Thanks a Lot Mr Kibblewhite

October 29, 2018
The lead singer for The Who looks back on frenzied tours, drug binges, band feuds and devastated hotel rooms in this raucous rock memoir. Recalling the titular school principal who told him he would never amount to anything, Daltrey recounts his rise from working-class London striver to superstar in the group that pioneered arena-rock staples such as apocalyptic sound systems, laser light shows, and guitar-smashing stage antics. Daltrey paints himself as the straight man in The Who's volatile group dynamics, tagging other bandmates with the heavy drug use and property destructionâdrummer Keith Moon, who drove a car into a swimming pool, blew up plumbing, lapsed into narcotic comas on stage, and died of an overdose, takes pride of placeâand toxic rivalries. There is affection and resentment in his portrait of Who songwriter Pete Townshend, who comes off as a brilliant but arrogant and cutting man whose abstruse concept albums lacked grounding in showbiz reality. Daltrey's musings are sometimes self-serving ("exual infidelity should never be a reason for divorce"), but they are full of vivid imagery ("all and skinny, looked like a nose on a stick") and piquant humor ("s the butterflies flew upward, they would all empty their bowels," he reports from the set of Tommy). The result is an entertaining rock ân' roll picaresque.

The lead singer of The Who tells all--sometimes laconically, sometimes archly, but always unflinchingly.Daltrey begins and ends his charming, too-short memoir with a common trope: a teacher who tells him he'll never amount to anything. He reveals a rosebud early on, too: a flannel shirt that his loving mother bought him so that he wouldn't have to suffer his school's "itchy, scratchy, horrible, bloody pullover." Toughened by the hardscrabble neighborhood in which he was raised, beaten up for his refusal to back down, Daltrey earned a reputation for bellicosity, including punching out his band mates in The Who, the band he founded and to which longtime foil Pete Townshend was a latecomer. (In one notorious row, Townshend punched first, getting knocked out for his troubles.) The author's affection for his band mates is evident, though he is less than patient with the late bassist John Entwistle, who never played at any volume other than loud and spent his considerable fortune on drugs. Along the way, Daltrey reveals a few tricks of the trade, including how he came to swing his microphone so vigorously and potentially lethally. "I started twirling my microphone not because of my ego," he writes, "but because I didn't know what to do with my hands during the solos." He also reveals how the band's considerable stagecraft evolved as a way to fill a stadium that, unlike the Beatles' audiences, was not overrun by screaming girls. Thus they made their own deafening roar, for which reason, notes Daltrey with pleasing self-deprecation, "septuagenarian Pete and me have to ask you to say that again, only a bit louder." The author praises Townshend for his indefatigability and work ethic, but it's clear he lacks neither: After all, while his mates were doing drugs, he was stripping varnish off medieval beams and building lakes on his country estate, a pastime he recommends. Throughout, he allows, he's been "a lucky bugger."Unaffected, lucid, and entertaining: One of the best rock memoirs in recent memory.

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May 1, 2018

The front man for The Who tells his story, their story, and what really happened on Keith Moon's 21st birthday.

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