The Who song that Roger Daltrey thought never worked
In The Who, Pete Townshend’s songwriting talents were unquestioned. While every band member could craft a catchy tune, Townshend consistently focused on the broader narrative whenever he entered the studio, pioneering the type of intricate rock and roll stories that would shape the modern concept album. However, Townshend also faced detractors, and Roger Daltrey was not hesitant to voice his reservations, particularly when he believed a song like ‘Dogs’ fell short of expectations.
For all of the praise bestowed on Townshend over the years, the band started out as primarily Daltrey’s outfit. After making some noise in the London mod scene, Townshend eventually joined the group at Daltrey’s insistence, thinking that he would be good at creating original material.
Despite the fact that the band initially tried to work with every member sharing writing duties, works like ‘Rael’ and ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ pointed to where they would be going in the next few years. Leaving most of the covers and bluesy tones behind, Townshend created songs that all connected into one story on albums like Tommy and Quadrophenia, all while trying to hang on to his sanity when making them.
No writer gets to that point by accident, though, and ‘Dogs’ was an example of Townshend flexing his songwriting muscles for the first time. Since My Generation featured a handful of covers from American R&B groups, ‘Dogs’ was another attempt at making a fiercer rocker that could go toe-to-toe with the blues rockers of the late 1960s.
When the band were first cutting it, Townshend wasn’t sure it was even in the running for the group to work on. Although the recorded version would turn up on various singles and the compilation album 30 Years of Maximum R&B, Townshend thought that it would have been better suited for Ronnie Laine to play, having already started working with The Faces with Rod Stewart.
From Daltrey’s perspective, the track should have stayed in the vaults or given to Laine, telling Uncut, “He was such a lovely geezer, Ronnie, they were great guys, The Faces, all of them. But I think it’d have been better if Pete had just given the song to Ronnie in the first place. As a Who record, it was all a bit frivolous for me.”
Given when the song was released, it makes sense why Daltrey wouldn’t be too kind about the track. Since the entire piece is meant to be about operating in a bluesy mode, it’s hard to really take it seriously when it’s being sung by the same people who were responsible for making some of the most forward-looking rock music of their time, like ‘I Can See For Miles’.
The Who would only go up from ‘Dogs’, though, eventually getting more outlandish both in the studio and whenever they played live, turning their songs into massive exercises every time they took to the stage. In a sense, ‘Dogs’ was never meant to be the latest new direction for The Who. It was a wave goodbye to their old sound, and the next few years were bound to be a lot more exciting.
