Pete Townshend Saved Roger Daltrey’s New Solo Album
Roger Daltrey has revealed that he doubted his new solo album, As Long as I Have You, was worth recording, until he was talked into it by his Who bandmate Pete Townshend, who wound up appearing on seven of its tracks.
The follow-up to 2014’s Going Back Home – a collaboration with Wilko Johnson – will be released on June1, and was completed after Daltrey suffered viral meningitis in 2015.
“There was a time there when I didn’t think I’d make it at all,” the singer told Mojo in a new interview. “But this incredible peace came over me. I’ll never forget it.” However, he still had doubts over the material when he went back to work. “Pete was the one who convinced me that it was great,” he said.
It’s been 12 years since the Who released their most recent album, Endless Wire, and Townshend said that he had certain requirements if they were to make another record. “You know, the difficult thing for Roger and me is that we never really collaborated on a creative level,” he said, “not even in the way we plan stage shows. Either I am driving or he is driving. The next Who album if there is to be one really needs to feature songs from Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend in equal numbers.”
Elsewhere in the new interview, Daltrey recalled the time he briefly left the band in 1965 as a result of his colleagues’ behavior. “I agreed to go back and the agreement was that they stop doing drugs onstage," he said. "I didn’t give a fuck what they did offstage. But when the music’s getting fucked up ’cos you’ve got so many purple hearts inside of you. … Everything’s double speed and you can’t get the words in. … When rock gets too fast, it comes off the ground. It’s no longer a rock. It’s a bag of wind.”