“He looks like a god”: the moment Pete Townshend saw Roger Daltrey become a rockstar
The relationship between Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry is a complex one. Despite helming one of the most influential bands in British history, The Who, the two were, by their own admission, never friends.
“We’re not mates at all,” Daltry put it plainly in 1965. But still, even if there was no friendship, there was pure admiration, especially in this moment when Townshend looked across the stage at his conflicting collaborator and knew he was something special.
“Our relationship is a working one, and that’s about as far as it goes,” Daltry told Forbes even as recent as the 2020s. By now, it’s reported that the two are back to refusing to speak. They did not even come together in the studio to make The Who’s last album; instead, they decided to record separately and even have separate producers. But things were always different on stage, especially in the heyday; Daltry would be the first to admit to that. “When we get on stage, there’s a chemistry that’s created. When we’re playing well, it starts to kick in properly.”
That’s what powered the band. It’s what made them great, let their name be known, and secured their spot not only in infamy due to their renowned on-stage brawls and wild energy that buzzed amidst this fragile connection but also in legend, as that energy undeniably created incredible, electric music.
Under it all, though, there always had to be a foundation of respect. While they didn’t have friendship to fall back on, they had that, and in one moment, on stage at Woodstock during the early hours of the morning, Townshend realised how strong that was.
“My big moment with Roger was at Woodstock,” Townshend said. As one of the most revered and remembered performances from that iconic weekend of music, The Who’s performance feels like the epitome of what people think of when they think of this rock and roll heyday, as the band had all the swagger and the energy the era was about.
Talking to Uncut in 2015, he could still remember the image of his bandmate in 1969 vividly: “He’d grown his hair long. His wife had suggested this. She’d also suggested that to accentuate his rather wooden movements, he wear a shawl. So he had a hippie shawl with bits hanging off it. He had this chamois leather coat made with strands on it.”
If it sounds like something out of a movie, it’s because it really was. “Mike Wadleigh lit Roger and I with single spotlights,” he recalled of the director of the 1970 documentary capturing the historic event, who was on hand to make it as cinematic as the moment deserved.
But in Townshend’s memory, it was already there. “This was about four in the morning. I’m on my knees, playing, and I look over at Roger, and he looks like a god. He looks beautiful. He looks happy, he looks kind,” the guitarist said in what is surely the most loving, admiring, even enamoured thing he’s ever uttered about a man he’s spent a lifetime falling out with. But, at that moment, he knew that, despite the fights, he was on stage alongside someone special. The Who realised that day that they were being led by a true rockstar. As recounted by Townshend, “That’s when everybody in the band said, ‘Oh, fuck. We’ve actually got a singer, a star. Someone who’s going to carry us.’”
And all of it is captured on tape. In the footage captured of that Woodstock performance, when the band didn’t even take to the stage until 5am, Daltry does come across as a god. His hair blows in the wind. He brandishes his mic stand as if it’s a sword at their hypnotised crowd, and the fringing on his jacket flies behind him like wings – he’s the archetype of a rockstar in his look, his energy and his vocals, too. In glimpses, you can see Townshend’s admiration, too, looking over at the frontman he often hated with total love during that set.
