The Who song that Pete Townshend said Roger Daltrey “nailed”
The darkest point in the career of The Who was in the early 1980s, when it seemed their magical powers had been lost.
Their 1982 album, It’s Hard, proved to be their final studio record featuring original material in 24 years. They later called it quits in 1983 after Pete Townshend came to the realisation that he simply didn’t have it in him to write another song for The Who, despite planning to turn them into a studio-only band.
After close to 20 years of going full steam ahead, dealing with the tragic loss of Keith Moon, The Who needed a break rather than entering the studio in 1982, which could have prevented them from spending a decade in the wilderness.
If the decision were up to Roger Daltrey, he’d have never released the project. It was recorded in a matter of weeks and wasn’t given the thought or consideration that was necessary for it to stand up alongside the band’s best material. In 1994, Daltrey said of the fiasco in an interview: “It’s Hard should never have been released”.
In another interview, he was equally scathing about their 1981 album Face Dances and said that both records “were made by a band who were very unsure about whether or not they wanted to be making a record, and I think that’s a terrible doubt”.
Although It’s Hard isn’t an album that many fans of The Who have on regular rotation, it did have moments on it that acted as a reminder of their magnificence. However, these were only fleeting, and for the most part, The Who sounded like a group that had left their groove behind in the previous decade.
According to Daltrey, ‘Cry If You Want’ was the only song on the album worthy of being released under the banner of The Who. He said in 2018: “At the time, I didn’t like It’s Hard. I think there are some great tracks on it. ‘Cry if You Want’ is a great track. I think it was a little over-produced, a bit cleaned up. But there were some things that were quite interesting.”
On another occasion, he said of the track: “I think the statement, the song that best captures what the Who feel at the moment is a song called ‘Cry If You Want.’ I think it should have been the single… I think that really does state how it feels to be 38 years old and singing in a rock band called The Who!”
All these years later, The Who continue to largely ignore It’s Hard whenever they take to the stage. For a lot of years, even ‘Cry If You Want’ was abandoned; however, it was a stalwart of their farewell tour in North America in 2025, showing the admiration that Daltrey and Townshend have for the song.
The pair famously squabble over the smallest things, and don’t see eye-to-eye on many things, but do share an appreciation for ‘Cry If You Want’. While Townshend is the songwriter behind the song, he puts the success of the creation down to Daltrey, who put his vocals on the line to perfect his take. In his autobiography, Townshend wrote, “He nailed it, almost fainting for lack of breath”.
Although Daltrey’s heart wasn’t in the project, which would have made most other singers drop their level of professionalism, that wasn’t in his DNA. Rather than quit, Daltrey poured everything he had into trying to rescue the record. While it didn’t save the album, it did give The Who a classic song in ‘Cry If You Want’, which has stood the test of time.
