“He is now too old”: Pete Townshend believed Roger Daltrey grew out of ‘Quadrophenia’
No rock star can claim to be the same 20-year-old superstar for the rest of their lives. There comes a point where everyone either needs to bow out or start ageing along with their audience, and even though they can still write hooks, being in one’s 60s and trying to write songs for the teenagers of the world is always a bad idea. Pete Townshend may have never lost the fire to write songs during his lifetime, but Roger Daltrey understood that some of his tunes weren’t suited to his voice any more.
But if there’s one person who has managed to preserve his voice pretty well over the years, it’s Daltrey. It’s inevitable that everyone starts to show signs of age in their voice over time, but even if he manages to sound his age at some points, he can still deliver stirring renditions of tunes like ‘My Generation’ and ‘Baba O’Riley’ to this day. But playing entire albums live is an entirely different story.
After all, Daltrey was the primary voice behind a record like Tommy, and despite having the chops to pull off that performance, it’s not as easy to distance himself from the modern version of it and the role he played in the movie back in the 1970s. No one’s expecting the massive curly-haired animal that dominated the stage at the time, and that’s why Daltrey made it a more baroque affair when he tried to revitalise the rock opera in the modern age with an orchestra.
But whereas Tommy was fairly malleable, much of what made Quadrophenia work had a lot to do with the story. It’s certainly not as complicated as what Townshend had in mind for Lifehouse, but trying to get through every facet of the album takes a lot more to pull off from a singer’s perspective, especially given the demanding performances on tunes like ‘The Real Me’ and ‘Love Reign O’er Me’.
Given the storyline, though, there’s a lot more angst in Quadrophenia than what Tommy had. It’s easy to view the band’s original opera as a tragedy when everyone casts Tommy out and condemns him to be deaf, dumb and blind forever, but since Jimmy always has a slight chip on his shoulder, hearing him cry out in pain on ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ feels like an impassioned teenager rather than a wounded disabled kid.
“I think Roger feels he is now too old to be identified with Jimmy as a young man. But I have always felt we are merely performing Jimmy’s story, telling it for him really.”
Pete Townshend
And according to Townshend, that’s why Daltrey found it a lot harder to reconnect with that side of his past, saying, “I think Roger feels he is now too old to be identified with Jimmy as a young man. But I have always felt we are merely performing Jimmy’s story, telling it for him really. Roger is giving this some very deep thought.” Then again, that’s probably because Daltrey has a better outlet for that kind of emotion now.
After all, ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ already gave the frontman a way to deal with his anger in song, so going back to those times in his later years could be like reopening old wounds. While Daltrey is more than happy to sing anything that Townshend puts in front of him, he also understood that he was a far better singer than an actor, and going back into that role could be borderline dangerous for someone who seemingly conquered their fair share of emotional demons.
Whether or not Daltrey ever decides to take Quadrophenia on the road is anyone’s guess, but that doesn’t dull the impact he made when he came out with the original album. He has already put in the blood, sweat and tears to make the band’s second proper rock opera, and looking at the raw musicianship on display, Quadrophenia certainly stands its ground next to their magnum opus, if not a bit higher.
