LEGENDARY rocker Roger Daltrey has opened up about his own cancer diagnosis while helping a fundraising campaign at the Royal Albert Hall.
The 81-year-old musician, famed for fronting The Who, took to the stage this week with the long-running British brand for a string of annual performances they hold to help raise funds for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
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During the performance, Daltry shared his own health woes – revealing he’s going blind while still maintaining his sarcastic wit.
Standing on stage in purple-tinted glasses, Daltry said: “The joys of getting old mean you go deaf, I also now have got the joy of going blind.
“Fortunately I still have my voice, because then I’ll have a full Tommy.”
Tommy is the name of the band’s iconic 1969 rock opera album, which follows the story of Tommy Walker, an army soldier who later becomes deaf, dumb and blind.
Bandmate Pete Townshend, 79, also joked he was “Superman” now after getting his knee replaced, and told the audience: “Maybe I should auction off the old one. Elton John had one done, and he wears his as a bracelet. Unfortunately, mine’s in three bits.”
However, he added that, compared to what those who need the Teenage Cancer Trust, what he was dealing with was “a piece of p**s”.
The Who have been central to 25-years of fundraising campaign concerts, particularly Daltrey, who is a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Spearheading every annual concert series since its launch in 2000, the concerts have raised over £32million, helping bankroll 28 specialist units in the NHS, care workers and specialist nurses.
However, the band confirmed their run would be ending this year, although the annual Royal Albert Hall concerts will continue.
Instead, the charity is working with guest curators in order to keep the event going.
The announcement this year would be their last was made in January, just short of two years after the band telling The Sun that they might be preparing for retirement:
“It’s difficult to make a decision going forward, to say we’re going to do this or that, because we don’t know how well we’re going to be or how fit we’re going to be,” Townshend told us in 2023.
“We’re both old. 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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