The Who's Roger Daltrey: "I've been told I'm going blind"
31 March 2025, 11:42 | Updated: 31 March 2025, 18:54
The legendary Who frontman opened up to the audience at the Royal Albert hall last week.
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The Who's Roger Daltrey has revealed he's losing his eyesight.
The legendary mod rockers played the first of their two shows for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall last week and as reported by NME, the mic-swinging frontman opened up to the audience about his vision.
“The problem with this job is that you go deaf,” he told the crowd on Thursday 27th March. "And now I’ve been told that I am going blind."
“Thank God I’ve still got my voice. If I lost that I’ll go full Tommy," he added, referencing the band's 1969 rock opera of the same name where its main character becomes deaf, dumb and blind.
The Who - completed by guitarist and chief songwriter Pete Townshend - also played a second show on Sunday 30th March, where they treated the audiences at the historic venue to a selection of some of their biggest hits, such as Who Are You, Pinball Wizard, I Can't Explain, Substitute and My Generation.
The 2025 series - which ran from 24th-30th March witnessed performances from the likes of The Corrs; James Arthur, Frank Carter and Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols, plus included a night of comedy hosted by Micky Flanagan and a special night by Erased Tapes featuring Penguin Cafe.
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Though Daltrey still takes part in the Teenage Cancer Trust, he recently stepped down from his role curating the charity shows after 24 years because he believes he's not got long left.
“I have to be realistic," he told The Times last year. "I’m on my way out. The average life expectancy is 83 and with a bit of luck I’ll make that, but we need someone else to drive things.”
The 81-year old rocker went on: "I’m not leaving TCT – I’ve been a patron since I first met the charity’s founders, Dr Adrian and Myrna Whiteson, more than 30 years ago – and that will continue, but I’ll be working in the back room, talking to the government, rattling cages.”
Meanwhile, his bandmate Townshend believes the two rockers have a very different approach to their time in the legendary band.
Townshend has recently talked about his 1979 rock opera Quadrophenia being updated for the ballet by Sadler's Wells, with orchestration by his wife Rachel Fuller.
As reported by BANG Showbiz, asked by The Sunday Times about whether he'd be inviting Daltrey along to watch the adaptation, he replied: "I’ll certainly invite Roger to come and see it, but he might feel awkward about it because I think he feels I have an extramural life that is in competition with his. His devotion to the Who is absolute, whereas mine isn’t."
Despite Townshend's recent comments, Roger Daltrey's ambivalence towards continuing on with The Who has been well documented in recent years.
Back in 2024, the Substitute singer hinted that he was happy to move on from the band, but it was up to the guitarist.
Asked if there was any more to come from the rockers, he told The Times: "I can’t answer that. I don’t write the songs. I never did. We need to sit down and have a meeting, but at the moment I’m happy saying that part of my life is over."
Townshend may say he has less "devotion" to the Mod band, but in 2024 he did reveal he'd “met with Roger [Daltrey] for lunch a couple of weeks ago,” and that they were on “good form”.
He teased: "We love each other. We’re both getting a bit creaky, but we will definitely do something next year.
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