A Conversation with Roger Daltrey – HuffPost 11.4.13
Mike Ragogna: Roger, how are you?
Roger Daltrey: Fine, Michael, how are you?
MR: I’m very good, thank you, and thanks for taking the time for this interview. You’ve been so busy lately, especially with Who Cares, the Teen Cancer America Foundation that you and Pete [Townshend] put together. How did it get started?
RD: Well, Teen Cancer America is a foundation that we started with the same name as the foundation called the Teenage Cancer Trust that both Pete and I have been supporters of for the past twenty-three years. What the Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America aim to do is to provide specific hospital facilities specifically for teens between the ages of thirteen and twenty-three with cancer. Not medicine, facilities. Environmental support so that they can be more closely knit communities within the system. At the moment, the emergent system when they talk about teenagers and young adolescents and young adults, they talk about a system where everybody’s lumped together from the age of thirteen to thirty nine, and I would suggest to you that 13-year-olds have got nothing whatsoever in common with a 39-year-old and the other way around. It can only be detrimental in a psychological way to their health when they’re struggling to get through this dreadful, pernicious disease.
MR: Right. Well what’s interesting, also, is that within the culture, you’re pointing out something that lots of people aren’t aware of. When cancer is detected in one’s youth, it’s treatable in different ways and should be approached in very different ways.
RD: And, of course, ultimately, although we don’t do the medicine, by isolating the group you will be able to focus the medicines much, much more. It’s written that because Teen Cancer Trust was there, pediatric oncologists decided to give a 19-year-old with Leukemia a pediatric dose of chemotherapy, and the success rate of curing that particular leukemia now in that age group has improved something like twenty-five percent. That could not have happened in the old system, because up until the age of sixteen, you’re a child, and then you become an adult, that’s how it works. That’s how they delineate in the medical system.
MR: I imagine there’s a lot of joy with the positive results, but has it also been frustrating as far as the educational process?
RD: It’s frustrating for me because it’s very hard for me to understand your system. It’s so different from ours because we have a social system. It’s kind of been very beneficial for us because now we can compare figures with places that have been through our system and been through the system before we were there or while we were there. It’s proving quite an eye opener and there is quite significant improvement on the test rate of the medicines.
MR: There’s a UCLA connection here, right?
RD: Yeah, we had our first two in UCLA, one inpatient and one outpatient. We’re very proud of that. An outpatient’s going into Yale, they recognized the need, and we’ve got twenty-five other hospitals we’re in talks with. What we’re trying to do is to make this a gold standard that hospitals take people with cancer will use for this age group. They’re certainly competent and they’ve got the facilities for it.
MR: You’re focused on keeping things within the community, but you’re also promoting things like better living and eating healthily. You even have recipes on your website.
RD: [laughs] I think we’ve got to be realistic about the way medicine’s going and the cost of everything and the more we’re educated to be responsible for our health, the better. The decision to go Allopathic was a political decision. Previous to that, you had your medicine men and allopathic medicine and it all lived very comfortably together. I’m a great believer in homeopathy myself. There’s no doubt that acupuncture has its benefits. These things should all have their place and they should all work together. The allopathic side wants to eradicate the other side. I think that’s nonsense. They lead us into the belief that they can do everything, but every drug they give you has a shadow. Some of these alternative treatments from the homeopathic world, some of the kinesiologists who diagnose these can really help the body. There’s no doubt about that in my mind. They all say, “Oh, no, it can’t be, it’s all sugar tablets,” but it’s only because they don’t understand that view of energy. That’s my opinion, anyway.
MR: Right, and the mind-body connection. And the main problem probably being you have multiple industries competing for the same dollar.
RD: That’s one of the problems. Like I say, what’s so great about this is that the treatment is getting quite significant improvement in the success of their medicine.
MR: What can a person who’s reading this interview do to help?
RD: Talk about it. Discuss it in your communities and think about someone who’s thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, think if you were that age and if you’d have been diagnosed with cancer. Cancer is the number one killer disease in teenagers. They tend to suffer more than most from that diagnose because they’re so active in the sports arena and those other things. They also tend to get very rare cancers. Cancer in teenagers is very rare, but it’s still the number one disease killer of teenagers.
MR: That’s a very little known fact, Roger
RD: You’ve got to remember in every high school in every state, you’ll have two people, a boy and a girl, going through it with cancer. It’s not quite like that, but those are the numbers; it’s one in four hundred twenty girls and one in three hundred sixty boys will get it.
MR: Those statistics are frightening. Do you see progress that’s been made in the last few years, especially since your organization has come into play?
RD: We’ve only been going two years, but we’re doing remarkably well. We’ve got to raise a lot of money, but there are foundations over here that, again, the more publishing that we can get, they’ll recognize the sense of this issue and I’m sure we’ll get there.
MR: What’s nice is that people like you and Pete have large voices in whatever causes you get behind because of your celebrity and your musical credibility; you’re musical icons. I don’t want to distastefully segue into something else, but there is more news on your front. The Who has a new four-disc box set plus a triple-disc and double-disc versions of Tommycoming out on November 12. Interestingly, considering our earlier topic, that rock musical basically centered around the plights of a young person.
RD: Well, I think it’s the plight of us all.
MR: Right, in the bigger sense. But after all these years, when you look at a work like that and the impact that it’s had generation after generation, it’s obvious there’s something special about that music. What do you think about the work Tommy after all these years?
RD: I don’t know. There’s a wonderful kind of knowing naiveté about it, but it works. It speaks to something inside of us and that’s all I know. I can’t analyze it any more than that. Everybody’s on the same inner journey, and that’s what Tommy has always been about for me.
MR: In the beginning, when you guys first recorded and released the work, did it feel like you were on the track of an important piece?
RD: We didn’t really care. We just went into the studio with the ambition to put out as good a music as we could do and we didn’t really worry about whether it was going to be successful. We put it out there and it catches the public’s imagination.
MR: And it’s still resonating. This is still one of the essentials.
RD: Well it seems that way. Again it was just the chemistry of the time, something in the stars, who knows?
MR: The Who also has created other amazing works like Quadrophenia, et cetera, and classic anthems, contributing to rock and popular culture in a historically important way. You’ve got to feel proud about that.
RD: Of course, I do. And I feel more proud than anything that there’s something about The Who’s music that doesn’t seem to date us. I can’t explain what that is but the records still sound as fresh today as when they were made. I don’t know the reason for that, I can’t analyze why that is apart from that a lot of the stuff that we do is kind of classic.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
RD: I haven’t got a clue. [laughs] I do not understand the music industry today. It’s so different from what we did in those days, it’s such a different world now.
MR: Is there something on the creative level that never really changes?
RD: Hang onto your publishing and dare to be different.
MR: “Dare to be different.” Nice. Well, The Who was definitely different, yet people all over the world and over the decades have learned a lot from you, taken your works and grown with them. In a way, you’re the mentors of a couple of generations of music.
RD: We got lucky.
MR: [laughs] Is there anything big for Roger Daltrey in the near future? Maybe some more acting?
RD: I’m doing a few things, but I don’t like to talk about anything I’m doing until it’s done because I’m just as likely to say, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
MR: Roger, are there plans to develop more Teen Cancer America facilities in America?
RD: We’re talking to twenty-five hospitals at the moment and we’ve only been going two years. There are a lot of plans, but ultimately, we need good will and cooperation from the hospital administrations. We need them, if they need to, to come and see what we do and how we do it in Britain, because that’s our flagship. Teen Cancer America has got the same ambitions as Teenage Cancer Trust. When the medical staff understand what they do, they are usually a hundred percent gung-ho for it. But it can only happen through the good will of the hospital administrators and the doctors.
MR: Are there other artists and music industry supporters who can help?
RD: Well, I’m hoping. The whole music industry is kind of founded on the backs of teenage support. This is something that the music industry, I think in particular, as well as certain other sections of the economy, are hugely focused on–teenagers. I think it’s one of the ones that should look at giving something back.
MR: Beautifully said, never thought of it like that before. And of course, music is supposed to be a great healer.
RD: That’s right.
MR: All right, I don’t want to take any more of your time, Roger. This has been wonderful and I do appreciate it. All the best of luck with Teen Cancer America, Teenage Cancer Trust, and everything in the future.
RD: Michael, thank you very much.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne