Roger Daltrey Bemoans Isolation, Fundraising Opportunities For Teenage Cancer Trust

Roger Daltrey spoke about how Covid-19 and social distancing has wrecked his fundraising efforts for the Who's patron charity, the Teenage Cancer Trust. Daltrey and the charity were forced to scrap a week's worth of benefit gigs at London's Royal Albert Hall, which would've netted the Trust between one and 2.5 million pounds.

Daltrey appeared on Good Morning Britain, and explained, “All our funding is event based, so all our funding has been cut. We are fully funded. Everyone loves that kids have daycare centers and rainbows on the wall, but they’re completely different for adolescents and there’s nothing for them outside of us. It is really important that we survive. Early cancer diagnosis is everything. When there are teens with aches and pains who are afraid to go to the hospital, it is frightening.”

Daltrey shed light on how he feels personally being forced to stay home due to the pandemic: “A nightmare. It’s just been three months on Sunday. In that sense it is a nightmare. I live on a farm, so it wasn’t too bad, it didn’t completely isolate myself and my wife.”

He went on to explain he's always craved personal contact — and revealed that upon hitting it big with the Who, his fame prevented him from staying close to key people in his life: “Human contact. That’s what I didn’t like about being a celebrity. It distanced me a bit from my friends and everyone immediately treated me differently after I became famous. I didn’t like that. I never wanted to be different. I like to just chat with people and be treated normally. I just miss that human contact.”

For Roger Daltrey, his patronage of the Teenage Cancer Trust is merely payback for the teens that gave him a life in music: “We couldn't have done it without the support of teenagers. The whole of the rock business, the whole of — generally the whole of the music business is founded on the backs of teenagers. It just makes so much sense that the music business, for instance, should get behind this, because we rely on them. I also saw the simplicity of the idea. The way the medicine works — you're either a child or an adult. Now they kind of say, 'Well, we've got adolescent programs' — but those adolescent programs in your country, go from 13 to 40. And of course, a 13-year-old hasn't got much in common at all with a 40-year-old.”