The fistfight between Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey: “He could have killed me”
For any rock and roll band, the studio often gets tense. Since everyone wants to make the best songs they can put together, it usually takes everyone working to their wit’s end to garner the greatest performance onto the final track. Although Pete Townshend may have been the mastermind behind every masterpiece The Who ever made, one of their landmark records led to fists flying in the studio.
Then again, The Who and violence weren’t necessarily out of the ordinary. Unlike artists who wanted to push music forward and play to anyone who would hear them, Townshend unleashed war whenever he went onstage, often in a furious battle with his instrument that culminated in him breaking the guitar at the end of every show.
While Townshend put most of his anger into his music, he also started to think of the album statement as something more than a collection of songs. Wanting to tell a story throughout an album, Tommy would become one of the first widely accepted rock operas, with Townshend framing the story of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who learns to communicate with his family through music.
After failing to craft a follow-up with the album Lifehouse, Townshend would spend the next few years fine-tuning the story of his next rock opera, Quadrophenia. Telling the tale from different perspectives, Townshend would offer up his most ambitious project yet, featuring various orchestral instruments and massive sonic landscapes across its runtime.
While the band could grasp the story of the album a lot better, Roger Daltrey did have some regrets about the way the album was being mixed. As opposed to the traditional way of recording, Daltrey thought using the quadrophonic approach to production never wholly came together.
After complaining about his voice taking a back seat to the rest of the instruments, Daltrey would often have vicious arguments with Townshend about where the band should be going. Although things remained cordial in the studio, the guitarist remembered when Daltrey lost his temper.
Recalling that period, Townshend remembered Daltrey getting into a fight with him in the studio, telling Louder, “Roger punched me once, and I’m sure I asked for it. And he could have killed me, he had a hell of a punch. Luckily I just lost my memory for an hour or two. He was very sweet afterwards. Roger and I have had our spats, but he is a good and loving man. I knew that then and I’m more aware of it now. But we were both under incredible strain”.
This was not the first time that Daltrey was able to confront his violent tendencies, either. On the previous album, Who’s Next, the song ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ sees Daltrey dealing with his anger issues, with Townshend penning the line about needing someone to help him unclench his fist when he loses his cool.
Even though the band would eventually fold in the 1980s, the past few years of Daltrey and Townshend going out on the road were proof of their undying resilience as musicians. Despite their creative differences and personal grievances, The Who still thrives with the group’s voice and the man who has written it all.
