Roger Daltrey says he’s feeling the march of time, revealing to a concert audience that he’s going deaf and blind.
The frontman for The Who opened up at a gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall recently, telling fans that he’s losing his sight and hearing.
“The joys of getting old mean you go deaf,” Daltrey said at a concert for the Teenage Cancer Trust last Thursday, reports Sky News. “I also now have got the joy of going blind.”
“Fortunately I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy,” the 81-year-old continued, referencing the fictitious Tommy Walker from the band’s 1969 album-turned-rock opera Tommy, who is deaf, mute and blind.
Daltrey has been a longstanding patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust and has spearheaded the Royal Albert Hall concerts since they began in 2000, raising funds to help U.K. teens facing cancer.
More than 60 years on stage as part of one of the world’s most successful rock bands has taken its toll on the singer and this isn’t the first time Daltrey has revealed issues with his hearing.
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In 2018, he told a Las Vegas concert crowd that he is going “very, very deaf,” and had some advice to fans and fellow musicians.
“Take your f–king earplugs with you to the gigs,” he said at the time, according to TMZ.
More recently, he told The Times that he’s come to terms with aging and that he’s “ready to go at any time.”
“My dreams came true so, listen, I’m ready to go at any time,” he told the outlet last year. “My family are all great and all taken care of.”
“You’ve got to be realistic,” Daltrey continued. “You can’t live your life forever. Like I said, people my age, we’re in the way. There are no guitar strings to be changed on this old instrument.”
Guitarist Pete Townshend, 79, also joked about his knee replacement at the event but said it was nothing compared to what the patients in the Teenage Cancer Trust deal with.
“Maybe I should auction off the old one (knee),” he said. “Elton John had one done, and he wears his as a bracelet. Unfortunately, mine’s in three bits.”
The Who formed in 1964 before breaking up in 1982. They played a few reunion gigs together in the mid-’80s before reuniting in 1996.
For the last couple of years, Daltrey and Townsend have talked about nearing the end of their careers.
“We’re both old,” Townshend said in a 2023 interview with The Sun. “That in itself has a downside because, apart from what you can or can’t do on the stage, when you finish touring, you come back to normal life — whatever it is that you decide to do to fill your time away from the road — and it’s harder and takes longer.
“So life slows down because it’s so much harder getting up and down the stairs, but it also speeds up.”
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