The Who’s Roger Daltrey has expressed mixed emotions over making a new album with the band. This is despite the fact that Pete Townshend is currently working on a new project for the Who.
“No record market anymore”
Roger Daltrey admitted that the last album made by the Who cost him money. He said that making albums/records is a struggle, with streaming becoming more prevalent.
“The last Who album cost me money to make”, the singer revealed.
I don’t know if I’m gonna carry on for that very long, because at the moment, you know, we’re all out of work. I’ve got savings, but they won’t last forever. We’re much better off than most, but it won’t go on forever and I can’t go on paying to make music. That’s a fool’s game, you know?”
“There’s no record market any more. Everybody talks about streaming, but have you seen what artists get from that? It’s a joke. It was great to have an album out there, something that the fans liked, and I was really proud of it”.
He also added, “But far too much money was spent making it. It went out of control completely and ended up costing me money. I can’t go on doing that”.
“So incredibly adept, musically”
On the other hand, Daltrey hailed his bandmate from The Who, Pete Townshend.
He said, “At the same time, I love exploring Pete’s songs. He’s such a different writer and so incredibly adept, musically.
Adding, “He’ll present me with demos that are very patchy on the vocal side, because he knows that I’ll get to the heart of it. It’s sometimes like entering a cave with no torch and four matches”.
The singer also explained his approach to the new Townshend material in detail.
“I’ll do a lot of takes in the dark before I find the glimmer of where it’s going. In the initial stages of a demo I’ll approach the song as though I’m painting a picture. It’s a canvas and I’m sketching and sketching, gradually building up what I feel a song needs to be in order to touch people”.
The Who’s cancelled tour
This all comes after the band confirmed the cancellation of their tours of the UK and Ireland for this year, due to the pandemic.
