In celebration of the one and only Roger Harry Daltrey’s milestone 80th birthday, I’m devoting my March posts to his often criminally underrated solo work. But first, let’s get started with lauding our birthday boy!
Roger Harry Daltrey was born 1 March 1944 in Hammersmith Hospital of East Acton, London. His mother Irene, a polio survivor, was told she’d never have any babies, so Roger’s creation was a true medical miracle. Irene and her husband Harry later had two daughters, Gillian and Carol. Low odds of conception don’t mean no odds!
Sadly, Roger’s baby sister Carol died of breast cancer at age 32. His other sister Gillian had to go away to a convalescent home in childhood when she was diagnosed with a heart murmur.
When he was three months old, Roger and his mum were evacuated to a farm in Scotland. Many people falsely believe the Blitz ended in 1941, but Germany was still bombing England. Roger was born in the third and most brutal month of Operation Steinbock, which lasted five months and was known as the Little Blitz. His dad was away at war, so they were particularly vulnerable. Roger’s paternal uncle died in a Japanese POW camp in Burma.
Roger went to Victoria Primary School and Acton County Grammar School. At the latter school, which was for academically promising students, he met Pete Townshend and John Entwistle. It wasn’t easy to grow up in a country recovering from a major war, esp. in a working-class family, but Roger didn’t feel consciously deprived. He just lived what he knew.
In 1957, Roger started getting into music, like many other young people coming of age in postwar Britain. He made his own guitar and joined The Detours as a lead singer. Two years later, his dad bought him a more professional guitar which enabled him to become the band’s lead guitarist.
That same year of 1959, on his fifteenth birthday, Roger was expelled from school for smoking, truancy, being disruptive, and being the unofficial school tailor. He was also falsely accused of shooting an air gun. Roger took it to school, but a friend fired it, not him. The pellet ricocheted off a wall and hit another boy in the eye, blinding him. British schools of the era being what they were, Roger was beaten. In his memoir, he said, “That teacher should have been reported for sexual abuse.”
In honour of the headmaster who told him he’d never amount to anything, he entitled his 2019 memoir Thanks a Lot, Mr. Kibblewhite. Roger hadn’t particularly liked school, since he had to move two miles away from all his old friends instead of starting with a crowd of people he already knew. He was also bullied by older boys on account of a jaw injury that made his face look strange. They also treated first-year boys like their servants, and found an easy target in Roger.
Roger didn’t feel like he learnt anything serious, and failed to find any teachers he connected with. He frequently played hooky, since he felt so profoundly unchallenged. During his second year, he finally stood up for himself against the bullies by hitting one with a chair, and they left him alone.
Over the years, Roger has been very candid about having problems with anger management when he was younger. His temper caused serious trouble with The Who later on, to the point the other guys wanted to kick him out. Since the band meant so much to him, he made a big effort to control his evil inclination as much as possible.
Roger began working as an electrician’s mate, but asked the employment agency for a new job six weeks later. He was sent to work as a tea boy in a computer cabinet factory, which turned out to be in a pathetic shed with old coke boilers. He slowly advanced through the ranks, but all along his heart belonged to rock, and eventually he quit to become a full-time musician.
In 1964, Roger married his girlfriend Jackie after getting her in trouble, and their son Simon was born later that year. Four years later, they divorced. He began dating Heather Taylor in 1968, and they married in 1971. Roger was very honest when he proposed, and said he wouldn’t live like a monk while on tour. That arrangement obviously worked for them, since they’re still happily married.
Roger has eight known children. His kids by Heather are daughters Rosie and Willow and son Jamie. Sadly, given the treatment of unmarried mothers in that era, his three daughters from one-night stands were put up for adoption. His son Mathias is from an affair with Swedish model Elisabeth Aronsson. In his infamous 1979 High Society interview, he described himself as a walking penis back in the day! (If you read that interview, you’ll never see baby oil and whipped cream the same way again!)
To date, he has fifteen grandkids.
In addition to his amazing work as The Who’s lead singer, Roger also had a solo career from 1973–1992, and has acted in dozens of films and TV shows. Roger donates a lot of his money to charity, esp. the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Roger kept his age amazingly well, looking decades younger until his sixties. Some of the ladies on my estrogen Who lists joked he slowed down the aging process by all that high-speed microphone twirling around himself!
We’re so lucky Roger is still with us and that he’s given us so many decades of wonderful music. Roger, may you have a very happy birthday and live as long as Moses!
Welcome to My Magick Theatre 