't know about until recently. I watched footage of you singing it at the ground. Yeah, I wanted to do it traditional. Do you remember the old cup finals?

Oh, when the marine band used to come out with the white helmets? Ah, brilliant. And they used to sing with a brass band. I thought, I want to do a song like that about Highbury because, you know, I've been going there for like 25 years and watched my son grow up there and I just wanted something that kind of reflected

on what Highbury as a ground meant to the club. And did you write it? I wrote that, yeah. Was it Highbury Highs over North London skies? Oh, yes. Don't rub it in. It's been great talking to you, Roger. I'm really glad you're still working.

The album, as I say, is called As Long As I Have You. It's out now. I've listened to a lot of, you know, American music. I love Johnny Cash. I love all that stuff. And it's got all that. I was blown away by how good your voice is, and I'm not giving you any BS.

And I'll tell you something else, I love the McCrary sisters, who do backing vocals. Oh, they make me tingle as well. I wouldn't take anyone less. We tried putting session singers on over here, and I said, this ain't the real deal. No, they... So the producer, Dave Eringer, went over to Nashville

and got the McCrary sisters out. And they're sibling voices. They do something, don't they? Well, as an atheist, that's the closest you'll ever hear to an heavenly choir. Look, it's been brilliant talking to you. Best of luck with the Who tour. The album, I'm sure, will do brilliantly.

Keep working, because it's great. Cheers, mate.