The Who's Roger Daltrey used to beat up his "alcoholic and cokehead" bandmates. Now he prefers worm farming.

words: William Shaw

Photographer: Nick Wilson

Roger Daltrey is unwell.

At the last minute, he cancels the interviews at his North London management offices contrite, but still hangover from a binge two days before.

 "It was the beer," he protests. "Even from when I was a kid I couldn't drink beer. If it had been wines or spirits, I would have fine."

 What had happened is this : Sunday had been the last Arsenal match at Highbury. Daltrey had composed a song for the occasion and sung it, along with a version of My Generation, to the delight of the crowd and despite the inadequacy of the PA. He's been an Arsenal fan since he started taking his son to matches in the '70s.

 But afterwards, he and a few of the lads went out to celebrate the occasion. The 62-year-old rock god hasn't quite been the same since. Dressed in a Esprit sweatshirt and trainers, he slumps into a leather chair.

 Two-day hangover notwithstanding, Daltrey looks much younger than his years, of course. He's keeping much better than many of his contemporaries．But there's a twitchy tension about him still ; the boy whose stutter was hijacked to become the theme for the song My Generation is still somehow ill-at ease and you can sense some of the abrasiveness that was an essential part of The Who. The nervousness is partly due to the fact that after 24yrars of studio silence, The Who are about to release an 11-minute single, Wire & Glass, followed eventually by a new album; Daltrey has returned to the studio to find that everything is different. He's learning how to deal with the 21st-century recording process. And then there are the gigs. A European tour started in June, including the O2 Wireless Festival. The Who co-headline a two-day festival in London's Hyde Park at the start of this month，as well as playing T in The Park. He orders tea and we begin…

Choosing songs for a Who album has always been a tricky process between you and Pete Townshend. How's it working out?

There's something wonderful about the way he writes. It's not the normal pop or rock crap.

There's always a spiritual journey. He's written 26 songs. Which ones work for me? You've got to realise that I have to interpret them, and to do that I really have to inhabit a different space-somewhere between the two of us. I have to find something int there that I'm comfortable with that makes it better than what he's doing with it. And If I can't find that he might as well be making a solo album.

Why this burst of creativity after 24 years?

He sent the first demos the Christmas before last. This has all been a bit drawn out. The decision was made two years ago, then Zak/ Starkey, The Who's drummer / went on tour with Oasis and … I think to be really honest Pete wasn't always felt challenged by the idea of writing for The Who again… and I understand his fears, his running away from the cahallenge. Why does he need to write anything else? the man's written some of the best music of the last 50 years. It's nerve-wracking for him. Let me tell you, he's not goning to Fail. He's still got it. What he's written is fantastic.

A recent article on the Publishers Weekly website claimed your forthcoming aoutobiography was a book about a "clean-living" guy. Where did it all go wrong?

Well, I haven't written anything yet, so that's a bullshit story.

You were, at least, the one who kept straighter head than the other three.

Well, I was in a band with two alcoholics and a …No, three alcoholics and three cokeheads. It was very difficult. Someone had to be sane and it was me.

You were born, famously, during air raid.

Well, I started to come in an air raid…yeah. Down the Tube station, on the Underground. Our childhood was moulded by the war…

Pete's dad was in The Squadronaires [ the RAF's dance band]. The [ that generation] did not want any more eitement in their lives. They'd had it. They were shell-shocked. Fuck, if you'd been in the front line facing bullets you'd been the same. But it pushed them into a very strange space and I suppose that's what made us want to rebel.

You were quite wild, weren't you?

That didn't come until I went to grammar school. I disn't fit in there at all. We were working-class Shepherd's Bush boys going to-Acton Count Grammar Scholl, which drew in all these middle-class boys. And, of course, being a little guy [5'6"] I got picked on a lot and had a temper. I always had a temper. And my temper got me results because one they'd seen that firework go off they wouldn't want to see it again. I wasn't really a bully, bout I did really start to enjoy that adrenaline rush. You do kind of get addicted. But then music took its place.

But you carried on decking people when you were in The Who!

[Indignantley] No, no, no!

You did! You may not have decked John Entwistle…

No…I never hit John.

…But you decked the other two.

I only had fights with them because they picked a fight with me. They always hit me first .

You just hit harder.

[Contritely] Unfortunately, yeah. Um…but, you know, you're leading very compressed lives, four alpha males squashed into a van, into a hotel room, into a squalid dressing room.

You did get very pisses off with Keith Moon about his drug use.

Well, he used to do it all the time and I was never pissed off with him until started interfering with the music. And then I got very pissed off.

You hit him and flushed his drugs down the toilet…

Well, it's a famous story, but yeah. Mainly because I knew this band was a winning band. I'd put this band together and I saw it going downhill because I was the straight one. They didn't know what that fucking meant. But it was shite.

When anybody mentions the name Roger Daltrey, talk always turns to trout farming.

Ha!

How did the boy from Shepherd's Bush become a farmer?

I think it's a throwback to the bombs sites that I used to play on as a kid. They were my sanctuary away from the madness. I've heard Keith Richards say similar things. When the celebrity things started to become oppressive in the early '70s I moved out of London and stopped me cracking up. But I hate people who move there [ the countryside]

and then just use it as dormitory. I thought, "Fuck me, I'm here, I've got to cmploy people. "I started getting interested in fish farming. It was the early days, all sticky tape, green wellies and all that shitty business. I had a hand in taking the industry to a new level. But I realized I was taking the industry to a new level. But I realized I was taking too much on, so I sold it to my workers and they 're fuckin' multi-millionaires now. It's easy to take the piss. But I'm into worm farming now. They can really take the piss out of that.

According to press reports, you're doing a Countryside Alliance gig in support of foxhunting with Bryan Ferry, Eric Clapton and Roger Waters.

No, I'm not! I've been mispresented there. I do support the countryside, but the Countryside Alliance has been hijacked by the hunting mob and I'm not interested in that. I don't think it should be banned, but it's a bullshit issue and I don't want to be involved. There are serious problems in the countryside, but any time anyone does anything for the countryside it's brought down to that one issue.

Is Your company, Spiritfire Pictures, still planning a biopic of Keith Moon[Mike Myers is earmarked for the lead] ?

Yeah. I'm getting the script at the end of net week.

Keith's death in1978 seems a long time ago now. When you play live, how muchi is he still a presence?

He lives in the music. Him and John shaped the music. I don't know whether that's going to e apparent in the new songs. We're a duo now and that's very freeing. The view's endless now. But every time we play something from the past, they're alive again. It's really weird.

You said a very sweet thing when John Entwitstle died in a hotel room in Las Vegas after a night spent with a prostitute, You said his death wasn't anything to be ashamed of. It was quite the opposite…

Well, I got very down about Keith dying, and then my parents died and after that you get on a very different level with death. When someone dies I go,"Good fucking life there…" Maybe I'm in denial. When people say, "What a sad way John went," I say, "Sad? Two lines of coke and two hokkers? After a party in Vagas?"

I can't stand all this Princess Diana bollocks.

People want to feel something because we're all becoming numb. And I can't stand it! It dosen't matter if you live five years. With the Teenage Cancer Trust [ Daltrey is a patron], some of them don't make it, but I don't get down about it. Celebrate the life. When I see them, they're so alive. That's not say I don't feel for the parents. I fucking do.

You were very impressive at Live 8…

I didn't like the event. Hats off to Bob [Gedolf],but I just wish they'd done that one percent more thinking about were doing.

It should never have been a three-quid concert [the cost of entering the tet message lottery tickets], cos then realized it could never pay for itself. Then he had to have the Golden Circle [ for high-paying corporate guests]. It created the whole was Africa- and I fuckin' hated it because the people I was trying to play to were all stuck behind the fence three miles away.

You stuck up for Pete Townshend very publicly when he was accused of illegally downloarding child pornography, Why?

Cos I know if he said what he said then he was telling the truth. Because I know how much work he does with abuse charities. And, of course, in the full light of day I was right and that's all that matters,[Police found no evidence that Townshend had dawnloaded child pornography; he was cautioned for using a credit card to access a site containing child abuse images and remains on the Se Offenders' Regidter.]

About eight years ago you had a heart-to-heart with Pete try to clear the air.

Miscommunication was always an issue…

Still is. God forbid we should ever clear that up. It would be a disaster. We'd lose the tension. He'd want to fuck me and I'd want to fuck him and it would be boring. If he started liking me…

You seem to talk very warmaly about him these days.

I've always felt very warmly about him, but he is very difficult - and I'm sure that he is. We are incredibly volatile. But I know the person that's in there and I love him.

Do you spend any time him outside of music?

No, No, None. Used to. Used to when we were kids. A lot.

Boys play in bands to avoid actually having to talk to each other, Discuss.

That's true.

The Who are the greatest example of that.

Yes, but that was when we were boys. I think we've done an awful lot of talking about it since, and I think that what's important in my life now is to help all the people who were interested in the Who as artists - and I think we are true artists - to help them through their life. Show them how to die, in some ways. We've shown them how to live. Let's show them how to die. People keep saying all these pop stars who died young, they're fucking heroes. What are they fucking heroes for? They did the easy bit. Muddy Waters and BB King - they 're the fucking heroes! BB King is still lifting people up after 50 years and still giving audiences a kick in the arse, rather than giving up.

You spent the '60s making a lot of money.

Unfortunately not for yourselves.

Yep. We kept a lot of musical suppliers in business. And a lot of hotel - room decorators, When you look at the rich list of British rock stars, we aren't in there, ha ha ha!Do I wish we'd kept our eyes on that ball? Yes and no. I wish I had a boat in the Mediterranean I could go and lie on, but then, fuck it. It was all good. Compared to most people I've had a life of bliss.

THE WHO MANAGEMENT office is full of strange ghosts. A framed cartoon by John Entwistle of Keith Moon; another by Entwistle of the band wasted, Townshend staring mad-eyed and intense, Moon goofy and stoned. It's entitled Too Much Sprits Of 76.

 Daltrey is off for a last - minute rehearsal for a charity concert put on by Daily Epress publisher Richard Desmond for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Tonight he'll be appearing alongside artists such as Robert Plant and Greg Lake, with Desmond on drums. "He's not bad," says Daltrey. He picks up hid guiter case; the black Mercedes limo is waiting downstairs.

Roger - highbury highs

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