{"id":2775,"date":"2025-06-14T14:59:37","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T14:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/roger-daltrey-s-track-by-track-guide-to-the-who-s-greatest-hits-28335\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T14:59:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T14:59:37","slug":"roger-daltrey-s-track-by-track-guide-to-the-who-s-greatest-hits-28335","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/roger-daltrey-s-track-by-track-guide-to-the-who-s-greatest-hits-28335\/","title":{"rendered":"The Who\u2019s 20 greatest songs\u2026 as chosen by Roger Daltrey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this feature from Uncut’s October 2001 issue [Take 68], Roger Daltrey reviews his side of The Who’s story, providing track-by-track commentary on The Who\u2019s most explosive singles…<\/p>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

A miserable October day in London, 2002. Roger Daltrey is staring out of the window at …<\/p><\/div>\n

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In this feature from Uncut\u2019s October 2001 issue [Take 68], Roger Daltrey reviews his side of The Who\u2019s story, providing track-by-track commentary on The Who\u2019s most explosive singles\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

_______________________<\/strong>
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\nA miserable October day in London, 2002. Roger Daltrey is staring out of the window at the colourless metropolitan sky, looking smart but sombre in a dark pin-stripe suit. Ominously, Uncut\u2019s interview with The Who\u2019s vocal powerhouse comes the afternoon following a memorial service for bassist John Entwistle, who died on June 27 this year; on the eve of a scheduled tour of America which they valiantly honoured (roping in Pino Paladino as an emergency replacement for \u2018the Ox\u2019).<\/p>\n

Twenty-four years after the death of drummer Keith Moon in September 1978, Entwistle\u2019s passing now means that Daltrey and guitarist\/songwriting genius Pete Townshend are the last men standing in England\u2019s other great surviving rock band.<\/p>\n

Lest we forget, back in the \u201960s The Who were the only British combo who proved themselves worthy of ranking alongside The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, turning the hierarchy of UK pop from a dynamic duo into a holy trinity. Beginning as a pop-art explosion of R\u2019n\u2019B feedback and mod frustration, by the end of the decade, along with Jimi Hendrix (who was already indebted to the unorthodox musicianship of early Townshend), on a purely sonic level The Who had permanently transformed the molecular structure of rock\u2019n\u2019roll. Be it patenting the modern \u2018rock opera\u2019 with 1969\u2019s behemoth Tommy, setting the sound levels for the next decade of headbanging metal-heads with 1970\u2019s Live At Leeds or the technological ambition inherent in the synthesized sheen of 1971\u2019s Who\u2019s Next, The Who broke barriers, moulds and eardrums at virtually every turn. The secret of their success?<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo things,\u201d considers Daltrey. \u201cOne, Pete wrote fucking great songs. And two, he had such incredible individual people to play them. I mean, talk about icing on the cake! Pete had a good cake, but he also had the same thickness of icing on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new Who CD, The Ultimate Collection, is partly in memoriam for Entwistle and partly for those who need reminding of The Who\u2019s matchless contribution to the rock acropolis. Though at the height of their powers The Who prided (and possibly over-indulged) themselves on their albums, it was always the 45rpm pop single that provided the greatest thrills, from the brusqueness of 1965\u2019s \u201cI Can\u2019t Explain\u201d through to 1981\u2019s Moon-less curtain call \u201cYou Better, You Bet\u201d. Where their \u201960s counterparts either split (The Beatles), struggled (The Kinks) or, in the case of The Stones, stopped caring about singles, the \u201c\u2019Orrible \u2019Oo\u201d continued to churn out provocatively original A-sides well into the \u201970s, regardless of whatever ambitious (and often abortive) rock opera Townshend may have had up his sleeve at the time.<\/p>\n

As Townshend wrote himself in a 1971 review of their own Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy singles collection for Rolling Stone magazine, The Who\u2019s earliest mandate was a religious belief in the 45 format and little else: \u201cWe, I repeat, believed only in singles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirty years on, Roger Daltrey, too, has plenty to say about the purity of the singles aesthetic in the age of Pop Idol. \u201cI made some rude remarks recently about Simon Cowell in an interview,\u201d he guffaws, \u201cbut I\u2019ve changed my opinion of him because you need to have a bland period so that all these young groups will get pissed off and start coming through. You can see it happening now with a lot of the new groups, The Coral and all that lot: they\u2019re saying, \u2018We\u2019ve had enough of this shit, let\u2019s get out and make some noise!\u2019 So thank you very much, Simon Cowell, you did it, mate! Make no bones about it, shit like Pop Idol and American Idol will lead to the creation of the next punk. The seeds are already out there. It\u2019s great!\u201d<\/p>\n

Young men going out and making noise was exactly how one might describe The Who\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre when they first formed as The Detours in Shepherd\u2019s Bush, west London, in 1962. Youth, in all its arrogance, was a vital ingredient in those early days, an attitude crystallised three years later on \u201cMy Generation\u201d in which they unwittingly provided their future critics with a well-worn taunt in the infamous decree of \u201chope I die before I get old\u201d. For a man now fast approaching 60, Daltrey\u2019s healthy pallor is a terrific advertisement for the merits of four decades of the rock\u2019n\u2019roll lifestyle; a shockingly well-preserved yin to the dilapidated yang of his peers (there\u2019s only four months between them, but he looks a decade or two younger than, say, Keith Richards). All the same, even today, one broaches the \u201cMy Generation\u201d conundrum with Daltrey at one\u2019s peril.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it incredibly tedious when people bring that against us now,\u201d he glares. \u201cFor me, age has nothing to do with it. It\u2019s a state of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of his own mortality, and the question mark that hangs over the future of The Who \u2013 wherever he and Townshend decide to step on from here \u2013 Daltrey is quite confident.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can\u2019t be the same because John Entwistle was a genius at his style, there\u2019ll never be another like him,\u201d he says, unruffled. \u201cBut that\u2019s not to say we can\u2019t go on. As soon as you start playing that music, John is alive again, just the same as Keith\u2019s always been alive whenever we play. That\u2019s the great thing about music, it transcends this life. We never know when we\u2019re gonna pop our clogs, we\u2019re all in the drop-zone at our age, but life goes on and music will certainly go on. The Who\u2019s music will go on long after I\u2019m gone and Pete\u2019s gone, and that\u2019s everything I believe in. Right now, I\u2019m very optimistic about our future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean we have been incredibly lucky,\u201d Daltrey concludes. \u201cI wake up every morning thinking, \u2018Gawd \u2013 what a life!\u2019 When you think about the great bands of all time, there\u2019s only a handful like the Stones or The Who who\u2019ve gone on for as long as we have. And you think \u2013 why us? It\u2019s an extraordinary life we\u2019ve had. Why we should come together and make that noise and create that extraordinary thing? God knows. Life is weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

A case of \u201cI Can\u2019t Explain\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cHa!\u201d laughs Daltrey, rolling forward in his seat, \u201cExactly! I can\u2019t explain!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post The Who\u2019s 20 greatest songs\u2026 as chosen by Roger Daltrey<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In this feature from Uncut’s October 2001 issue [Take 68], Roger Daltrey reviews his side of The Who’s story, providing track-by-track commentary on The Who\u2019s most explosive singles… _______________________ A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,35,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-interviews","category-the-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}