The moment Roger Daltrey called the worst of his career: “It was an incredibly painful period”
It’s not unusual for a rock band to go through difficult periods, and The Who are a band who have wholly embraced some of the struggles that they’ve faced. Whether it’s personal relationships within the group, criticism that the band has received as a whole, or the way that they perceive their own fanbase, The Who are no strangers to a little thing called conflict.
One of the biggest conflicts The Who had as a musical outfit was what kind of audience they were trying to appeal to. They clearly weren’t a group for the older generation, which they so beautifully pointed out in the song ‘My Generation’; however, as their track ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ took aim at hippies, they also didn’t appear to be a band for the younger generation.
“All those hippies wandering about thinking the world was going to be different from that day,” said Townshend, reflecting on when the band played Woodstock, “As a cynical English arsehole I walked through it all and felt like spitting on the lot of them, and shaking them and trying to make them realize that nothing had changed and nothing was going to change.”
The band also had trouble deciding on what kind of music to make. While they started out writing hit singles, they steadily moved on to working on elongated concept albums, records that didn’t have a single but had layers, characters, and a genuine narrative arc that listeners could become engaged with.
The Who also dealt with plenty of issues internally. While the band are still touring, it’s not like there haven’t been various break-ups and make-ups throughout their career. This has been because of creative differences, personal rivalries or the general stress of being in a rock band. Nobody said that it would be easy, if it were, everyone would do it. Regardless of what the trouble was, though, The Who have always managed to get through it.
However, there was one period where it looked as though The Who might be done for good. It was a time that Roger Daltrey called the lowest in his career, and it dates back to 2003, when Pete Townshend was hit with child porn charges. Townshend was charged as he had used his credit card to enter a website which was advertising child porn.
Townshend said that he was using the website for research for his autobiography, as he believed that he may have been abused as a child. The police informed The Who guitarist that it was not legal “to access these images for research or out of curiosity.” Eventually, Townshend was cleared of all charges, but the police did issue a formal caution about accessing such sites.
Daltrey reflected on how difficult this period was for the band. “When Pete was arrested [in 2003]. Not only did I know it was completely out of character for Pete, I felt for everyone affected by it,” he said, “I know how it affected my family, and I thought about his family and the people that love him. It was an incredibly painful period for all of us.”
