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Roger Daltrey Talks New Tour, Thoughts on Broadway’s ‘Tommy’ and Future of The Who 

Roger Daltrey. (AP)
Roger Daltrey. (AP)
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Roger Daltrey Talks New Tour, Thoughts on Broadway’s ‘Tommy’ and Future of The Who 

Roger Daltrey. (AP)
Roger Daltrey. (AP)

As Roger Daltrey hits the road on a short solo tour this June, he’s unsure if fans will ever see another tour from The Who.

“I don’t see it. I don’t know whether The Who’ll ever will go out again,” he told The Associated Press over Zoom.

The 80-year-old rocker has a “use-it-or-lose it-mentality” when it comes to his singing voice, so he finds it necessary to perform as much as possible, with or without The Who.

Recently, Daltry spoke with The Associated Press on the future of the band, his solo tour and his feelings on the Broadway revival of The Who’s seminal rock opera, “Tommy.”

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: What do you think of the “Tommy” Broadway revival?

DALTREY: I’m glad the album is still out there; it means a lot to me. It’s the best opera ever written. I don’t particularly like it (the musical). It’s been altered and changed. I can’t imagine cutting some of the music in “Madame Butterfly,” or some other great operas.

AP: So, you think of it as a straight-up opera, as opposed to a rock opera?

DALTREY: It’s a fabulous opera. It was tongue and cheek at the time that we called it an opera. We did take a lot of chances with it. But since living with it and playing it on stage, and having seen lots of grand opera, I saw I had one in my hands. So, I’ve come to conclusion that it’s the best opera ever written.

AP: Tell us about the tour.

DALTREY: I’m bringing a band over from the UK of eight people, a very different sounding band with different instrumentation. No synthesizers. It’s just about having a lot of fun playing different songs, and obviously some Who classics. But we do them different. So it’s just something I love to do. And people seem to like it when I take it out there. So, I’m just going to put my toe in the water.

AP: So you’ll play solo material and The Who stuff?

DALTREY: Having a band like this gives me an opportunity to do a lot of things that I’ve done over the years with different artists, like the stuff I did with Wilko Johnson 10 years ago. I will do some solo stuff, plus some covers of other people that I really admire to make a night of entertainment and fun. So many people are retiring. All the good old boys are retiring and it’s very thin out there.

AP: Is getting out there in front of an audience what keeps your voice intact?

DALTREY: That’s always been the impetus for me ever since I had my voice problems out. You’ve got to keep using it. Just like anything else in the body. You stop walking, you lose the muscles in your legs. The voice is a similar thing. If you stop using those muscles in the voice box and the vocal cords, they’ll go soft on you and you’ll lose your voice. Mine is remarkable for my age.

AP: Simon Townsend is performing with you — not his brother, The Who’s Pete Townsend. What is it like supplementing one Townsend for another?

DALTREY: Simon Townsend is always in my solo shows. Simon has always been with me. Well, he’s a totally different guy than Pete, though he’s got very similar timber to his voice that suits my voice in the harmonies. He’s a great musician, fabulous guitarist and a great guy. You know, I’ve known him for 60 years.

AP: What’s the difference being touring with The Who and hitting the road solo?

DALTREY: It’s a lot less weight on my shoulders by myself. The Who feels like, I don’t know, heavier. It’s always much more relaxed and solo shows.

AP: There’s less pressure with a solo gig?

DALTREY: Because it’s the responsibility with The Who — there’s heritage and history to maintain that always need to be in a good light, so it puts a lot of weight on your shoulders. But with this band, I’ve discovered that I can go out there and have a good time and play any kind of music that I want.

AP: Can you give me an example?

DALTREY: I was doing some solo shows on a cruise, and I got this terrible allergy just before the first show. I ended up in hospital and didn’t know whether I’d make the cruise. But I did make the cruise. Anyway, I ended up having to do three shows back-to-back, and I’m thinking I was not able to have a sound check. I’m not going to get a rehearsal. But at least these three shows I can do.

Soundchecks are very important when you’re on the road. And I thought, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll show the audience a rehearsal.” And that’s what I did. I did the show as a rehearsal and talked about what’s going on the stage, what the roadies were doing, and what everyone was doing. And they really enjoyed it. If you can get away with that, you get away with anything.

AP: With a career that began in the mid-1960s, what has been the biggest change you’ve seen over the years?

DALTREY: Age. (Laughs.) I mean, see the elders growing up with us out in the audience, but equally, we have got an enormous number of young fans, which I’m astounded by. So, it changes all the time. But obviously our audience, they’ve grown up with us, so age is the thing you notice most.

AP: Mick Jagger is on the road with the Rolling Stones at 80 years old. Will The Who ever tour again?

DALTREY: I don’t see it. I don’t, I don’t know whether The Who will ever go out again. I don’t know. I don’t think like that. If we’ve got something to do, something which was progressive and interesting and there was a reason to do it, then we would go out. But at the moment I can’t see it.

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Entertainment

Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)

Jack Nicholson did not want to go to the Oscars. It was 1976 and he was nominated for best actor in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Miloš Forman film, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a nationwide theatrical re-release on July 13 and July 16, had become a bit of a sensation — the second highest grossing picture of 1975, behind “Jaws,” and had received nine Oscar nominations.

But Nicholson wasn’t feeling optimistic. In five years, he’d already been nominated five times. He’d also lost five times. And he told his producer, Michael Douglas, that he couldn’t go through it again.

“I remember how hard I had to persuade Jack to come to the ceremony. He was so reluctant, but we got him there,” Douglas said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “And then of course we lost the first four awards. Jack was sitting right in front of me and sort of leaned back and said ’Oh, Mikey D, Mikey D, I told you, man.’ I just said, ‘Hang in there.’”

Douglas, of course, was right. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” would go on to sweep the “big five” — screenplay, director, actor, actress and picture — the first film to do so in 41 years, (“It Happened One Night,” in 1934) which only “The Silence of the Lambs” has done since. That night was one of many vindicating moments for a film that no one wanted to make or distribute that has quite literally stood the test of time.

“This is my first 50th anniversary,” Douglas said. “It’s the first movie I ever produced. To have a movie that’s so lasting, that people get a lot out of, it’s a wonderful feeling. It’s bringing back a lot of great memories.”

The film adaption of Ken Kesey’s countercultural novel was a defining moment for Douglas, a son of Hollywood who was stuck in television and got a lifeline to film when his father, Kirk Douglas, gave him the rights to the book, and many of the then-unknown cast like Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd.

DeVito was actually the first person officially cast. Douglas, who’d known him for nearly 10 years, brought Forman to see him play Martini on stage.

“Miloš said, ‘Yes! Danny! Perfect! Cast!’” Douglas said in his best Czech accent. “It was a big moment for Danny. But I always knew how talented he was.”

A Joyful Shoot

Though the film's themes are challenging, unlike many of its New Hollywood contemporaries it wasn’t a tortured shoot by any stretch. They had their annoyances (like Forman refusing to show the cast dailies) and more serious trials (they found out halfway through production that William Redfield was dying of leukemia), but for the most part it was fun.

“We were very serious about the work, because Miloš was very serious. And we had the material, Kesey’s work, and the reverence for that. We were not frivolous about it. But we did have a ball doing it,” DeVito said, laughing.

Part of that is because they filmed on location at a real state hospital in Salem, Oregon. Everyone stayed in the same motel and would board the same bus in the morning to get to set. It would have been hard not to bond and even harder if they hadn’t.

“There was full commitment,” Douglas said. “That comes when you don’t go home at night to your own lives. We stopped for lunch on the first day and I saw Jack kind of push his tray away and go outside to get some air. I said, ‘Jack, you OK?’ He said, ’Who are these guys? Nobody breaks character! It’s lunch time and they’re all acting the same way!'”

Not disproving Nicholson’s point, DeVito remembers he and the cast even asked if they could just sleep in the hospital.

“They wouldn’t let us,” DeVito said. “The floor above us had some seriously disturbed people who had committed murder.”

A lasting legacy

The film will be in theaters again on July 13 and July 16 from Fathom Entertainment. It’s a new 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films with an introduction by Leonard Maltin.

“It’s a gorgeous print and reminds me how good the sound was,” Douglas said.

DeVito thinks it, “holds up in a really big way, because Miloš really was paying attention to all great things in the screenplay and the story originally.”

Besides the shock of “holy Toledo, am I that old?” DeVito said that it was a treasure to be part of — and he continues to see his old friends, including Douglas, Lloyd and, of course, Nicholson, who played the protagonist, R.P. McMurphy.

One person Douglas thinks hasn’t gotten the proper attention for his contributions to “Cuckoo’s Nest” is producer Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014. His music company, Fantasy Records who had Creedence Clearwater Revival, funded the endeavor which started at a $1.6 million budget and ballooned to $4 million by the end. He was a gambler, Douglas said, and it paid off.

And whatever sour grapes might have existed between Douglas and his father, who played R.P. McMurphy on Broadway and dreamt of doing so on film, were perhaps over-exaggerated. It was ultimately important for their relationship.

“McMurphy is as good a part as any actor is going to get, and I’m now far enough in my career to understand maybe you have four, maybe five good parts, really great parts. I’m sure for dad that was one of them,” Douglas said.

“To not be able to see it through was probably disappointing on one side. On the other, the fact that his son did it and the picture turned out so good? Thank God the picture turned out. It would have been a disaster if it hadn’t.”

Douglas added: “It was a fairy tale from beginning to end. I doubt anything else really came close to it. Even my Oscar for best actor years later didn’t really surpass that moment very early in my career.”