Hey, One Direction — forget what you’ve heard. The Who want you to know they’re big fans.
We sat backstage with the band’s two surviving members, guitarist Pete Townshend and vocalist Roger Daltrey (separately, 10 minutes apart), we suggested a game to each of them: The Who’s Who of Music.
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It was simple enough. We would share the name of a modern day musical act, and they would tell us the first thing that came to mind.
Daltrey laughed. “I probably haven’t heard of half of them,” he said. “Is this the Alzheimer’s test?”
The rock legend was in good spirits. It was a mere hour before he and Townshend would perform their first Abu Dhabi concert together, part of the weekend’s Grand Prix concert series. The show would kick off their last big tour of Europe and North America, The Who hits 50!.
Before that, though, we had things to talk about. Like One Direction.
Bear trap
“Love them,” Townshend said.
“A great pop band,” Daltrey said. “I’ve been rather misquoted with One Direction, because a journalist laid a bear trap for me and asked me if their music would be significant in years to come, and I said I don’t know whether it will be. And, of course, when they cut the question out, it sounds like I’m attacking One Direction. Well, I’m not at all.”
In an interview published online by the The Mail on Sunday in October, Daltrey was quoted as saying: “Here we are with the world in the state it is in, and we’ve got One Direction … Where are the artists writing with any real sense of angst and purpose?”
The quote was widely picked up and re-printed. The following month, a journalist from The Guardian asked the One Direction boys if they thought it was fair of Daltrey to say their music lacked purpose. “Aaayyyuhhh ... I mean, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion,” Louis Tomlinson, the oldest member of the band, replied.
Chin up, Tomlinson. Daltrey’s opinion appears far more favourable than it had once sounded.
“They’ve done incredibly well and you can’t knock the fact that they’ve become the biggest pop band in the world. We were a pop band once, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.
Bieber trouble
However, Daltrey did think there was something wrong with another pop star’s antics: Justin Bieber. The discussion took a sombre turn when the 20-year-old, who has been making headlines for legal trouble and controversial behaviour, was mentioned. “Shame. I mean, what a shame. The boy needs help,” Daltrey said.
“Justin, give me a call. Otherwise, you’re going to end up like Keith Moon, and it’ll be goodnight Vienna — and I’ve lost too many friends. You don’t need to go. You’ve got a lot to offer.”
Moon, The Who’s iconic drummer, struggled with substance abuse before his death. He died in 1978 at the age of 32 after he overdosed on pills.
Townshend told us that Moon was the one of them who was most likely to get nervous before a show. “I never felt nerves. My dad was in a band, so somewhere like this, backstage, on the stage, on the side of the stage, I always felt very much at home … Keith Moon used to be sick before [the shows], but not me,” he said.
Back in our game, Daltrey told us that Beyonce was “class”, and that she was firmly on his radar as a musician. “I’m making a solo album at the moment, and I’m toying with doing one of her own songs, the Beyonce songs, just changing the lyrics a bit,” he admitted.
Advice
How about Taylor Swift? “Good country artist — good looking girl!” Kings of Leon? “American rock’n’roll band — and a good one.” Coldplay, then? “You have to hand it to them — the melodies. Chris Martin’s melodies, and the sound that they created, was totally original in its day. I just wish he wouldn’t run around so much on the stage, because it takes away from the music. It doesn’t make the music stronger, it weakens it and he doesn’t need to do it. When did you ever see Elvis run on stage? And Mick Jagger is the same — stop it! Stop it! Stand still and dance.”
Townshend didn’t have as much to say, exclaiming “Yes, yes, yes!” to all the musicians we mentioned and insisting that they were all great in their own right. What he did have something to say about were his squeaky clean black boots after we complimented him on them. He looked down at the rubbery pair.
“Prada,” he offered. “They make them about every five years and you have to make sure that you get a pair. They don’t make them all the time.”
The more you know.
Watch the full interview here:
