WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 964 - Roger Daltrey

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

Roger Daltrey believes you can't retire from rock and roll, rock and roll retires you. But for now, as long as Pete can still play and Roger can "sing the s--- out of the songs," The Who will go on. On the release of his memoir, Roger talks with Marc about building his first guitar by hand, meeting Pete Townsend and John Entwistle as schoolboys, finding Keith Moon in a Beach Boys cover band, getting kicked out of The Who over NOT doing drugs, coming back in time for the band to achieve its greatest success, and maintaining his close relationship with Pete after all these years. This episode is sponsored by Screen Dive from 20th Century Fox, The New Yorker, and ZipRecruiter. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talked to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters

what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf broadcasting from midtown manhattan in a hotel room with a living room i'm not saying it's nice but it's a a mid-sized suite but i'm here for a few like two weeks so you know it's nice to have a little room sitting in a couch on a couch that isn't mine that is the wrong fabric for a hotel room i don't like the fabric when it just, you know what, couches in hotel rooms generally not great. But I think many of you know my feelings on that, that generally if you're sitting on furniture in the hotel room, you should be wearing clothing, a robe, or perhaps put a towel down.

And I'm not a germaphobe. It's just that I have to assume that if these couches could speak oh i'm not sure i'd want to know and how often do they clean the couch i don't know i don't know this is an observation i think that was once put in my head years ago by todd berry joke to be honest with you about bedspreads and yes do not send me the pictures of what, you know, those special infrared cameras of hotel room couches and sheets and bed. I don't want them. I'm here for a while. I'm dug in, not afraid of germs.

I'm on a not need to know basis with what the bedding and the couches have been through. I'm just taking proper precautions. You know what? Maybe I won't. Maybe I won't. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll live on the edge and sit on a hotel room couch with my bare butt before I leave. I might do that. Today on the show from a band called The Who, Roger Daltrey is here. I had a nice chat with Mr. Daltrey back at the garage. I didn't know what to expect. I don't know a lot

of times from these older rock dudes, but when you really think about Daltrey, whether you're a Who guy or you're not a Who guy, you know a few Who tunes, but you also have to realize that Roger Daltrey was a king among rock stars. He was an archetypal rock singer. is one of the the guys who created modern rock singing he you think about a rock singer you think about daltry you think about plant that ear right you know what i'm saying it's a fucking who man and i talked to roger daltry about his book it's called thanks a lot mr kibblewhite my story and uh so just so you don't get let down i didn't i didn't even think to fucking ask him who mr kibblewhite is but that's my style that's who i am i didn't even think to do it it's the title of the goddamn book i'm not beating myself up i didn't

think to do it so another thing i want to address if I could, while I sit here and after telling you that the other day that I was sort of isolated here by my own doing and trying to justify it as being okay, because I'm working. I want to thank the people who emailed me. I do read them, especially if i'm isolating in a hotel room in midtown manhattan i'll read the emails thank you for the suggestions thank you for inviting me places thank you for telling me what to do what i should do i appreciate that it was all done with a a good-hearted concern and uh desire to uh to get my head in the right place.

And who doesn't need that? I hope I do that for all of you sometimes. So the news has been rough. The news has been bad. But I feel okay today. I'm processing grief, panic, pain, horror, skepticism, despair, momentary elation. There's some amazing stuff, though. I read something today about that monster that shot out that synagogue. And when he was taken to the hospital, a couple of the people that took care of him at the hospital were Jewish.

And they did their jobs. And they did them willfully. And I read that story and I just started crying. And there is decency and spiritually grounded people and people that are bigger than the garbage culture that seems to be pervasive because of our pig of a president. I think the horrible thing is the pleasure that so many of them, and I will isolate them and they know who they are, the pleasure they get out of seeing other

people in pain, of causing other people pain, of just reveling in the vulnerable's lack of defense against their psychological, emotional, and physical brutality. They revel in it, and they know who they are, and somehow or another they frame that or rationalize that, the ones that have the intellect to do so,

as winning. That's winning. We're fighting a fight fight and we're winning. And the people that don't have that rationalization, a lot of them just get pleasure out of seeing and causing other people pain and exploiting and diminishing and abusing other people's vulnerability that's how they get off that's what winning is to them and that's horrifying and i think about that and it's just uh i don't know i don't know how you i don't know how you change that because you enter into that interaction and that's what they're setting out to do.

It's not about principle. It's about using other people's pain and strength and causing it and defending it. And if you push too hard, they'll want to cause it in you somehow. And they will laugh and laugh. I don't know. I don't know what to do.

I hope the voting works. Give us ease up something. Just a little bit of hope. But I went to the theater the other night, me and Brendan McDonald, my producer and partner in this event of WTF, went to see the Waverly Gallery. That's Kenny Lonergan's play that's up now.

It's an older play of his. And I thought it was great. Elaine May was in it it and she was amazing. Elaine May was sort of pivotal in the early days of comedy with Mike Nichols, Nichols and May. And then she went on to write movies. She wrote The Heartbreak Kid, one of the great sort of tragic comedies of the 70s. What a great movie. I guess the the point whatever i'm trying to say here in coming off of what i just said is that you go to the theater and you you you are in the vulnerability of of the human heart and it's uh and it's a controlled environment and it's an uplifting environment and it and it really checks in it checks you in with your humanity uh in in that way in a in an art way and maybe

tweak your lens a little bit out in the world as you go into the horrendous like theater of cruelty theater of the absurd every second of the day but i'll tell you you know in new york though i may have felt isolated for a minute and you know i got, I got out in the world. I did some stuff. I always think, you know, people in New York, they may be brash, but they're decent people. A lot of them. And I always, once I lock in, and thanks to you, you know, I get out of my head and get out in the world. It's all right.

It's okay. Okay? I just had a guy walk up to me on the street he was thrilled he had his headset on he just was like oh my god i never do this i live in new york i know you're not supposed to do this but i listen to you every day i listen to you every day he's all excited he says can i you know can i i don't do this but can i do a selfie selfie and i'm like yeah man yeah yeah what's your name he goes alex i'm like sure man he's like oh this is great and then he picks up his phone to turn on the camera and he's got his headset in and he's listening to rogan's podcast and i said i said i caught you he goes no no i

you know joe's a good guy i know you guys got your thing and i'm like no you know we don't we don't do we i don't think i think we're okay now the things that people know about us yeah i think no rogan and i are fine he's like all right good good and then we take the selfie and he's like i was so he says you know i've been a year sober and you know i you help me i listen to your show and i'm like that's great man thanks for saying that i appreciate it and that happens a lot to me in new york as people walk by me with their headset on and they see me and they go all bug-eyed and then they point to their earbuds and they go i'm listening to you right now that happens here that happens here so roger daltrey uh i didn't know what to

expect and uh i'm i'm always surprised as i said with these these guys who've been around a long time doing rock and roll but he is not only lucid but very chatty and uh he's got a great story because there's so much i learned from uh people who grew up in england you know just after the war it's so outside of our experience to live in a country that was bombed entirely during a world war. But that did happen. And Daltrey is one of those kids that grew up in that. And that's a whole world, a whole childhood that is completely unique to me

and I always like talking about. And I've talked about it with several British guests of a certain age. But he does have a new book out, Mr. Daltrey. Thanks a lot, Mr. Kibblewhite, My Story. That's now available wherever you get books. And this is me talking to the frontman, singer of The Who, Roger Daltrey. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats.

But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to

let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. You want to wear the headphones? No, I don't like listening to myself. You don't, really?

No, I talk bullshit. But when you're singing, you have to listen. I hate the sound of my voice. Really? Yeah, I never... The talking voice? The talking voice is special. You know, I've grown to, I guess, appreciate it.

I don't know if I like it, but it helps me when I hear it. I don't like to listen to it again. That's the thing. Yeah, again, no. While it's happening, I'm okay with it. The sound in my head is totally different than when I hear it played back to me. And it's always been that way? Yeah, always been.

Always been. But I know when I'm doing it right, you know, when I'm singing. When you hit it? When I hit it play back to me. And it's always been that way? Yeah, always been. Always been. But I know when I'm doing it right, you know, when I'm singing. When you hit it? When I hit it. It's more to do with the vibe. Yeah. And if it's moving me.

Right. The sound of it, you know. Well, I mean, the whole process, I mean, I play music, but I'm an amateur. And last night, I actually played a show with, you know, Slash.

Oh, yeah. Isn't he great? He's great. Isn't he? What a great with Slash. Oh, yeah. Isn't he great? He's great. Isn't he? What a great guy he is. He's a sweet guy. He's a terrific guy. I tell you, man, as an amateur stepping into that world,

I mean, you guys got to hit that fucking, you got to hit that place every night. That's your job. I don't know how the hell you do it. My fingers hurt and I'm exhausted. I know. I don't know how the hell you do it. My fingers hurt.

I'm exhausted. I know. We just did a tour of South America last year with Guns N' Roses. Oh, you did? Yeah, yeah. You and Pete? Yeah, Pete and I. Yeah.

Slash Cable said, we're going to have to wrap our game. But he never has to wrap his game. He's fantastic. So you guys played South America, what, three years ago? No, not last year. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dwight, those arenas see 50,000 people. Oh, no.

Rock in Rio, God knows how many were there. But we'd never been to South America, ever, in our whole career. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Was it fun? It was fun I mean I it was I loved the shows always loved performing yeah I didn't like going everywhere in a bomb-proof Land Rover and all that oh because and the police escorts everywhere yeah you know and yeah scary not

comfortable not scary just like who needs this You know, Brazilians are wonderful people. But the divide between rich and poor is so huge. Yeah. But to me, the favelas look much more interesting than the middle, you know, the poor areas. Yeah, yeah, sure. Look like real communities. Right. Whereas everything else in places like Sao Paulo and Rio, every house, middle class house, had barbed wire fences around it.

I thought, who wants to live like this? Right, like bunkers. It's insane. Yeah, yeah. Give a bit of your money away and get, so you haven't got this divide. I don't get it. Yeah, it seems to be an ongoing problem everywhere the divide there's no middle and there's uh you know the haves and the have-nots well it's not too bad

in england but i mean i don't think you're ever going to sort it no i don't know nature i mean you split it up overnight equally yeah by the end of the week it will be just as unequal as it is now yeah somebody somebody right yeah somebody will figure out an angle to get the money back Equally, by the end of the week, it will be just as unequal as it is now. That's our nature. Right. Yeah, somebody will figure out an angle to get the money back. It's all equal except for that one guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did he end up with that?

But you grew up, you didn't grow up, I mean, the class system, you guys at least in England talk about it. We don't even mention the word class in America. There's not even a word. Well, you don't have class. Excuse me? Well, you don't really, do you me but there well you don't really do you no you do you definitely do but it's not talked about like that there's no lower class they're just people that haven't made it yet yeah you have money or you don't have money right or you're black yeah um and that's that's why the blues spoke to us

working class in england because we would we were the equivalent as the black community in America were in the 40s, 50s, 60s, where they were before civil rights. Right. But you weren't as isolated, were you? I mean. No, but you're very hard to climb out of it. You know, impossible to climb out of it. And so we kind of understood that. Just being hopelessly poor and stuck.

When you say poor, I kind of like to think about what we mean by poor because we didn't have much money. I was born in a v1 raid where we came out of the shirt my mom came out of the shelters and both ends of our street had disappeared you were born in a shelter but no i was born in a hospital i started to come in on a railway station platform right you know in the tube but anyway um so but that was the world i grew up in and people say oh you we you you were poor and i say no we weren't we were incredibly wealthy

because we had the war brought together incredible community yeah and family right enormous families we had yeah and everybody had to share housing because housing was so short because so much had been destroyed. Do you remember bombs dropping? No. No, I don't remember. But I remember the bomb sites. Right. Because how long did that rubble stay around?

I've talked to a couple of people. It stayed around until the 60s. Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just mounds of rock. I mean, my book cover, I fought and fought for that cover because it's so indicative of what our landscape was like when I was born. Yeah. And the first sort of 15 years of my life in London.

Smoking rubble. Smoking rubble. Yeah. That was slowly being cleaned up and new houses built. And your father? And it's also indicative of Gustav Metzger, who was the guy who really pioneered, you know, auto-destructive art. So I kind of put the thing together.

I thought, this really does sum up what the Who were all about, where we came from, and what we're all about. So Gustavav what's his last name he was the pioneer of that pete got into an art school of of auto destructive art oh things that blew up on their own you're supposed to you know you have to destroy yeah to create and that was that was what it was at the core of uh pete's creativity well that that's what they were taught in art school. He's always referred to that's where the kind of destructive element of the Who came from.

No kidding. Yeah, yeah. So your dad was in the war. My dad was in the army, yeah. He was a gunner. Yeah. Or a bombardier, as they called it in those days. He got wounded on D on d-day yeah he could straight off the

landing craft on the beaches and blown up by a mortar bomb uh and sent back wounded and he had the shrapnel in in him till he died you know they didn't get ever get it all out of everybody and he wasn't even around when you were born initially right no no No, no. You didn't meet him until you were how old? Well, I can't remember how old. Yeah. I think it's kind of late 1945, so it would have been 18 months. Uh-huh.

But there again, there was a lot of my family coming home from the war, but I'm sure it was my dad. I distinctly remember, as I've written it in the book, you know, the webbing on the boots the boots yeah when you're when you're 18 months old and just starting to kind of toddle yeah and stop crawling every every you know boots are enormous yeah and and that soldiers in those days used to have

webbing on on their leggings yeah and i remember the tin helmet and the rucksack, and I remember the family being around the room where we used to live in Shepherd's Bush. Yeah. With all the chairs around the edges, the whole family there, everybody cheering as he came in. And this stranger picking me up. Yeah.

That ended up sleeping with my mum which you can imagine you know when you you know all of a sudden there's you know you've been with your mother through quite a lot because we were evacuated to scotland to stramra we we we shared a house with two other families, a four-bedroom house. Yeah. And the family that owned the house were already sharing it with another family, and they took us in and gave us a room. My mother, her sister, and three kids. That's unbelievable. In one room.

So that's the kind of first 18 months of my life. And then all of a sudden this bloke turns up and sleeps with mom. Who are you? Who are you? Yeah, this is my place in the bed. But that's that community you're talking about, that everybody really showed up for each other. That's what I'm saying. So when you say poor, no, we were incredibly wealthy.

Sure. Did we have any money? Yeah. We had enough to live. We had no luxuries. Food was rationed. Yeah. 1945 was the worst year of the whole year.

When the war ended, the food ration in England was cut to the worst it had ever been because we had to share what meager rations we had. Which, incidentally, to give you an idea of what it was, one pound and a quarter of meat would be for a family of four for a week. That's crazy. Oh, yeah. So everybody was sort of thin. Very. Sticks.

Lean. Extremely. No such such thing as obesity that's for sure and then of course when the war finished what little food we had in britain we had to share with the german people who were even more devastated and worse they were worse off but there wasn't a feeling of tension or anger or resentment or oh just a bit are you kidding you couldn't mention a german name in my house probably until the kind of 70s 80s oh and and the japanese oh don't even go near the japanese i mean and quite understandably and i'm sure the japanese had the same thing about the Americans and the Germans had the same. You sort of talk in the book about how once you realized that they were equally as devastated and that, you know, they were just people that there was some sort of understanding at least.

Oh, yeah. And you meet the Germans, you know, face to face. And these people that have been kind of, we've been told were horrors and everything else. And when you read the history, it's kind of horrific. Yeah. You suddenly realize, why were we ever fighting? How did we get manipulated to be doing that? Yeah.

That's what happens. But human nature tends to keep repeating itself that's for sure so like your dad when he came back now did uh because i in the book you talk about a bit about how he lost his brother right in the war my dad lost his brother in in burma yeah he's young he's younger brother alf um and i think he was on the River Kwai on that. So who knows how he died? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah.

That was horrendous. Yeah. But then when you read the history of it, the Japanese was tough on their own. They were conscripted at the age of 12. Right. To die for the emperor. Right. And they were brutalized from that age. of 12 right to die for the emperor right and they were brutalized from that age so yes it was brutal and that's what happens when you train people to be brutal yeah and you get you've got the feeling that your father just never quite recovered mentally

i don't think uh many people really really did no that generation now they've got when i talk to all my peers of my age i say well how do you really get on with your parents and they all talk about this kind of sense of distance oh yeah and that was you know you can understand it i suppose i mean for instance my mother till the day she died if there was ever a thunderstorm, we would be thrown under the table. She'd be screaming like a banshee. No kidding. Because she was back in the bombing. Yeah, I can't imagine it.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it never went away. And I only hear about it from guys of your generation, British guys. I talk to Eric Idle, Roger Waters, I mean, guys who were born into it. They all went through it. Yeah.

And I can't even fathom it. I don't think people really realize just how leveled London was and England. It was just like bombed to shit. Yeah. Well, we held out. We held out for all those years on our own. Yeah. Churchill was, these are going to hold out.

Take the hit. Yeah, you know, when the Brits get their back up, they can be a bloody nightmare. So when did you start, like, you know, finding interest? You have siblings, right? I have, yeah. Yeah?

How many are you? I've got two sisters, yeah. Yeah. And when did you start sort of realizing that music was the thing? That wasn't until... There was always music in those days,

and the great thing about that period is that if you wanted anything, you had to make it yourself. You had to do it yourself. Right. And then, of course, to get through the war, people used to sing a lot. Oh, yeah.

You know, when the air raid started, people used to start singing, and the louder the bombing got, the more they raid started, people used to start singing. And the louder the bombing got, the more they used to sing. What were they singing? Oh, all kinds of, you know. Folk songs and stuff? No, all kind of couple of songs, you know. Roll Out the Barrel, you know.

Any of those kind of, you know. Get your mind off it. Yeah. Get it loud. Hitler could never understand it. The more he bombed us, the more we sang. That was your big weapon. Yeah, that was the weapon.

But you can understand, I suppose, you know, the drowning out the bombing. And so everywhere you went when I was young, people would be singing. The postman would sing. The milkman would sing. The people on building sites would sing. Yeah. I used to hear it all the time. I mean, you probably did in your, when you were growing up,

more than you do today. I guess. You never hear anyone singing today on the street. No, they've got their headphones on. If they're singing, they don't know that anyone's listening to them. Now they're dead on the street. Yeah.

It's a little bit. Between the phones and the headphones, it's a little scary. A little scary? Are you kidding me? It's terrifying. Life's not down. It's looking yeah it's true it's i've noticed that oh it's the biggest addiction i mean it is the psychological ramifications of this lot are going to be horrendous to do yeah if we make it through we'll see this might be the last lot no i'm on'm on the way out, mate. Don't worry. I know. You made it under the wire.

But so everyone's singing. Well, that's pleasant. But when did you, like, what kind of? So anyway, then we got our first TV, which was a tiny little 12-inch screen. Did you have musicians in your family or no? No. My mother's brother played drums in a little traditional jazz band. Oh, yeah.

You know, and again, playing kind of trad jazz, like New Orleans type jazz. Yeah. And he loved Hank Williams. So I was attuned to music because on the radio all day, they would have, when I first got my first job in a laundry when I was 12 to get some money to buy the bits to make my first guitar, there was music on the radio all day. They used to have things like workers' playtime

where everybody in the factory would sing along to the radio. Oh, my God. It really was a lot of singing. Oh, no, it was unbelievable. But then we got our first TV, which was a 12-inch black-and-white set. You know what I mean? When you see a 12-inch set today,

it's about as, well, it's half the... It's a phone. It's a phone now. Exactly. It's a phone. Exactly. That's what it was. But this thing was magical when one day i

saw this guy and he was making a noise and singing and he had this look and it was elvis presley and i thought wow that was interesting elvis really knocked you guys out yeah he really knocked us out so we all rushed for the we all thought wow we want to look like that uh no way could we get any grease or any brew cream to our hair back so we all rushed to the bathroom and got the soap yeah just wicked it up we did the same job yeah and we have very clean hair yeah so and of course all thought we look like elvis yeah but equally that just got us interested in, this is a new kind of music. This has got your foot tapping.

So this is like 57, 58? Yeah, probably 56, 57. And then, anyway, very soon after that, this other guy comes on the TV, who's not like Elvis at all, because Elvis was cool. He had his collar turned up and he had that kind of,

what would you call that jacket he had on? Sharkskin jacket. Oh, that suit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. Those baggy trousers with the tight bottoms. Yeah, yeah.

With his leg waggling. But then this other guy came on the TV and he's wearing a DJ, a dinner jacket, a white shirt, crisp white shirt, and a dickie bow tie, you know, dressed up, you know, for a proper function. Yeah. Who is that? It was a guy called Lonnie Donegan. And he's playing an acoustic guitar, just like Elvis, but this guy's come really seriously playing the thing Lonnie can and he's singing these kind of songs which were early

American folk songs things like midnight special yeah bring a little war Sylvie yeah you know ham and eggs the all kind of that's a chain gang song like lead-belly stuff and yeah it was the way he sang it. And it was something in the way Lonnie sang, unlike Elvis, that was primal. And I thought, that's what I want to do. And I can do that. I already knew I could sing because I'd been in the church choir around about seven years old. Yeah.

Not that I wanted to sing that that kind of stuff right but lonnie inspired me because it he threw his head back and he just let himself go and it was a kind of freedom belted out yeah yeah and and that got me that primal quality that's interesting so it wasn't it wasn't the sort of kind of revolutionary vibe of rock and roll. It was really the deeper, sort of seemingly more honest. Oh, yeah. I mean, rock and roll then was Bill Haley. That was it, Elvis.

Little Richard and Chuck Berry were in the background. But we hadn't heard them in Britain. But it was the folk. You've got to remember, our music was very much controlled by the BBC in those days. But you had to wait until someone brought the records over from America. Yeah, we had to wait for that. And unfortunately for us, we had a lot of GIs in the country. Yeah, that's right.

And again, we had a lot of black GIs who brought us the blues over and all that stuff. So when you first started out, the thing that moved you was folk music We had a lot of black GIs who brought us the blues over and all that stuff. So when you first started out, the thing that moved you was folk music, and that's what you started to play? Or what were you playing? We played skiffle. The thing about what Lonnie was playing, we could all have a go at it. What is skiffle exactly?

It's those early songs done in in um but it improvised you know um for a bass you had a t-chest which is a wooden box yeah of thin plywood about uh a cube about two foot two foot right and the string and like a broomstick yeah broomstick a string and a broomstick and you put your foot on it and you tighten up the string to get a high note and let it go for a low note played well that can sound every bit as good as a proper bass and did you say you were building a guitar i had to build a guitar i couldn't afford to buy one someone from my father's uh place place of work yeah lent me one to copy yeah a spanish guitar i've kind of looked at it and thought oh yeah i've got to do that got to do that you built a guitar yeah and uh got some plywood cut it out and

glued it all together in the way i'd seen that this thing was made uh-huh trimmed it all up with a pen knife around the edges were could have a bit rough where I joined the sides uh-huh but then got some sandpaper and got it all looking quite good some button polish for a finish and it sounded okay it sounded I don't know what it could not probably, but to me, it sounded like what I wanted was a guitar. I didn't know anything about intonation. I didn't know anything about the... I copied this guitar that worked well.

I didn't understand about, you know, the way you have to adjust the bridge and all that. I could tune the thing in the same way as this other guitar could be tuned. Yeah. The action of it would have made a better cheese cutter than ever a guitar would have ever been. Yeah. But I could learn the three chords you needed

to play most of the songs of the time. The one, the four, and the five. Yeah, which was e a and b seven yeah and if you could play those three chords you could do or most of the skiffle songs so immediately then you start a band other people someone gets a t-chest bass and they start playing the bass yeah and then someone else goes and gets it gets a washboard or with a hubcap for a cymbal. And you... And you did it. Yeah, you just make this noise.

People started singing. You sing the harmonies. And there were good skiffle bands. There were bad skiffle bands. But there were skiffle bands on every street. So it was a wonderful, wonderful time. Yeah, it's sort of amazing that the part of the craft or the appeal of the music is that because whatever your economic standings were, you would go out and you'd find or create the instrument and you'd just get into it.

Well, when you're growing up in a society that's been leveled, you've got no choice but to build. Yeah, and there's plenty of junk around to build things out of, I would imagine. Well, the junk was pretty destroyed. Oh, nothing. I think that's highly imaginative. No hubcaps, no. Well, the hubcaps, yeah, I mean. Auto parts.

There's always going to be a hubcap. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, hubcaps and ball bearings. Yeah. So how long, were you working as well when you were in the band no no this was my first guitar

was around about the age of 12 between 11 and 12 you were working at the laundry no I worked at the laundry to get the money

to buy the parts for it and that guitar lasted about 6 weeks and then because the one thing I never short run not being

being any kind of carpenter whatsoever, never ever done anything like this before in my life, I had no idea how to join the neck of the guitar to the body of the guitar. Right. And it folded up. In six weeks, it just went ding, you know, completely useless.

Yeah. But I got lucky that my uncle was a proper skilled craftsman, carpenter, and he watched me struggle in making this thing and let me get on with it. Yeah. But he was so impressed that I'd actually built something that worked and heard what I was doing with it. He said, I'll help you do the next one.

So I made it to the next one with the help from my uncle, and he showed me how to join the neck to the body. Yeah. We didn't know anything about truss rods through the neck to keep the neck straight. Right. Still didn't quite understand intonation. Yeah.

But the second guitar was probably 500% better than the first one, and it lasted for probably about 18 months to wow yeah um i reckon i reckon that guitar lasted me it certainly lasted me two hours um into my 15th year maybe two years that guitar and you were what primarily playing on the street or where were you playing oh youth clubs yeah youth clubs we occasionally you know got invited to there were competitions always the best skiffle band in in hammersmith we won a competition once who was in the band with you how many people there was a there was myself there was our who became our first drummer, Harry Wilson, on drums. My mate Reggie Chaplin on the

T-Chest bass. Ian Moody was on the washboard because he looked great. It's hard to look great with a washboard. Yeah, no, but we didn't care what he played because he looked cool. Yeah, right. Ian was one of those guys, you know, had a coolness about him, you know, so we've got to have him in the band I tell you man if you can look cool with a washboard you really got something but anyway um so we used to play we occasionally got kind of asked to would you come and play at our wedding yeah and then they give us a drink at the end of the night and they'll give us a few bob so that was good I can't it's so it's so that whole sound and that whole setup it it sounds so primitive, but it was popular. It was popular. And you've got to remember in those days, like I said,

getting back to the fact that music was everywhere, every pub you went past, there'd be someone on a piano. Yeah. And sure enough, usually most, especially at the weekends, from the Friday night to the Sunday night, lunchtime, you know, Friday evening to every Saturday, lunchtime, Saturday night, Sunday, lunchtime, Sunday night. They'd be singing and the piano going

out of most pubs in the area in those days. It was important. All those old-fashioned Cockney songs. It's important to the mental health of the culture. Well, the booze was. and the music i would hope that of course the music was it's something there's something wonderful happens when you sing yeah when groups sing together i mean it's you know we know now but when a choir sings together their their heartbeats go down to the same rhythm but when i watch watch, like if I... It's metaphysical, this stuff. No, I think so.

When I go watch a musical, like I don't go see a lot of them, but even if it's happy, I'm crying. Because it's so... The power of so many people singing is really emotional. It's overwhelming to me. That's what I... That's what we Brits don't

quite understand. Hopefully you will get it. What? Because you've got soccer taking on quite big in this country, which is great. Yeah. It is the most beautiful. You love it, yeah.

Yeah, and it knocks your football to a high hat. Is it? But what you haven't got yet, but hopefully you will get, you haven't got the anthems and the singing. Because English crowds sing. And when you sit in a crowd watching a soccer game in England and the crowd are singing, it's just wonderful. That noise of 50,000 people, not all singing the same song even, but it's just the noise of voices doing that it's

extraordinary i bet well have you had that happen when the who's been on stage of course we have i mean we we played mexico city uh about four years ago our first time again we'd ever been been to mexico um and 19 000 people showed up we thought we're never gonna get anybody we've never been to mexico really you thought that uh yeah but but anyway this 19 000 people yeah the place was sold out yeah they sang almost louder than we were playing yeah they knew every word it was extraordinary i bet i bet i can't even imagine it yeah so when does rock and roll start filtering in because like and also like where you were like the thing i find fascinating about talking to you guys of of uh of this time in in london and in england is that like there was you know once

rock and roll started to happen and the blues started to happen you all kind of were around right you saw each other a bit yeah that, that's much later on, though. Yeah, so... There's a big kind of growth pattern there. Then we heard... Then we started to hear, like, the Everly Brothers. After Skiffle. Yeah, and then Buddy Holly.

Oh, yeah. And people then... Oh, those other people. Roy Orbison. Yeah. Dale Shannon. Oh, yeah. And people then, you know, those other people, Roy Orbison. Yeah. Dale Shannon. Oh, yeah. So we became that kind of pop group,

and anything that was in the charts, we were expected to play. So you mean you got real... And I went from playing an acoustic Spanish guitar, had to make my first electric guitar. You made it? Yeah, I made it. Another one.

You were just making guitars. Well, yeah, that's how... You couldn't afford to buy one. You could buy a house for the same price as a Fender guitar. You made it? Yeah, I made it. Another one. You were just making guitars. Well, yeah, that's how. You couldn't afford to buy one. You could buy a house for the same price as a Fender guitar. Right. Insane prices. So you made an electric guitar? Yeah, I copied a Fender Stratocaster. Uh-huh. Because the

first Fender Stratocaster came over in, I think, late 1962. Uh-huh. And it was almost like something had landed from outer space. We looked at this thing that Hank Marvin of the Shadows was playing, and it was making a sound that was so unusual. And the same thing as Buddy Holly had one too.

I mean, what is this guitar you know anyway i've got to have one got to have one got to have one but like i say you could have bought a house right cheaper than the guitar yeah so i went to um i went i thought i'll make one because i was now working in the metalwork factory and we had benches and saws and all kinds of stuff that i could do a lot more than i ever could on at home and um so i went up to london and looked at one in in a shop window in charro cross road and got some rough measurements through the window of this guitar just ogling it i mean drooling yeah at the mouth and and built this guitar out of mahogany yeah and it looked just like a fender and i had it sprayed bright pink just like a pink fender what do you use for pickups uh i had a friend who worked for an electric guitar company called burns uh-huh guitar guitars who were just down the road from

where i worked in acton and you know yeah you know it was not one piece at a time out the door you know the johnny cash john was a bit like that so the pickups that you meant we managed and i got the proper machine heads and i made this thing and it looked just like a Fender guitar, only there was a little kind of snag that my Fender guitar was just about quite a lot bigger than a Fender guitar. The window had been magnified, all the measurements, and it weighed a ton. A mahogany.

Yes. But it worked, and it weighed a ton. Mahogany, yeah. Yes. But it worked, and it sounded okay, and so we could then go on to playing some real proper rock music. Pop songs, rock music. And we had one amp. Everything went through one amp. No microphones. You just sang loud.

Yeah. That's where we got our voices from. And you're working, though. You're doing shows. Well, we're doing youth clubs and yeah but then as that progressed and i met john who made his first bass guitar john entwistle john entwistle he made his first bass too he made his first bass guitar i love this i never heard this whole element of of that sort of post-war england experience made his Keith Richard made his first guitar. Who did? It's quite common. Keith did?

Keith Richard. I talked to him. I didn't know he made it, yeah. Yeah, he made his first guitar. Quite a few of us did. We were hungry to do what we dreamed of doing for the rest of our lives. And the idea of getting a new one

was just out of the question. Couldn't afford it. Oh, forget it. Yeah. Unless you robbed a bank. Yeah, yeah. So where'd you meet him? I met him on the street and I'd seen him at school because he was both him and people at most my same grammar school yeah they

were a year younger than me but you couldn't hide either of them in a crowd of thousand people yeah because they just had something about them pete obviously from his from his nose when he was young because he kind of and we were so skinny yeah and john had this strange walk but he had this kind of john john wayne walk oh yeah um so he's he stood out too uh and i met him on the street, and had a chat with him, had a look at his homemade guitar, which was much more rudimentary than my ones,

and I said, well, you know, are you in a band? He said, yeah, I'm in a trad band, we play trad jazz,

I play trumpet most of the time, and I'm just learning this thing, the bass, yeah, I said, we're looking for a bass player. Do you want to be in my band? And he said, I don't know. So then I said to him, you know,

well, you know, are you getting paid, your band? And he said, no. I said, we are. And that was that, huh? But we weren't. You were. And that was that. And I said, come along to rehearsal.

And he came along to rehearsal. Yeah. And he was quite obviously he was a talented guy and you're playing like are you playing

Buddy Holly we're playing Buddy Holly Everly Brothers anything that's in the charts anything and you're singing yeah

I'm singing some of it we had a singer who wanted to be Cliff Richard oh yeah yeah everybody wanted to be Cliff the. Oh, yeah. Yeah, everybody wanted to be Cliff. The English Elvis, you know.

Yeah. Pathetic. Yeah. But you were primarily... But not that Cliff's a bad singer, because he's a good singer. Sure. But no way was he ever going to be Elvis. Right.

But you were mostly focused on playing at the time. Yeah, mostly focused on playing. But, yeah, and we had this lead would do um he would do most of the singing i'd do some of it so you pull ant whistle in and then it comes in and and the guy who was the rhythm player at that time i used to play lead guitar yeah it was on bass and the rhythm player was the guy who owned the amp well he wasn't very good. And after about six weeks, John said, look, you know, we're not going to get anywhere with Reg on the rhythm.

But I know a really good rhythm player. Do you mind if we give him a try? So I said, no, let's give him a try. And along comes Pete. Oh, wow. And to his credit, Reg was very gracious and bowed out but still lent us the amp for a while oh wow that's good and immediately pete came in it was quite obvious from his ability on that guitar did he have a real guitar or did he make he had no he had

he had the neck i don't know how this happened. What? He had the neck of a guitar with a really crappy body. Yeah. So I immediately made him a new body for a neck that was really quite a good guitar that he kept for quite a while. But immediately it was very obvious that Pete's talent was extraordinary because he was playing chord shapes that we'd never seen the like of. Yeah.

And his rhythm playing, because his part in the jazz band that John was in was as a banjo player, a five-string banjo player. So all those things were in Pete. Early on. So very early on it was it yeah obviously this guy was something special was he playing an open tuning or is he playing standard tuning you know standard tune in those days but he just had a feel for it he had a feel for it so we went that we went on like that and we got we got some bigger equipment yeah we didn't get very good equipment but we made it look big yeah because it was all about image in those days and you're still playing covers

and we're playing covers anything that people requested we got we managed to get a job um in an american air force base yeah uh officers Club in Bayswater in London every Sunday afternoon. Yeah. And, of course, the GIs would always be requesting all music we'd never even heard of. Yeah. So we were then expected the next week to pay it. To figure it out.

Yeah. Like what? We might lose the job. Yeah. Johnny Cash. Oh, you name it. Chuck Berry. So you had to you name it chuck berry so you had to go find it yeah we had to go find it and learn it yeah and then we do our versions of it and i just appreciate that you appreciate that you tried for them that's nice and um of course within a very short space of

time now we progressed immensely we were were then doing Roy Orbison. I used to sing the Roy Orbison. I used to sing the Del Shannon. I had an incredible range. I used to sing the Johnny Cash. Yeah. Colin couldn't do that stuff. Yeah.

That's when I started to become a singer, a proper singer. Well, those are good ones to learn from, huh? Not bad, eh? Yeah. Well, those are good ones to learn from, huh? Not bad, eh? Yeah. So when did you start, like, because, I mean, weren't you guys focused initially on more R&B stuff?

No, no, no. The R&B stuff didn't come until 1960, very early 63. Uh-huh. The thing that was the big impact and i still remember it the first time we all heard love me do by the beatles oh boy that was the key key in the ignition yeah of that creative period to write to start to start doing britain In Britain, yeah. What was that, 62? That was, Love Me Do was late 62 when it hit 63. And then right on the, on the tail of that,

Pete met a friend called Tom Wright at art school who had all this Bob Dylan. Oh, the guy with the records. Yeah, the guy with the records and he had a lot of Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker,

Alan Wolfe, Lightning Hopkins, all that stuff. And that's when we started to listen to it. We didn't play much of it. The kind of places we were playing, people wanted to dance and they wanted to have what was in the top 20. That's what we were doing. Pete immediately wanted to start playing this bluesy stuff. Yeah.

At the same time as that, we saw a guy called Johnny Kidd. Yeah. It was a guy called Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. Yeah. And Johnny Kidd had a three-piece band. Yeah. No rhythm guitar. Just lead guitar, bass, drums, and a singer.

And we thought, oh, that's interesting. Trio. Yeah, trio. Make more money each. We started to do a lot of Johnny Kid covers, and they were kind of like halfway between the blues and pop. And because you take the rhythm guitar away, blues and pop and because you take the rhythm guitar away it was the perfect thing for a guitarist like of pete's what was to become he's a bit you know he's he's him in full flow right

was the perfect vehicle because he could really kind of do that rhythm thing he could do the rhythm yeah and then he could go off and pick some kind of solo out of it and expand on it. And so then we started to do Johnny Kid covers, and we were like a Johnny Kid mimic band. But it used to go down great, and I could sing the shit out of that stuff. And then slowly but surely, we start introducing Howlin' Wolf and all these other things. And you're living in London? We were. At the time, where were you living and you're living in london we were at the time where were you living all living in london yeah so like at that time like were you seeing the stones around

were you seeing any of them around the stones had their first hit in 60 late 63 yeah with chuck berry song come on come on yeah yeah and they were playing just down the road from us they used to play the same clubs yeah um you know, on quite a few occasions, we supported them as their support action. Uh-huh. And, of course, we saw them. I was quite, you know, I used to be quite good friends with Brian Jones.

Yeah. Was he a good guy? He was a really nice guy, Brian, yeah. Yeah. I got on great with Brian. What about Terry Reid? Do you know Terry? No, I didn't. He was Scottish, wasn't he? Oh, was he on great with Brian. What about Terry Reid? Do you know Terry? No, I didn't.

He was Scottish, wasn't he? Oh, was he? Yeah, yeah, but what a great singer. Yeah, right? I mean, you can still see, he's still got the chops. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, God, what a great singer. Well, he's the one who taught me about this,

that in London at the time, there were the blues guys, there were the pop guys, but there was also this kind of white r&b trip going on that there were real soul singers in britain at the time i didn't know about that that's right there was stevie winwood came from that period there was a guy guy called chris farlow guy called georgie fame zoot money there's always yeah there was some really good stuff going on and of course what what what what happens uh by them doing that is that that you know artists like sunny boy williamson and jimmy reed and john lee hooker howling wolf they all used to come over to england and they couldn't believe it because they were treated

like kings yeah yeah you know and they come from the south you know right well you know what we know what they were treated like down there yeah they couldn't believe they just loved did you go see him well they used to come up and jam with us really yeah yeah you know sonny williamson did quite a few shows with us at the marquee no kidding can i do a number with you? As if we were going to say no. That must have been amazing. Absolutely amazing. So what started the sort of the shift into like writing your own work, writing your own stuff? Well, that was kind of becoming obvious when we got into 1964. Yeah.

And we got a recording contract and we had a new manager, a guy called Peter Meaden. Yeah. Who recognised the fact that, you know, there were too many Stones lookalike bands of which we were one.

Yeah. And he said, it's all about image because the Beatles have done their image. Stones have done their image the Stones have done their image but there's this new thing coming

going on yeah which I was very aware of because my sister younger sister Carol went out with what I consider to be

one of the first mods I ever saw yeah and he came from a place in London called Lewisham uh huh and he had a scooter and he had they used to he used to wear these kind of herringbone tweed.

Yeah. Very, very tailored, but very wide at the bottom, kind of bell-button trousers. Yeah. PVC jackets, unlike anybody on the street. Uh-huh. And that was the first mod I ever became aware of. And Pete Meaden convinced us that we had the chance

if we did things a little bit differently, especially our look, we could become the band for this. For the mods. When did you pick up Keith Moon? Did I miss that? Yeah, you did miss, but it doesn't matter. He kind of flew in one night.

Where'd you find that guy? Well, he just turned up at the front of the stage hearing that we were looking for a drummer. We'd sacked our drummer and we were looking for someone. Yeah. And he played in a band that was doing Beach Boys songs. Yeah. I can't imagine it.

I know. I mean, you know, this is kind of Wembley in London. Yeah. In 1963, late 63. Yeah. Beach Boys, it's so juxtaposition. Yeah. You know, dingy, grey, wet.

And there they are doing sunny California. But anyway, Moon just loved beach boy music did he but yeah and and he turned up in front of the stage and just said i can you know here you're looking for a drummer because you can i have a try because i can play better than the guy there yeah immediately though cocky little sod yeah and he he got on this guy's drum kit the guy kindly let him use it

yeah and we played a version of Bo Diddley's Road Runner yeah and which kind of started and it was great

and it was really good this kid could obviously play yeah but then halfway through this was when Pete was starting to get into the early kind of feedback-y type solos.

Yeah. And really stretching out. And when Pete went into this in Roadrunner, Moon kind of doubled up the beat, and it became, it was just, it was really like starting up a jet engine. Yeah. All of a sudden, what would you call it,

our algorithm that existed between the four of us was found and it was, we came together in a completely different way. On that one tune? Yeah, immediately. And so, you know, at the end of of the song he'd broken the bass pedal immediately destructive yeah we should have known that but it should have been a warning to us what would you have done though but anyway so you know you come along to rehearsals he said he was never asked to join the band

i think asking him to come along to rehearsals was pretty said he was never asked to join the band. I think asking him to come along to rehearsals was pretty much asking him to join the band. Sure, yeah, yeah. But he just brought this whole other element and him and Pete fed off of each other and I guess John too. I mean, all of you. Yeah.

And when you think back on that time, do you miss Keith? Do I miss him? Of course I do. You know, he's the Pope of Catholicolic yeah of course i'm missing you know he was the funniest man i've ever met in my life but he was also he could also be a nightmare yeah no really oh so everything about keith was everything about his personality every side of it was was enormous yeah he could be the the most loving the most hateful the most spiteful the most caring the funniest the saddest

oh yeah all of it he was a real box of chocolates yeah so so after you guys like gel like that you realize the possibilities and I guess like I guess Pete was like, well, this is the window. This is where I can we can really I can work with all you guys and we can all work together and take some chances. Huh? Well, yeah. Yeah. And then we needed to get an original song to do. We went we went to this guy's house who had a huge blues collection.

Yeah. We tried to find a song that we thought would make a potential single. Yeah. And we found, I think it was a John Lee Hooker song, Got Love If You Want It. Yeah. Got love if you want it baby.

Yeah, it's great. And Pete Meaden. Wait, Slim Harper. Oh, Slim Harper. Yes. Oh, that's right. Yeah. God, I've got better memory than me then. It's great. And Pete Meaden. Wait, Slim Harpo. Oh, was it Slim Harpo? Yeah.

Oh, that's right, yeah. God, I've got better memory than me then. It's going. The dementia's on its way. Comes to all who wait. Yeah. Slim Harpo, that's right. Slim Harpo, that's right, yeah.

And Pete Meaden said, Oh, we can't do those lyrics. This has got to be a mud song. So he basically plagiarized it. He just took the melody and rewrote this song, I'm the Face, which was a mud term, you know, be a face, you're a snappy dresser.

Yeah, yeah. It's a style thing. Yeah. And so that became our first single as a group called The High Numbers, which he convinced we, incidentally, as the pop band, we were The Who. Yeah. We were The Detours. That was the first one?

Yeah, it was the first name. Then we were The Who. Yeah. Then Pete Meaden convinced us to become The High Numbers. The High Numbers. to be this mod band yeah um after the who you had the who before the high numbers yeah yeah so we said all right we became the high numbers and sure enough what it did it started to attract this mod audience uh-huh and this i'm a face record plus the fact by this time pete is into the full

feedback right um starting to get destructive banging the speakers um not quite the destruction yet but you know really getting some sounds that were very very unusual yeah the sounds that jimmy hendrix copied off of him that you know he became kind of more famous than pete pete was first pete was first so what happened that did you were you at that show when hendrix showed up to what'd you mean in london the first time you went to london yeah well hendrix was signed throughout we signed we were supposed to have 40 of track records yeah uh not that we ever got anything but i mean I mean, I have a letter from Chris Stamp. For the label?

Yeah, which was the label. Yeah. Which Jimmy was signed to. In England. So, technically, we should have had 10% of Jimmy Hicks' record contract. But we never saw a bloody penny. Anyway. But I heard that when he came, like, who was I talking to?

It might have been Terry Reid about that, the first performance that Chaz, who was the guy from the Animal? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jack Chandler. He did the first one at Blaze's Club, and everyone was there. Right. It was just, like, stunning. He'd go to that place anyways and he was at the back at the bar and that Hendrix was on stage and Brian Jones came through the audience

to the bar and he walked up to Terry Reed and he said it's terrible up there the flooding and Terry Reed's like what are you talking about it's like the water on the floor and Terry Reed said what are you talking about it's like all the guitar players are crying they're all crying that's brian's great great try since you're here yeah i know every i mean it was stunning i was glad i wasn't a guitar player that night he was stunning he was stunning like clapton was there and page was there they were all there everybody was there black bet was there pete was there everyone was there what was pete's reaction what was your reaction well i was just i was just amazed that this guy was you know he was there, everyone was there. What was Pete's reaction? What was your reaction? Well, I was just amazed that this guy, you know, he was so primal.

He was such a great showman. Yeah. And the band was so good. He had Mitch Mitchell on the drums and Noel Redding on the bass. And they don't get enough credit either because they were again, how they managed to find that chemistry. Because those guys

Jimmy could be incredibly unpredictable when he's playing. He could be playing one thing one minute and he'd switch on the blink of an eyebrow. Yeah. But those guys would stay with him every bit of the way. That's telepathy. Yeah. But you guys have that too, right?

We do it too. But those two guys kind of never got any credit at all. way. That's telepathy. But you guys have that too, right? We do it too, but those two guys kind of never got any credit at all, but they were incredible. Mitch Mitchell's drumming was phenomenal. And Noel Redding's bass playing, you listen to him, he sticks with Jimmy

every note of the way. And Mitch, it seems like Keith is similar in terms of his momentum and how he played. Mitch came up from the same area of us in London. We knew all those guys growing up. Ronnie Wood, all those guys. I've known Ronnie Wood since he was 15 years old.

You did? Yeah. Was he always the same? Yeah, he's always the same. He does love a party. Yeah. So you knew the faces and all those guys yeah yeah so but i imagine that when hedrick's came that was a big kick in the ass to everybody on some level did

it have an impact where you're like we gotta of course it had an impact it had an impact on everybody but equally you could no way you were going to get near to what he was doing. Sure. But Pete got quite angry because he had... The feedback thing. The feedback thing and the guitar on the... All that stuff into the speakers. Pete was doing that three years before. You can imagine it must have been a bit heart-wrenching for Pete. Jimmy had obviously seen it somewhere.

Or Chaz had told him about it. Right, right. if you do this you'll do it better than him and Jimmy could make it something much kind of much more flamboyant well Pete's pretty flamboyant yeah but it was kind of

it was there was something more sensual about it when Jimmy did it we were more just destructive. Yeah. And Pete's got that windmill. That's his, right? It's hardly sensual, is it?

No. I mean, the windmill's a bit like, fuck you. Maybe you were more about fuck you as opposed to like, someone fuck us. You were fuck you. How about the Kinks? Were they, they were like around? Well, they were around. And that, so then we get into 1964.

Yeah. And we're now supporting people like the Stones. Yeah. We supported the Beatles. You did? Yep. Where? We supported the Beatles at the Blackpool Opera House in August.

I think it was August 1964. You get along with them? And the Kinks. Yeah. Yeah, they were just a bunch of Liverpool guys to us. Yeah. And the Kinks were on the same show. Yeah.

We did quite a few shows with the Kinks. They were great. They were a great band. Good showman, Ray Davis. Yeah. And, of of course they had uh uh you really got me and all day and all of the night right kind of singles and that's when pete wrote can't explain which was a basically a almost a kinks copy but with lyrics work that were

kind of from a different space right right yeah a little more uh uh existential a little more yeah you know like questioning yeah yeah yeah you had to think about a bit more wasn't quite wasn't quite so in your face right but it probably fit in with the with the sentiment again it it fitted in with the mod thing because the mod thing now was starting to get into kind of early drug scene right amphetamine yeah which was speed yeah you know i've got a feeling inside can't explain my head's about to pop off yeah yeah so anyway so that so that it worked for that and then we had and then we had an american producer cheryl talmay who produced the kinks do the record so it So it kind of, although it, it did, it was a hit

and it was our first hit and I'm very grateful for it. It always felt that it was never quite the who as I liked it. Yeah. He brought in a load of backing singers, you know, that kind of,

they were called the Ivy League. Yeah. And put those backing vocals on it Jimmy Page played the lead guitar on it because in those days you had to record live and he didn't want Pete to do his kind of

original, far more original than anything Jimmy Page did on it but you went along with it well we had to you know in those days anything to get a record made and have a chance at getting a record and jimmy at that time was just a studio guy it was just a studio session musician yeah yeah and so very young yeah so that so that puts you on the map though right can't explain but it put us in the map put us on the map we got our first top of

the pops and then we you know we got on our first TV shows. And then, of course, along came Any Way, Any How, Any Where, which, again, had much more of what the Who were all about. Right. But then we had to kind of have some kind of link to the first record with the backing vocals, which we did ourselves. But we had, you know,

Go Anywhere You Want, Where Are You? Yeah. So I had that kind of repeat thing. But when you listen to the outro of that, the record company sent the first pressings of that record back because they thought it was a bad pressing. They thought there's a fault on this record. Why?

Because of the feedback. They didn't understand it. They didn't get it at all. That was the real sound of the Who in those days, which we'd never had on Can't Explain. Yeah. Because we'd had Jimmy Pages tidied up. Yeah, yeah.

Solo. Yeah. So that song, Any Time, tidied up yeah solo yeah so that's your so that song anytime that one got you into your own sound yeah

and then that led into My Generation yeah and then we have Substitute Generation oh yeah and that was all easy stuff when did The Seeker

come out I can't remember oh that was 68 I love that song yeah it was 68 Seeker's a great song it's a great song man it was 68. I love that song. Yeah, it was 68. Seeker's a great song. It's a great song, man. It was 68.

That guitar and that song, and you belting it up. Yeah, good sentiment. That's when Pete got into kind of Eastern religion and found Mayor Barber and all that stuff, which later on inspired Tommy. So that was a really good period. In between my generation and that period, that was probably the darkest period for me in the Who.

For the sellout and quick one? No, no, no, no, no. I'm a Boy, the Happy Jack period. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Pictures of Lily. Yeah, yeah, that was a tough time? It was a tough time for me as a singer because I'd been thrown out of the band

after my generation. Well, that came to a head because of drugs, right? Because of drugs. Because we went on our first European tour and I managed to get hold of a huge pile of amphetamine. The other guys? Or you did? The other guys.

I couldn't do them. I tried it when we because we used to sometimes play two shows a night yeah you know one we'd finish at 11 11 p.m yeah and then we start another one at two in the morning right yeah and then we finish at five in the morning yeah so to stay awake i tried them but i couldn't sing. Tired you up your throat? Yeah, dried you up. And I just thought, there's two ways this can go. I can either do this and stay awake and be a shit singer, or I'll just have to do my best and be tired and be a good singer. So I couldn't do them.

But the other's good. You can take as many as you like if you're playing the drums or playing the guitar. You can change your rhythm a little bit. That was the problem. And when we did the first tour of Europe, they got a huge pile of amphetamine. And it slowly, progressively through the tour got worse and worse and worse. And the music got faster and faster, louder and louder.

Was that mostly on Keith? No, the whole band. Yeah. The whole band. And it was cacophony. Yeah. It got so fast on the last show we did in Denmark that I could hardly get the words to the songs in.

So while they were smashing the gear up, I decided I was going to do something about it. I came off the stage, I found their stash, and I flushed it all down the toilet. That's not great for people who like drugs. No. So it's three against one. And the one mostly was Keith,

because I took it out of his suitcase and flushed them. And immediately he came off the stage, he went to his suitcase and said, you know, where's my stash? I said, it's gone down the toilet. he he flew at me with a tambourine attacked me with a tambourine which doesn't sound like very much yeah nice soft yeah pigskin instrument and it's going to sound exciting the only thing is he was slashing at me with the bells oh yeah right which is a whole different thing because that he could have they got an edge to him he could have yeah he could have shredded me so needless to say didn't get very far yeah i was a good fight a good street fighter in those days

and um and and uh put him on the floor and and the band threw me out for fighting was that the first fight in the band oh no we'd always we'd had lots of fisticuffs before but this was a you know no i, I mean. Who was usually fighting? The bells of the tambourine took it to another level. Oh, okay. And I decided to give him a good pasting. Yeah.

But in the previous way, who was usually hitting each other? It was usually Pete and I hitting each other. Sometimes we'd hit Pete. Very rarely Keith. But, you know, it would just be a punch and a thump. About what? Just verbal. You know how you are.

We were four alpha males with testosterone kicking in. Is it any wonder we had a few fights? But was it musical? Usually musical. About why? Well, I can't. You can't. I can't remember specific things.

Yeah. But you know it is when you're that age. Right. Did you never have fights with your friends? I was never a fist guy. No? No, I was. Well, you're a verbal guy.

Yeah, a verbal guy. So you just had a lot of punches on the nose. Yeah. For being too verbal. You would have hit me. You are a clever sod. Yeah, exactly. A cocky cunt.

Yeah. Yes. That's right. You are a clever sod. Yeah, exactly. A cocky cunt. Yes. That's right. But also very diplomatic, right? When it got ugly. Yeah, you got to be diplomatic when it got ugly. Maybe we can do this another day. Maybe we can meet in the middle on this one.

That's when I'd get it. I managed not to get a hit. We'll see if we make it through this. So what happened? So you got kicked out of the band? I got kicked out of the band, and I was fine about that. I thought, oh, well, I'll start this band.

I'll start another one. How old was I? 21 years old. Plenty of time to start another one. I knew old was i 20 21 years old plenty of time to start another one i knew by now i could sing i've hit records under my belt yeah um i thought i'll start another one i was going to do a soul band but then they went out and they did a few shows without me which i gather didn't go down very well right they got booed off, apparently. And the management, sort of three or four weeks later, came and saw me. They said, look, Roger, they said to the band,

apparently they said to the band, look, you've got to take him back because it's not working. And then they came to see me. They said, look, you've got to go back. It's not working. And I said, well, you know, they've thrown me out. I said, well, they have you back as long as you promise not to fight anymore.

I said, okay. I said, I'll do that. I said, but I'll only go back if they promise not to take drugs before they go on the stage anymore. Yeah. I said, I don't care what they do afterwards, none of my business,

but I can't be with a band who've got potentially so much talent who throw it all out the window because they're popping stuff down their throats. And they agreed, I agreed. We didn't have another fight then for years. Yeah. Did they slow down on the drugs?

To their credit, what they did after, I don't know what they did. I don't care. You know. Well, I don't. Well, Pete certainly did. Pete didn't do any drugs all the way through the 70s. Yeah. I mean, really, nothing.

Yeah. It's only after Keith died that I think that was just, I think that was just the loss and the grief and everything else. When he started drinking? Yeah. Yeah. When he started drinking.

Yeah. So I remember Pete, Pete was really, really super clean. So what about the, like the whole, because I mean, Keith Moon is sort of

like known for establishing the hotel room behavior. Yeah. Well, he was very good at that. He was very good at that. He was one of the originators. He was a remod behavior. Yeah, well, he was very good at that. He was very good at that. He was one of the originators.

He was a remodeler. Yeah. He just kept the show going. Yeah. Yeah. Because I talked to Joe Walsh recently. Oh, yes, he was quite good at it, too. I think he was one of Keith's apprentices, wasn't he?

He was. In Destruction. So then you entered the period where you did what tommy and who's next and and and uh really yeah tommy was the big big one that broke you know the store that was it that broke the back of the industry so we became really well known yeah um it just hit at the perfect time and that you know the genius of tommy a lot of that came from kit lambert who always his father was a composer yeah in england founded the sadler's world's ballet company he um always felt that the three minute pop song could be much much more

yeah and he said we should do an opera because he was into opera right he was into all that right father did um he said you know this rock can be an opera we should do an opera so we did a mini opera on on on the record a quick one yeah um oh yeah that second side and then and then and then we then we started work on tommy which went on for about three months Then we started work on Tommy, which went on for about three months in the studio, piecing bits together. And out it came, and it hit at a time when, as you know, America was in the Vietnam War. Youngsters were getting conscripted. Yeah.

And that album just spiritually seemed to speak to them because they felt deaf, dumb, and blind. Yeah. They felt not seen or heard. Right. And it also came out of your childhoods, too, right, in the war and blind. Yeah. They felt not seen or heard. Right. And it also came out of your childhoods too, right? In the war. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it just resonated and worked.

And we did Woodstock. People kind of went, wow. And then it just grew and grew and grew. You had a tough spot at Woodstock too, right? Everybody had a tough spot at Woodstock. The stars of Woodstock were the audience. Yeah. But it was like five in the morning or something?

Five in the morning we went on, but someone went on after us. I don't know who that was. I mean, so they had it worse than us. Don't you worry about that. Did you throw Abbie Hoffman off the stage too? I didn't. Repeat, it was wonderful. I know, wonderful, wonderful did. It was wonderful. I know.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Good old. Yeah. He said, anyone else gets up here, I'll kill them. And he meant it.

That's what Pete did? Peace, love, and rock and roll. What happened? Abby got on to give a little speech? Yeah, he was giving a speech about John Sinclair, you know,

from MC5. Right. Because he was in jail. Right. You know, but the trouble is he got on our stage. Right. In front of Pete. Right. You know, but the trouble is he got on our stage. Right.

In front of Pete. Yeah. You know, and we were British. Yeah. Fuck off. That was the end of that statement. Speak later. So that's where he blew up and everything changed.

And how many years after the album did you make the movie? and everything changed. And how many years after the album did you make the movie? The movie didn't come until 19... We made the movie in 1974. Oh, late, yeah. And it came out in 1975. Yeah, way... So that was after...

It was the movie of Woodstock that really put us on the map. Yeah, right. They, you know, The Who, were just visually amazing. Right. And put, you know, that really... And then right and put you know that really and then and then who's next that was another huge record yeah going so ahead of its time yeah didn't make number one you know that record no no no people didn't get it they thought this is funny noise what's all these people won't get fooled i mean that was huge yeah um we found out later that our record company

will remain nameless but you can look it up they were bootlegging our they were bootlegging us out the back door no shit we were being bootlegged by our own record company no wonder we didn't make number one it's impossible for us to oh that's crazy yeah i know but it's a lots of people it did that was just the business dirty business a shit business yeah but you survived you did all right yeah well listen i'm still here that's all i care about yeah pete had written people's going through a very difficult period of writing yeah that kind of first first kind of tremors of middle-aged angst uh-huh creep creeping in yeah um i'm too old to be doing this and but you know it's all over oh really you know and we were like 31 30. but they're crazy but

you know that's what's so such genius about townsend yeah he had the ability to write about townsend he had the ability to write about what's going on in him so deep down you know but then he just threw a load of songs at me he said i don't know if any of this is any good yeah there's a load of songs you choose what the ones go on the album and he was totally surprised at what i chose oh yeah because i chose in some ways the most vulnerable ones those wonderful songs that give you a hint yeah of the midlife crashes to come yeah yeah yeah at 33 no i think he was what was his 1975 so what pete would have been pete would have been 30 so he hadn't even hit 33 yet you know wow so that's what i found so intriguing about those songs, and I chose them. Yeah. And he's always said, he said,

I was shocked by what Roger chose. Yeah. You know, what's that one? Blue, Red and Grey. Right. Which I just loved. He said, and Pete, I don't know whether he would do it now, but I used to say to him, please, Pete, play Blue, Red and Grey

on stage you know it's wonderful and the way you sing it is wonderful and he's saying oh I look fucking stupid

playing a ukulele so I do it I do it on my own solo show you know because I love it so much yeah

yeah well that's so nice that their relationship was like that that he told you to pick him you picked him and he let you do it yeah and well that's so nice that their relationship was like that that he told you to pick him you picked him and he let you do it yeah and uh so that was that album and then you know it was a very it was a tricky time in our career because he'd worked so hard on the tommy

on the movie or the movie and the soundtrack and he got nominated for an oscar for the soundtrack um was that the first that was the first time you oscar for the soundtrack um was that the first that was the first time you acted too wasn't it yeah it was the first time i acted and then of course then we had a bit of a break and then when we came back to it we did a tour in 1976 which turned out to be the last tour we'd ever do with keith yeah and um of course the band was bigger than ever then yeah yeah and then uh it like and then once you lost keith how long did you have to like process that well that was hard but you get through it i mean pete and i we we did you see it coming well we saw it coming for too long that's what made it such a big shock yeah because you kind of think well he's got nine lives yeah he he had no fear

um i think in today's world he would have been diagnosed as autistic um and because you come because he'd come through it so many times and not died, so many things where he should have died and he didn't, when it happened, it was kind of more of a shock. Yeah. Weird, weird. Because you kind of started believing he was sort of immortal. That's right. Yeah.

Anyway, Pete, John, and I, we said, you know, we can either stop or treasure what we really had between us, which is the music. Which is what we really had between us which is the music yeah uh which is what we did yeah you know which pete was the writer of this music i was a singer of it john was a bass player of it you know keith was obviously irreplaceable with his character yeah i've never met ever in my life anyone who comes anywhere close to being another geith moon yeah um but you can replace a drummer that became incredibly difficult and we rushed into getting a very good friend of ours kenny jones into the band who's extremely good drummer who drummed with us on on

he did some drumming on the tommy soundtrack yeah um so we thought he'd be good and it did but it didn't work out he his sense of timing wasn't quite like ours um and the only way i can explain it because kenny's like i say an excellent excellent drummer yeah just as putting keith moon in the faces would have been a disaster yeah putting kenny in in the who ended didn't start out a disaster yeah ended a disaster like how because he's just too straight a drummer but you did three albums with him or four right no no we did two two and well yeah he couldn't feel like, you know. No, it didn't fit, you know. It just didn't sit right, you know.

Did it end acrimoniously? No. The fans kind of got the kind of, you know, they all take sides and they don't quite understand what you're talking about. So it felt like there was acrimony there, but there was never any between Kenny and I, and I have never, ever said that he was a bad drummer. He's a great drummer. He was just the wrong drummer.

Who would have been the right drummer, though? We don't know who would have been the right drummer, but we should have left the door open. We, you know, you take... You could have put Mitch Mitchell in there. At the time, we could have done. He would have been more of the right open. You know, you take... You could have put Mitch Mitchell in there. At the time, we could have done. He would have been more of the right drummer. Yeah.

Oh, well. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, there you go. He couldn't... You are correct. He would have been far more the right drummer. Yeah. So when did that thing in Cincinnati happen,

that horrible thing? That was 1979. So that was with Kenny. December the 3rd. Yeah. What a fucking day. Jesus. What a day.

What a day. I remember that. What a night. It was like a global nightmare. It was all that anyone talked about for weeks. It was horrible. Yeah. that anyone talked about for weeks.

It was horrible. Yeah. And the horrible thing for us was that we didn't know it happened and we played the show. We played a great show that night. And the reason they let us play the show, and thank God they did, because the people of Cincinnati don't realize what a debt of gratitude they should have towards our manager, Bill Kerbishley,

because the fire department and the police, because the accident happened on the way in. Oh, yeah, it was a stampede going into there. It was a stampede going in. They only opened two doors or three doors out of 11. General admission. General admission. General admission. And of course, everyone tried to funnel into this tiny little space.

And people fell over and then they got trampled and 11 people died. The police and the fire department wanted to stop the show. Yeah. By this time, the crowd was in. to stop the show. Yeah. By this time, the crowd was in.

And Bill Kerbisley, our manager, pleaded with them and almost said to them, are you crazy? You know, if you do that, you're going to have people coming out

and you'll have a right on you. Yeah. This was an accident. You don't need to be dealing with another situation. Right. Just shut this doorway off, screen it off,

and deal with this issue, let the show go on. Yeah. And, you know, so glad that he did. But for us, we just did a great show that night. And to come off stage after a great show and be told the news that, you know, 11 kids had died on the way and it was like it i can't tell it was like being hit with a sledgehammer i can't imagine being hit in the heart with a sledgehammer um but we stay in touch with the families you do oh yeah

yeah yeah we do they have a memorial fund where they provide scholarships at one of the high schools. This high school lost three students. So they provide three scholarships every year. And we've helped, you know, we've been in touch with them for a long time. Wonderful people. I visited them. I went back and visited the high school in the summer. Yeah.

I visited them. I went back and visited the high school in the summer. Yeah. So, you know, because it's so hard for us, but it's not as hard for us as it was for them. Yeah, it's a real sort of defining grief. I can't, yeah. It was just, you know, to lose people that age is always horrendous. Yeah.

to lose people that age is always horrendous yeah well it yeah and you just never quite process it and you do the best you can and we're doing the best we can yeah you can't you can't change the past you have to live with the future and we're doing the best we can with that yeah and what is wonderful is the people from that community are wonderful wonderful oh good and and now like when you guys like because a lot of things we didn't get to talk about uh is that you know i mean you've done a a lot of acting and a lot of movies and television that's my that's my other job but you know i didn't you know i i fell in love with the process but then i was already famous yeah and tommy was easy for me because it was just music but i didn't know anything really about acting but ken russell that must

have been nuts oh yeah it was nuts i mean that was completely nuts but what a genius director no kidding man oh and you're working with all those uh those amazing uh musicians too like like tina turner and they're clapping and it was just wonderful but i was playing a character who's deaf dumb and blind yeah and i was doing it method and i said i went through that hardly speaking to anyone yeah hardly seeing anything i mean i laid for a whole day under tina turner's skirt yeah and for the life of me i can't tell you one thing. About the experience? No. And I find that, I find it really strange.

Well, you were in it. You were in it. Totally in it. Yeah. That space. Because I used to have to turn my eyes off. Because they used to throw things at me, and you couldn't have any kind of thing going on at all.

Was Ken on you for that? Pardon. Was Ken on you for that? Pardon? Was Ken on you for that? Did he push you, Ken Russell? No, I just did it. But, I mean, he'd always do ten takes of everything. That was just Ken always looking for something unusual to happen. It's a trippy movie, man. But, like I say, some of the stuff that was going on

and things flying past my head, and the camera reads your eyes more than anything. Yeah. So they had to be completely glazed and dead. Yeah, you did it. Yeah, yeah. So I just turned them off, but with them wide open. I mean, it's the weirdest time when I think back to that.

I mean, I hardly spoke to Anne Margaret, who's the sweetest woman you could ever meet. But, you know, I just had to get my head around it. This is my mum. Yeah. And she's gorgeous. Yeah. And that's where you got the bug, though, to do the acting? I got the bug to do the acting.

And I thought, well, I'm the acting? I got the bug to do the acting, and I thought, well, I'm not going to give this up, but I'm the kind of guy who had the balls to go out, and I took any acting job, but I had to make all my mistakes. Because you liked it. But I liked it, and of course, in full glare of being a really famous guy. But I didn't care.

I don't care. And in the end, I ended up doing Shakespeare and all kinds of stuff. And I've got fabulous reviews. So I learned the craft in the end. And I'm proud of that. And you did some musicals too, huh?

Yeah. Yeah, I did the Beggar's Opera, the Flippany Opera. Yeah. I did... Is that fun? I did My Fair Lady at's Opera, the Flippany Opera. Yeah. I did... Is that fun? I did My Fair Lady at the Hollywood Bowl with John Lithgow. Yeah.

Yeah, we did a couple of shows there for the city with the L.A. Philharmonic. That was fun. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, great. I've got great notices for that. Yeah. I mean, musical and acting, I mean, together, you're made for that yeah well i mean i mean the musical and acting i mean it's together i mean that you're made for that well i suppose so but i don't i don't want to go in the theater though

i don't want to to me that would be like going back to the theater like going back to the factory going back to yeah yeah yeah shows a week no no no i i'm still the gy The gypsy lives hard in me. Yeah. And so where are you and Pete at these days? You talk a lot? No, we wanted a year off, so I haven't spoken to him for a year. Oh, that's how that goes. No, that's how we are. I respect that he needs that time away.

We love each other, dear. We're brothers. Yeah. And we're dearest friends, uh that's all i can say and you know we're we're not gone who haven't gone no we we were very i was very um very determined after after saying it was our last tour in 1982, and I said that, and that came off of my back. Yeah.

The other guys in the band didn't know I was going to say that, but I knew at that time what a state Pete was in. Yeah. He'd had quite a run in with heavy drugs. Yeah. And a lot to do with pressure

of the fact that we didn't have the right drummer. Yeah. The band wasn't quite gelling. He was having trouble writing. And all that pressure was on him. Yeah. He needed a break. So I thought, well, this is going to be the last tour.

Because if we'd have carried on, it would have killed him. Yeah. So, and in no way I'm going to let that happen. So I just announced that out of the blue. Yeah. So, and I know why I only let that happen. So, I just announced that out of the blue. Yeah. Obviously, it was never going to be

the last tour and I kind of, kind of knew it then. But you both did solo stuff too, you know, worked some stuff. We did solo stuff, yeah,

kind of hobby for me that was. Yeah. And, you know, here we are now and when it came to us announcing our 50th year, and we're going to go on tour, I said that this is the beginning of the long goodbye. Yeah. And we have to be realistic at our age.

You know, I'm 75 next year. I can still sing the shit out of this stuff. Yeah. Pete can still play it. Yeah. So play it out out of this stuff. Yeah. Pete can still play it. Yeah. So play it out. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But all I can say is we don't know how long we'll go. And I don't think you ever retire from this business. I think it retires you when you're a band like The Who. Yeah. Because our music deserves and has to have a kind of energy within it that if ever we can't give it that. Because we are a rock band.

We're not a good time rock and roll band. We're not like the Rod Stewart faces, Rolling Stones, you know, bar band. Do you understand what I mean? We're the opposite of that power chords baby yeah and it's on the one

it's the slam yeah you know it's not music to fuck to ours is music to fight to yeah

and if it ever loses that fighting edge yeah which exists between Pete and I still to this day then I'll stop.

Because then it will be cheating my audience. And I've never wanted to cheat them, ever. Because I remember too well from my early years, first ticket I ever bought to go and see anybody was to see Cliff Richard and the Shadows in 1962 at the Shizit Empire and what it took to get the money to buy

those tickets and I thought that's what an artist owes it to an audience to be there for them and deliver and if you ever stop doing that you're taking a piss fuck off out the business yeah

those are great closing words well that's just how i feel about it i think it's i think it's i think it's right i think it's right people work too hard to come and see you you deserve to deliver it yeah you don't want to just like sweep walk through you don't want to autopilot and i'll tell you another thing about the book you know you know what i love about your book is that you can hear your voice in it. You know what I mean? I hope so. It's good, solid storytelling, and it's honest.

You know what I mean? It's not embellished a lot. You know what I mean? It's very honest. Yeah. Did you do it all yourself? I worked with a guy. I worked with a guy called Matt Rudd.

He's a journalist. I wrote my book in a different Rudd. He's a journalist. But I didn't. I wrote my book in a different way than most people do their biography. I didn't have a book deal. I don't think you can write a biography on a book deal. Autobiography. No. Autobiography.

What's the difference? Well, one, if you were writing your biography, Roger Dahl should be another guy. Maybe that's true. Yeah, but. Oh, you don't know me, do you? Where's the real Roger Dahl? Yeah, no. Who wrote this book? But what I'm trying to say is

I didn't know whether I had one in me. And if you do a publishing deal, all of a sudden, they've got a hold on you. Oh, right. You take a lump of money. Yeah. And I don't believe any of this kind of art or whatever should ever really ever be done initially for the money

right so i i thought i don't know whether i've got a book in me i'm gonna get someone to who i admired as a journalist to interview me oh okay yeah and he went on for four years yeah i didn't care how long it went on i paid him yeah um and if it'd taken 10 years i wouldn't have cared i just i said because all i want is a good book yeah and then and then i put it together and put it out there and and publishers loved it and i got a book deal yeah but now i'm i'm there dancing to my drum right you already had the book and yeah and you know like the cover for instance i fought for that cover yeah and the reason i wanted that cover was for reasons i told you earlier um guess what they wanted what just a face with the name yeah know, just like every other biography cover.

No, that looks like the Roger Daltrey everybody knows. What would you notice on the shelf of biographies? Yeah. Just see what I'm trying to say. Right, right. But they didn't get it at all. But because I'd done it my way, I could insist that that's the cover. Yeah.

It's a good cover. Thank you. It's a good book. And I really appreciate you coming by. It's great good book. And I really appreciate you coming by. It's great talking to you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too. I thought that was great.

He can still sing the shit out of things. I love the way he said that. I can sing the shit out of that. Love it. Just a reminder, folks, we'll have new WTF t-shirts designed by the great Aaron Draplin available in the merch store at WTFpod.com later this

month. But if you're at my Beacon Theater show in New York City on November 10th, you'll be the first ones to get your hands on them. Alright? Alright. Can't play. Matt Sweeney gave me a guitar but no amp. I told him I didn't want the amp. I appreciate him

giving me the guitar so I can noodle around in my hotel room while I'm sitting on my hotel couch on a towel watching Rachel. Boomer lives! We'll be right back. Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family.

Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night

on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.