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By the middle of 1968, The Who had released eight singles in the previous four years — all of which went Top 10 in the UK. Despite their success, they felt like a band adrift.
Guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend wanted to write more complex, meaningful music, while singer Roger Daltrey still felt like an outsider after a dispute over the other members’ drug use.
“The Who was just in a lost period,” Daltrey tells The Post. “I was on
‘parole,’ if you like. We made all these strange singles — ‘Pictures of Lily,’ ‘I’m a Boy,’ ‘Happy Jack’ — and I was searching for the voice of the band again.”
Daltrey found that voice with “Tommy,” the tale of a pinball-wizard messiah that not only launched the band to superstardom but gave the group a clearer and stronger voice than it ever had before.
“That was what brought the band back to its root,” says Daltrey, who brings “Tommy” to the Nassau Coliseum on Friday. “I was searching, trying to find what it needed, and ‘Tommy’ was definitely the vehicle to get me there.”
If “Tommy” gave The Who new life, Daltrey is using this tour to repay the favor, playing the album live the way it was meant to be heard for the first time ever.
“We didn’t have the facilities [then] to do all the things we’d done on the record,” he says. “We had three vocals, drums and bass guitar. We turned it into much more of a rock thing than it ever was on the album, where it’s much more classical, and there’s layers of vocals. We can now do that with modern keyboards, and my band can sing the harmonies.”
While this “Tommy” might be the most complete live version, fans will notice one glaring omission: Townshend.
“He doesn’t wanna tour because he’s having terrible trouble with his ears,” says Daltrey, referring to Townshend’s tinnitus. “I’m working on a different monitor system so we can keep the volume down.”
While Townshend stays home, completing work on a massive “Quadrophenia” box set, due out Nov. 15, that includes rare demos and previously unreleased tracks, Daltrey says that for him, a break would have been inadvisable.
“Singers can’t just have a year off at my age,” says Daltrey, 67. “The voice is like any muscle in the body. If you stop using it, it will deteriorate. I had to do something.”
While this tour breathes yet more life into “Tommy,” which has also been a film and Broadway musical, one project that’s no closer to fruition is a long-discussed biopic about late Who drummer Keith Moon. Once set to star Mike Myers, it’s been shelved due to the lack of an appropriate script.
“I’ve had so many scripts done, and they all end up as ‘Carry On, Keith,’ and I hate it,” says Daltrey, referring to the limited vision of Moon as nothing more than his partying wild-man persona. “I see him as a kind of Shakespearean character, far more in-depth and complicated. He was one of the most entertaining men I’ve ever met, but he was other things as well. All the scripts I’ve had done completely ignore that other side.”
Instead, Daltrey is pouring his attention into the other notable, complex character from his past: the “deaf, dumb and blind kid” Tommy.
“ ‘Tommy’ is the story of the human condition, and the journey of the human spirit,” says Daltrey. “The characters in ‘Tommy’ are metaphors for things happening in people’s lives, like Uncle Ernie’s malevolence, and Cousin Kevin’s spite and brutality. I’ve never seen him as a person. It’s something inside all of us.
“I relate to Tommy as I relate to myself. My feeling about Tommy is that we are all Tommy.”