(Credits: Bent Rej)
Sun 22 February 2026 12:00, UK
There’s a certain sense of swagger to Roger Daltrey that most rock stars need to be born with to succeed.
He didn’t have the greatest voice when the band first started, but over the years of honing his craft, he was coming out with the kind of screams that could have put any average hard rock singer to shame whenever he worked on tunes like ‘Love Reign O’er Me’. He built himself up to be the greatest virtuoso in his line of work, but there were more than a few musicians who seemed to be touched by some musical god before they even touched their instruments.
When The Who first began, though, the focus wasn’t on being the most accomplished musician in the world. It was volume and fury that they were after whenever they made their tunes, and once Pete Townshend started piling up his amplifiers well above the average setup, people started to feel the music a lot more than they heard it. But it’s not like all that volume was covering up for a lack of talent by any stretch.
In fact, Townshend was already one of the most verbose songwriters coming out of the British invasion. Not everyone would have been able to come up with the same kind of intensity in a song like ‘My Generation’ or eventually draft a concept album that told a story from back to front like Tommy, but Daltrey was always the one who was willing to give a voice to their masterpieces like ‘I Can See For Miles’.
But the story of The Who is a lot different from the usual rock and roll setup. Considering how many wild basslines John Entwistle was used to playing, Townshend could have been the “true” foundation of the band every time he played those power chords. He could leave it to Entwistle to fly off the handle whenever they needed something a bit more intricate, but they were truly blessed when they got Keith Moon in the band.
Moonie was definitely a bit cheeky when he told the band to their face that their original drummer was crap, but it’s not like he was that off the mark when he started pounding the life out of the drums. He was a storyteller half the time he played the drums, and even during sections when things would have seemed too busy, Moon never sounded out of place whenever he started tearing through tunes like ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
Townshend should be given the credit that he deserves for being a fantastic songwriter, but if you ask Daltrey, the true genius behind the band was always Moon whenever he started playing, saying, “I never met anyone like him in my life and I don’t think I ever will, and you should all be grateful for that. He was wonderful but dangerous and very frustrating. He was an uncontrolled genius, completely out of control.”
But with a band that has such heavy subject matter in the lyrics, you kind of need a character like Moon to help lighten things up. Quadrophenia isn’t a happy album by any stretch of the imagination, but even in a story that revolves around a kid disillusioned with his own life and eventually voyaging out to see and asking for salvation from an empty sky, having Moon take the microphone for ‘Bell Boy’ is the kind of levity that the band was sorely missing on their later records like It’s Hard.
It wasn’t easy keeping a band like that together every single time they went out on tour, but despite Moon being one of the most out-of-control drummers the world had ever seen, he was absolutely necessary for The Who to become the juggernauts that they turned into. No one could have imagined the band with any other drummer that keeps time, and even if Moon was off the wall in every single aspect of his life, there was nothing wrong with a little bit of mayhem in rock and roll.