It’s the kind of song most artists would dream of having in their catalogue – an era-defining, chest-thumping anthem with one of the most famous screams in rock history. But for Roger Daltrey, it’s one song in The Who’s discography that he would happily never sing again.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2018, the frontman expressed his true feelings about ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’, saying: “That’s the only song I’m bloody bored sh**less with.”
The eight-minute closer from the band’s 1971 album Who’s Next, stitched together from the abandoned Life House rock opera, was eventually turned into one of their biggest crowd-pleasers.
It reached high positions in several charts, achieved critical praise, was considered one of Rolling Stone’s The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and got covered by several artists – such as Van Halen, whose version earned the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart. But Daltrey didn’t seeem to agree.
“All the other [songs] I can approach like I’m singing for the first time,” he explained.
“I don’t know what’s happening there psychologically. Maybe it’s the song, but I never seem to be in the same pocket where I’m singing it for the first time.”
And while that particular track just wore thin over time, there’s another one he actively avoids – and not just because of how it sounds. ‘Music Must Change’, from 1978’s Who Are You, holds a darker place in the band’s history.
Originally, Keith Moon couldn’t even record drums for the track: “Keith couldn’t play the drums to it,” Daltrey revealed on The Howard Stern Show in 2015. “It was in a three-four. Keith couldn’t play normal drums. Keith could play great Moon drums, and that was it.”
A session drummer was eventually brought in, and the band made it work, but Daltrey still regrets how the whole thing went down.
Only weeks after the album’s release, Moon died of a drug overdose. When ‘Music Must Change’ was finally brought back into setlists in 2002, tragedy struck again. Bassist John Entwistle died in his hotel room in Las Vegas the night before the first show of the tour.
“We were going to do it in the show, then John died” Daltrey recalled. It’s why, to this day, he sees the song as “cursed.”