(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 14 December 2025 18:46, UK
The measure of any great rock and roll band comes from how well they can deliver onstage. No matter how often people meet in a studio trying to create magic, it comes down to what happens when they get on a platform and perform to the broadest audience possible. While The Who had already been known as one of the greatest live rock bands of all time, Roger Daltrey believed one of his contemporaries was far from technicians on the live stage
Now, is Roger Daltrey necessarily the best man to judge a band? No. He might be one of the more gifted rock singers the 20th century knew, but he is also a really tough judge. Daltrey is famously mean about many of his contemporaries and even spent a lot of time hating on his own group.
“We’re not mates at all,” Daltrey said way back in 1965, right when the band had only just formed. Keith Moon felt the same, stating that same year, “ We have absolutely nothing in common apart from music.” It is a completely baffling and unique connection; the boys seemed to hate each other, but the musical synergy was undeniable.
When The Who first started out, though, it all revolved around the music coming out of America. For all of the great bands the British Invasion spat out, half of them took their cues from the music from blues and R&B a few years earlier, with many members of the Mod scene performing songs by James Brown during their first gigs.
Once Daltrey and Pete Townshend came together to perform the song ‘My Generation’, a different texture was being created. Compared to the meagre facsimiles of rock and roll being created at the time, Townshend was giving birth to the sounds of punk rock without realising it, making the most out of what could be done with barrages of feedback and noise.
With Keith Moon being an incredible showman from behind the kit, the band quickly garnered praise from every rock band on the scene, matched only by Townshend’s willingness to push his songwriting on albums like Tommy. By the time the band began performing landmark setlists on their album Live at Leeds, they had carved out their path in rock and roll, where dramatic works of theatre and rock and roll grandeur went hand in hand.
Before Daltrey had found his voice as a songwriter and frontman, The Rolling Stones had defined the archetype for hard rock. For all of the great blues songs they covered in the past, Mick Jagger was always known for inhabiting the sounds of the blues into his stage presentation, often dancing to his heart’s content across the stage as Keith Richards pumped out one riff after the next.
Compared to The Stones’ signature menace, Daltrey considered his band to be on a completely different level, thanks in no small part to how they incorporated different sonic textures into their sound, like synthesisers on ‘Baba O’Riley’. Even though Daltrey considered The Stones one of the greatest spectacles that rock had ever seen, he thought their musicianship remained questionable.
When discussing the band’s chops, Daltrey thought that most of their live performances tended to be less than impressive, saying, “As a band, if you were outside a pub and you heard that music coming out of a pub some nights, you’d think, ‘Well, that’s a mediocre pub band.’ No disrespect. But that music can. It’s part of its charm. Like I say. You have to see the Stones”.
While The Who was no stranger to technical foul-ups, their tenacity onstage could put some of the album performances to shame, including Daltrey’s fantastic screech at the end of ‘Love Reign O’er Me’. For all of the great music that The Who created during their time together, Daltrey is still convinced that their rock and roll credentials could go to bat with The Stones on their best day.
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