The 1973 tour Roger Daltrey couldn’t stand being part of: “A little overblown”
As sublime as some of the albums they produced were during their heyday, the past merits of The Who have somewhat been tarnished by the constant bickering between Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend in recent years.
This petulant and argumentative side to the two principal figures of the band that has appeared of late might make it seem like they were simply only going in for one final reunion for the immense paycheque at the end of it, or simply because they wanted to pay service to their fans and though they could get over the fact that they weren’t on the best of terms. On the other hand, it could simply be two crotchety old blokes going head to head with one another in a battle of the egos, you decide.
However, it can’t possibly have all stemmed from nothing, and there must have been an origin to all of their highly publicised disputes, even though from the outside, the prolific nature of the band and their constant ability to exceed expectations might have made the inner dynamics of the group seem much more harmonious.
The feuds between Daltrey and Townshend are definitely not a new thing, as they were at each other’s throats for the entirety of one of their biggest tours together, and despite the immense nature of the spectacle they were putting on, Daltrey claimed to hate every moment of it.
In a 2024 interview with Musoscribe, Daltrey was asked about the disastrous start to the 1973 tour in support of Quadrophenia, where the high-concept nature of the album with its detailed narrative arc proved to be tough to translate to the audience without any form of visual representation. While the band would, of course, end up giving away the rights to director Frank Roddam to make a film adaptation of the storyline in 1979, they couldn’t get it right on stage initially.
During the first shows of the tour, the band found themselves pausing to explain the ongoing narrative between songs, which Daltrey confessed “did in [his] head,” while also comparing the situation to “being on a school bus with a broken clutch.”
Much to Daltrey’s frustration, this carried on for a number of shows, but it was eventually resolved through a number of tweaks, such as having an actor portray the protagonist of Jimmy and having it on a screen behind the band, and with Daltrey re-writing the dialogue, which he couldn’t help but dig at Townshend over.
“Pete’s dialogue is a bit like his books,” he said. “A little overblown.”
When it came to reuniting with Townshend to perform Quadrophenia in full in 2003, Daltrey had to put his foot down about meddling with the production of the show. “I’m not doing Quadrophenia anymore unless we do it as we conceived it: as music,” Daltrey would later argue back at his bandmate. “I’ll make any kind of story you want. I’ll do it in visuals, just on the screen.”
Evidently, the bickering was always a major part of the relationship between the two, and much like how siblings are constantly trying to dictate how the other might do things, this latest spat is simply just them returning to how things used to be, continuing on with a lifetime of insolence towards one another.
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