(Credits: William Snyder)
Sat 27 December 2025 9:46, UK
From the moment that The Who started out, Pete Townshend was always responsible for being the band’s beating heart. Even though Keith Moon may have been the rhythmic foundation and Roger Daltrey translated the song’s emotions to the audience, Townshend was the one plunging into the depths of his psyche to sculpt their masterpieces, writing most of the band’s material across masterpieces like Tommy and Who’s Next. Although Daltrey may have been one of the band’s greatest assets for his vocals, he remembered Townshend not being impressed by one of his show-stopping performances.
While the band had started as a scruffy club act through most of their early career, they quickly blossomed into a rock and roll machine throughout the late 1960s. After toying with the idea of making longer epics on tracks like ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’, Townshend thought that it was time to dive deeper on the band’s later output, coming up with the idea of making an entire album around the story of a deaf, dumb, and blind kid finding release through music.
With every band member playing a part in the story, Tommy would become one of the world’s first celebrated rock operas, as Daltrey sang about the pains of the protagonist’s fragile mind. Even though Townshend envisioned doing the same thing over again with the Lifehouse project, the rest of the band could never grasp the concept, eventually folding the material into Who’s Next.
By the time Townshend had time away from writing and had a chance to cut loose with the band live on albums like Live at Leeds, his next vision was an ode to the Mod movement he grew up in. Telling the story of a disenfranchised ex-Mod, Quadrophenia would become the band’s most daring project, featuring state-of-the-art production overseen by Townshend.
The album would also feature some of the most cinematic songs of the band’s career, featuring a brilliant use of horns on ‘The Real Me’ and culminating in one of Daltrey’s most extravagant performances on the song ‘Love Reign O’er Me’. While the song is quite a feat for anyone to sing with conviction, Daltrey was crushed when Townshend didn’t take a liking to it.
Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey together. (Credits: Rick Guest)
Recalling his time working in the studio on the track, Daltrey remembered Townshend feeling cold about the performance, saying, “When he heard ‘Love, Reign o’er Me,’ he hated it. I felt devastated. Maybe it could be better. He heard it as a quiet love song, but I heard the ‘Love, Reign O’er Me,’ main theme as the orgasm, a primal thing that we are born out of. It could be just love, and you can’t get like Dusty Springfield saying that”.
Considering where the song falls at the album’s end, though, Daltrey made the best call by reaching for the fences. Instead of leaving the protagonist, Jimmy, feeling defeated on a rock, Daltrey sounds like he’s pleading for some kind of answer to descend down from the sky, making for a showstopping finale that leaves the audience off on a musical question mark. Although Townshend may have wanted to get as close to his vision as possible, Daltrey’s delivery was far too powerful to ignore.
Are Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey friends?
Just because a band can be successful doesn’t mean they always like each other, and for the most part, it would seem that Daltrey and Townshend can agree to disagree on almost everything. The two men have spent the majority of their careers bickering and biting back at one another, but doing it while maintaining one of the most successful bands in history.
Townshend and Daltrey continue to fight during their live performances with a particular moment where “Roger comes over to me, stands next to me and makes some kind of soppy smile, which is supposed to communicate some kind of Everly Brothers relationship we have for the audience, which isn’t actually there.”
The guitarist continues, “It’s supposed to be an act where I’m supposed to collude like ‘we know each other very well, we look like enemies, but we are friends really’ kind of look. Often that will be the moment where I look him in the face and go ‘you fucking wanker’ and he gets angry when I do that” he says amidst a fit of laughter.
Talking in 2014 about their tour, he simply said: “It seemed like a good idea about six months ago, but I hate performing and The Who and touring. But I’m innately good at it, I don’t find it hard.”
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