Watch Roger Daltrey Cover CCR’s ‘Born on the Bayou,’ Paul Simon’s ‘The Boy in the Bubble’
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When the Who hit the road every couple of years, fans know exactly what they’re going to get when they buy tickets: All the big hits, a smatterings of songs from Tommy and Quadrophenia, and perhaps a single deep cut to appease the hardcores. When we asked Roger Daltrey about the possibility of playing the Who By Numbers obscurity “Slip Kid” in 2013, he explained why that simply wasn’t going to happen.
“It’s easy for fans to stick their heads in the sand and not understand the economics of touring,” he said. “It’s incredibly expensive to put on a show, so you have to put bums in seats. There might be 40,000 total people in America who want to hear ‘Slip Kid.’ That won’t be enough to put us on the road. That’s the problem.” (They did wind up playing “Slip Kid” eight times in the three years that followed.)
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When Daltery launches a rare solo tour, however, everything is different. These shows take place at intimate theaters, and are packed with fans who feel little need to hear “Behind Blue Eyes” for the 5,000th time. It gives Daltrey a lot of room to experiment. “With the Who — there’s heritage and history to maintain that always need to be in a good light, so it puts a lot of weight on your shoulders,” he recently told The Associated Press. “But with this band, I’ve discovered that I can go out there and have a good time and play any kind of music that I want.”
On his ongoing U.S. tour, that has meant lesser-known Who songs like “So Sad About Us,” “Real Good Looking Boy,” and “Another Tricky Day,” solo tunes like “Waiting for a Friend” and “Days of Light,” and unexpected covers. When he hit the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, on Tuesday night, he double dipped into the Creedence catalog with “Born on the Bayou” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.” A couple of songs later, the night took an even more unexpected turn when he played Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble” for the first time in his career.
The Who and Creedence Clearwater Revival played just a few hours apart on the second day of Woodstock, but they have little shared history. Fogerty is still quite honored by the tribute. “Thank you to my friend Roger Daltrey for celebrating with me!” he wrote on Instagram. “Can’t wait for us to jump on stage together sometime soon.” There’s even less of a connection between Daltrey and Paul Simon, though Simon & Garfunkel and the Who did play the Monterey Pop Festival a couple of days apart in 1967.
Daltrey continues his tour Thursday night at Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston. Maybe he’ll honor some hometown heroes and break out “Mama Kin” by Aerosmith,” “Tame” by the Pixies,” and “If It Isn’t Love” by New Edition. All of that feels fairly ridiculous, but who could have expected him to skip “My Generation,” “Pinball Wizard,” and “I Can’t Explain” in favor of a cut from Graceland?
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