Roger Daltrey Quotes

1. In those days I don't' think they were even demos.  



2. I have deliberately kept singing because I have to at my age. If I stopped for even a year my voice would slowly deteriorate until it's not there at all. That's a fact about getting to my age.

3. I think if Keith Moon was here today and you asked him to recall most of his early life or most of his life, he wouldn't be able to recall it.



4. I don't want to stop and I don't think Pete (Pete Townshend) does. We're at the pinnacle of our decline.

5. I love Adele. That's a lead singer; that's the real deal.




6. Rock used to be a right laugh. The trouble is the rock press have made it all so serious.

7. A lot of the new people they choose on shows like "American Idol" and things like that - I don't ever hear lead singers. They always seem to choose to pick people that are great singers, fabulous singers, but they've never got the voice that makes a great lead singer.

8. I don't like "Tommy" on Broadway at all. I like the music, I'm pleased with Pete's success but I don't like what they've done to it.

9. Part of the early Who career was all about knocking people's confidences out.

10. I don't know many singers who actually do like the sound of their own voice.

11. But contrary to what some people seem to think, I was never a bully. I was just a hard man.

12. Unless you've been touched personally, it's difficult to see, but there are millions of people who have no voice whatsoever.

13. I'm a rock god? I'm five foot seven. I had me jaw broken, and so my chin stuck way out. That's how I became tough - I learned to pick up anything and fight back...A rock god!


14. I don't care what people say about me.


15. You can do too much and oversell your market.

16. Well, for the "My Generation" album, there was nothing to be nervous about in them days. We used to take every day as it came. Every day was just a gig and I think we did the recording between gigs literally.

17. Imagine if you could go watch Mozart today, even if it's the last, crappiest show he ever played. What a thrill that would be.

18. All you could do was to see them. We were backstage when the Beatles were on and you could just about hear a noise. It was just literally screaming.

19. (on Freddie Mercury) When we lost Freddie, we not only lost a great personality, a man with a great sense of humor, a true showman, but we lost probably the best, the best virtuoso rock 'n' roll singer of all time. He could sing anything in any style. He could change his style from line to line and, God, that's an art. And he was brilliant at it.






20. My love for the band is still there. It hasn't changed, maybe that's why it's so painful these days.

21. I don't have any illusions anymore. The illusion that rock 'n' roll could change anything - I don't believe that. I've changed.




22. I don't think there's any way it could have failed. We don't know failure in this band. We didn't know failure. We got to know it a little after awhile but at that time there was no such word.

23. (on recovering from throat surgery) I got depressed after surgery, during what I call the big silence, that's when I realized what it would be like to not have a voice. I had two weeks of silence. Silence and no drinking. How's that for a good Christmas? So, you know, it was the strangest Christmas I've ever had.



24. I hope I die before I get old.

25. I don't over-sing anymore, which I used to suffer from terribly because I couldn't hear myself.





26. No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I'd had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

27. I know without our fans and the devotion of our fans we wouldn't be here. I don't mean to put them down, but I'm just stating a fact that it is hard to play to people that see you all the time and it takes a lot of fun out of it in some ways.


28. Of course, chicks keep popping up. When you're in a hotel, a pretty young lady makes life bearable.

29. We lived the life with Keith Moon. It was all Spinal Tap magnified a thousand times.

30. I love "Sell Out", I think it's great. I love the jingles. The whole thing as an album is a wonderful piece of work. The cover. Everything about it. It's got humor, great songs, irony.

31. We weren't wealthy but we definitely weren't poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd's Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.

32. Who would have ever thought that I'd end up saying that I want to be an all-around entertainer? But that's what I want to be.






33. We were too rough at the edges to be a pop group.

34. I think Pete (Townshend) did have a hard time as a kid with his appearance. But don't all kids have a hard time? God, I had a hard time, too. I was little with bow legs and rickets. I used to get picked on like everybody used to get picked on.


35. I feel there must be an enormous amount of really talented songwriters out there who can't sing.

36. Monterey, I remember, but I seem to remember the Fillmore West, that we played the week before Monterey. That was much more memorable for me. The first time in San Francisco. They were good gigs.




37. (on The Who's performance at Woodstock) It was the worst gig we ever played.

38. I'm realistic about my age and realistic about the fact that there's an awful lot less in front of me than there is behind me. I've always felt that music is an art form that deserves to live the life of the artist.

39. I used to be a great blues singer.







40. We tend to think of age only in time, but I don't think it has much to do with time at all; there's a whole load of other things. I've met 16-year-olds who are old and 90-year-olds who are young.

41. I live 50 miles from London and we've got some of the highest levels of teenage and childhood poverty in the country. It's disgusting. Just because it's a rural area, it gets forgotten.





42. I wanted to be in a band that shared ideas and were in it together.

43. You have to keep fit being a singer - that's part of the job. You can't do it unless you have incredible stamina.

44. My feeling was that I simply didn't have the enthusiasm to do reinvention.

45. You know, I was a school rebel. Whatever they said do, I didn't do. I was totally anti-everything. I was a right bastard, a right hard nut. I just totally closed the doors to ever wanting to know what they had to teach me. Rock & roll was the only thing I wanted to get into.

46. I don't think you should ever say: "This is the last time". Music isn't like that. You'll be sitting there not wishing to get onto a stage again for maybe two, three, four, five months, or maybe a year, then suddenly you'll wake up and feel like you've got to do it again. It's in the blood, and I never say never.





47. First of all, you have to understand that I'm like anybody else. When I hear my voice on a record I absolutely loathe my voice. I cannot stand my voice.

48. I'm not anti-fox hunting because, to me, shooting foxes is even worse and the results are horrendous.

49. Every generation of rock musician will understand that we wouldn't be anywhere without the support of teenagers buying the records.

50. Fifty per cent of rock is having a good time.


51. I always used to develop a cold going into the studio.

52. I enjoy singing; being in touch with something that is inside of me.

53. I've never wanted to be anyone other than who I am.

54. I can't retire.

55. You're better off being a brick layer if you're going to play guitar than a sheet metal worker.

56. I call it fan fatigue. I went to see Bob Dylan last year, who I think is absolutely incredible, but he suffers from his audience.

57. I thought if I lost the band, I was dead. If I didn't stick with the Who, I would be a sheet metal worker for the rest of my life.

58. I know my faults, but I'm comfortable with me.




59. European fisheries are a disaster. The American fisheries are well-kept.

60. I never understood that if you sweat as much as I used to every night, you drain your body of salts. So I got very, very, seriously ill. I got to the stage where I was almost hospitalized with serious problems.






61. I'm not always the most diplomatic person.


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