Roger Daltrey is happy to be on the road with his solo band — especially in the face of Covid, which nearly crippled the touring industry.
Daltrey's solo backing band includes Pete Townshend's brother, guitarist Simon Townshend and Simon's son Ben on drums. Daltrey chatted with Scotland's The Herald and explained, “If I do any Who songs we’ll do them completely differently from the way the Who do them, just to explore them. . . But the most important thing is I’m going to be employing 20 people, 10 of them musicians who have been out of work for two-and-a-half years.”
When pressed as to why Daltrey has dubbed the trek, “Who I Was” — he laughed and said, “Because the longer the lockdown went on the more I wondered who the f*** I was. It was driving me insane. You’ve got to remember we’ve been gypsies all our lives, travelled the whole world, then we’re shut up for two years. There was a huge part of me missing, which is the part of me that gets on a stage and sings. There’s something in me that seems to have to do that, or transmit whatever I’m thinking and touch people with the voice I was given as a gift. Unless you’ve done it, it’s very difficult to explain.”