The moment Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey were tricked into planting their own memorials
With so many stories of their antics, sometimes The Who feel more like characters in some sitcom rather than a serious and pioneering band. All the tales of their adventures, wild parties and silly run-ins could fill season after season with plotlines. In this episode, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey confront death as they take an innocent tree planting to be a spiritual reckoning.
While the majority of the band’s stories come from back in the 1960s and ‘70s when they were music’s favourite wild cards, this one is surprisingly recent. Despite the ongoing tensions between Townshend and Daltrey as the two remaining band members, public appearances regularly bring the pair back together.
In 2023, that appearance was as Sandringham Palace. The group had come a long way from being the kings of British counterculture back when they broke out. As early originators of the punk sound in the country, the rockers that started the group probably would never have guessed that decades down the line, they’d be guests at the royal family’s estate, playing a special show and planting trees on the monarchy’s ground.
For their rocker fans, it would be a suggestion prompting pure horror; the idea of their beloved rebels being anointed into the establishment. But times have changed; Nick Cave attends coronations, Johnny Rotten says his song ‘God Save The Queen’ is disrespectful, Mick Jagger got a knighthood. The anarchic energy of early rock and roll or punk is long gone, and so The Who were stood there with their shovels, ready to plant some ceremonial trees.
Perhaps it was the spirit of rock and roll’s rebellious past that overcame them as suddenly; the occasion got maudlin. What should’ve been a simple enough gig to play a couple of songs and then dig a hole, suddenly because a reckoning as the band stood there, contemplating their own mortality.
“I said to Rog, ‘You know we’ve been set up here, don’t you?’“ Townshend recalled. “This is the moment when you plant a tree and your soul goes in with it,” he continued, “Then they’ll put up a plaque that reads, ‘Herein lie the souls of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey’.”
At that moment, Townshend had the staggering feeling that perhaps, in some way, he was digging his own grave. Or at least, he was doing the hard labour for a site that would later become a kind of resting place where fans might flock to pay their respects once his days on earth are done. As he planted a Tilia Cordata Winter Orange and Daltrey was digging a hole for a Laurel Oak, the band reckoned with life and death as an easy appearance suddenly got heavy.
However, the joint existential crisis still wasn’t enough to keep the old friends together. That day in Sandringham in 2023 was the last show The Who performed on their brief comeback, and they have no dates scheduled. As their personal relationship continues to be frayed, with the two apparently not being on speaking terms, even facing up to their eventual demise couldn’t help them put their problems to bed.
