Roger Daltrey
Roger Harry Daltrey (born 1 March 1944) is an English singer, musician and actor. He is a co-founder and the lead singer of the rock band the Who. Daltrey's hit songs with the Who include "My Generation", "Pinball Wizard", "Won't Get Fooled Again", "Baba O'Riley" and "You Better You Bet". He began his solo career in 1973, while still a member of the Who. Since then he has released ten solo studio albums, five compilation albums, and one live album. His solo hits include "Giving It All Away", "Walking the Dog", "Written on the Wind", "Free Me", "Without Your Love" and "Under a Raging Moon". The Who are considered one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century and have sold over 100 million records worldwide. As a member of the band, Daltrey received a Lifetime achievement award from the British Phonographic Industry in 1988, and from the Grammy Foundation in 2001. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. He and Pete Townshend received Kennedy Center Honors in 2008 and The George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement at UCLA on 21 May 2016. Daltrey has also been an actor and film producer, with roles in films, theatre, and television. Planet Rock listeners voted him rock's fifth-greatest voice in 2009, and he was ranked number 61 on Rolling Stones list of the 100 greatest singers of all time in 2008. Early life Daltrey was born on 1 March 1944, in Hammersmith Hospital, East Acton, London, the eldest of three children of Harry and Irene Daltrey. Harry Daltrey was an insurance clerk who was called up to fight in the Second World War, leaving three-month-old Roger and his mother to be evacuated to a farm in Scotland. Daltrey attended Victoria Primary School and then Acton County Grammar School along with Pete Townshend and John Entwistle. He showed academic promise in the English state school system, placed at the top of his class on the eleven-plus examination that led to his enrolment at Acton County Grammar School. Daltrey made his first guitar, from a block of wood, in 1957, a cherry red Stratocaster replica, and joined a skiffle band called the Detours, who were in need of a lead singer. They told him that he had to bring a guitar, and within a few weeks he showed up with it. When his father bought him an Epiphone guitar in 1959, he became the lead guitarist for the band and was soon expelled from school for smoking tobacco. Townshend wrote in his autobiography, "until he was expelled Roger had been a good pupil." Early on, Daltrey was the band's leader, earning a reputation for using his fists to exercise discipline, when needed. According to Townshend, Daltrey "ran things the way he wanted. If you argued with him, you usually got a bunch of fives [a hard punch]". Daltrey would explain, later in life, that