He’s the feisty frontman of one of the greatest rock bands. And through it all, his rock-solid family and Sussex home have been his sanctuary
He’s famous for that scream on Won’t Get Fooled Again, the furious rebellion of My Generation and a whole lot of bare-chested, microphone-swinging. But today Roger Daltrey – singer, actor, former trout farmer and philanthropist – is sitting quietly in the corner of a cosy, softly-lit room in a genteel Georgian hotel in central London.
He stands up to shake my hand and greets me with a warm, slightly crooked smile (he broke his jaw as a child). He’s 74 and still in great shape, looking sharp in a crisp black shirt with slim-fitting black jeans, a full head of curls and his blue-tinted glasses.
So how did he balance his rock career and home life? “Some of my friends in the business found it hard to readjust to a normal family existence after the madness on the road. Me? No problem. I lived in the moment. If the moment involved standing in front of thousands of people with a drummer passed out on his drums, I’d deal with it. If it involved hosting 100 aunts and uncles, nieces, third cousins and nephews twice removed, no problem,” he says. “I used to import the whole family by coach on Christmas Day, about 60 of them, to have a beano in Sussex. I remember Christmas 1976 when Dad looked me in the eye and said, ‘Isn’t it grand?’ He was happy and that meant the world to me.”
He seems very down to earth, happy in his own skin. He’s the only member of The Who who never got into hard drugs and he’s been married for a mighty 51 years. “Heather and I were in the first flush of marriage when the kids started coming along: Rosie and then Willow three years later. When we had our son Jamie in 1981 I got to have a go at the hands-on dad routine. It didn’t matter how crazy things got on the road, I knew I was always coming back to stability,” he says.
This story is from the December 2018 edition of Sussex Life.
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This story is from the December 2018 edition of Sussex Life.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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