{"id":715570,"date":"2026-06-20T13:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/715570\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T13:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:38:11","slug":"the-who-song-from-1968-that-roger-daltrey-wanted-to-give-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/715570\/","title":{"rendered":"The Who song from 1968 that Roger Daltrey wanted to give away"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Roger<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

Sat 20 June 2026 10:46, UK <\/p>\n

In The Who<\/a>, Pete Townshend\u2019s songwriting talents were unquestioned. <\/p>\n

While every band member could craft a catchy tune, Townshend consistently focused on the broader narrative whenever he entered the studio, pioneering the type of intricate rock and roll stories that would shape the modern concept album. <\/p>\n

That ambition set Townshend apart from many of his contemporaries. While other songwriters focused on individual singles, he increasingly viewed albums as complete artistic statements, using recurring themes and characters to create narratives that stretched across multiple songs. However, Townshend also faced detractors, and Roger Daltrey was not hesitant to voice his reservations, particularly when he believed a song like \u2018Dogs\u2019 fell short of expectations.<\/p>\n

For all of the praise bestowed on Townshend over the years, the band started out as primarily Daltrey\u2019s outfit. After making some noise in the London mod scene, Townshend eventually joined the group at Daltrey\u2019s insistence, thinking that he would be good at creating original material.<\/p>\n

As the band developed, that decision paid dividends. Townshend\u2019s growing confidence as a writer gradually shifted The Who away from their early reliance on covers and toward a distinctive sound that helped establish them as one of Britain\u2019s most innovative rock acts.<\/p>\n

\"Roger<\/a>Credit: Bent Rej<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that the band initially tried to work with every member sharing writing duties, works like \u2018Rael\u2019 and \u2018A Quick One While He\u2019s Away\u2019 pointed to where they would be going in the next few years. Leaving most of the covers and bluesy tones behind, Townshend created songs that all connected into one story on albums like Tommy<\/a> and Quadrophenia, all while trying to hang on to his sanity when making them.<\/p>\n

No writer gets to that point by accident, though, and \u2018Dogs\u2019 was an example of Townshend flexing his songwriting muscles for the first time. Since My Generation featured a handful of covers from American R&B groups, \u2018Dogs\u2019 was another attempt at making a fiercer rocker that could go toe-to-toe with the blues rockers of the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

When the band were first cutting it, Townshend wasn\u2019t sure it was even in the running for the group to work on. Although the recorded version would turn up on various singles and the compilation album 30 Years of Maximum R&B, Townshend thought that it would have been better suited for Ronnie Laine to play, having already started working with The Faces with Rod Stewart.<\/p>\n

From Daltrey\u2019s perspective, the track should have stayed in the vaults or given to Laine, telling Uncut<\/a>, \u201cHe was such a lovely geezer, Ronnie, they were great guys, The Faces, all of them. But I think it\u2019d have been better if Pete had just given the song to Ronnie in the first place. As a Who record, it was all a bit frivolous for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given when the song was released, it makes sense why Daltrey wouldn\u2019t be too kind about the track. Since the entire piece is meant to be about operating in a bluesy mode, it\u2019s hard to really take it seriously when it\u2019s being sung by the same people who were responsible for making some of the most forward-looking rock music of their time, like \u2018I Can See For Miles\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Who would only go up from \u2018Dogs\u2019, though, eventually getting more outlandish both in the studio and whenever they played live, turning their songs into massive exercises every time they took to the stage. In a sense, \u2018Dogs\u2019 was never meant to be the latest new direction for The Who. It was a wave goodbye to their old sound, and the next few years were bound to be a lot more exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you have such an extensive catalogue of songs as The Who do, then there\u2019s a very good chance a few won\u2019t make the grade. In fact, mathematically, half are below average. But \u2018Dogs\u2019 has the curious position of both being a fairly mundane song, but also providing itself as a stepping stone for The Who to gather pace and become the mammoth global outfit they are today. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy Sat 20 June 2026 10:46, UK In The Who, Pete Townshend\u2019s songwriting talents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[24911,304718,88,216,24218,24216,35357],"class_list":["post-715570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1960s","tag-304718","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-pete-townshend","tag-roger-daltrey","tag-the-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}