ROGER DALTREY – FOUR PHANTOM BIOGRAPHIES

Midway through December I came across a “biography” of Roger Daltrey by “James Patterson” on Amazon. What struck me was that the photograph on the cover was not Roger, albeit of a young man with blond curly hair leaning towards a microphone on a stand, and it occurred to me that the image might have been created by AI. Sample text, too, looked suspicious to me, largely because it was insufferably bland and unctuously sycophantic. 

        I drew attention to this book to three friends of mine, all dedicated and knowledgeable Who fans, all of whom agreed with my conclusions. One of them was Ed Hanel whose home on the Hawaiian island Kailua accommodates what might just be the biggest collection of Who records, books and miscellanea anywhere in the world. It is Ed’s custom to obtain absolutely anything and everything Who related – regardless of quality – to add to his collection but it came as a bit of a surprise to me that in buying a copy of this book, he came across no fewer than three further “biographies” of Roger, each of which seemed to him – and me – to be of dubious origin. So, as a service to Who fans everywhere I am posting Ed’s comments here on Just Backdated.

        Over to you Ed. 

 

FOUR ROGER DALTREY BOOKS RELEASED 23 December, 2024.

EACH MERITS ONE STAR

Roger Daltrey Biography: Discovering the Legend of Rock Stage by “Adam Young” 

No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14795988R00085. Amazon indicates that the book was originally published 24 November, 2023.

        Largely direct quotes, sometimes with minor changes, from Roger Daltrey’s autobiography, Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite. For example: Roger’s “Chapter One: The Flannel Shirt” opens with, “On a muggy Florida night in March 2007, Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa.” This becomes “Chapter One: The Flannel Shirt”, opening with “Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa on a hot Florida night in March 2007.”  The text doesn’t get any better or any more original.

        The book’s text ends with excerpts from Chapter 16 of Roger’s book. In effect, the book ends in the mid-1980’s, referencing Live Aid 1985 and noting, incorrectly just as Roger did, “That was the last of The Who for nearly a decade.” Accordingly, the book completely ignores the last 40 years of Roger’s life.

The Legend Of Roger Daltreys (sic): Great Vocals And The Struggle For Self-Expression by “Betty Jo LeClair”

No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14795989R00085.  Amazon indicates the book was originally published on 17 June, 2023.

        Largely direct quotes from Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite, sometimes with minor changes. For example, Roger’s book ends with an acknowledgement, thanking Mr Kibblewhite, “And I really mean that.” This book inexplicably changes Roger’s words to, “Mr. Kibblewhite, I am quite grateful to you.” In Chapter 19 “Brothers”, the text begins by skipping several pages of Roger’s text, then quotes Roger for several pages only to stop mid-page. At the top of the next page, the text repeats several pages (Pp. 128/9). 

The Voice That Changed Music: The Story of Roger Daltrey and His Rock Revolution, by “James Patterson” 

According to Amazon, Mr. Patterson is a published writer. No publisher, sold on Amazon. Last Page Bar Code: 1479203R00049. Amazon indicates the book was originally published on 3 November, 2024.

        The cover picture is not Roger. Additional pictures in the book are dubious at best. The text reads like notes collected for a book project at the initial research stage. For example, “After this, Daltrey’s solo career underwent a major turning point with Rough Mix ( 1977) (sic), a joint project with Pete Townshend.” A little later on, we read, “This release [Under A Raging Moon] contained the smash track ‘Parting Should Be Painless’ and had a more polished rock feel” (Pp. 38/39). Basic editing should have caught both mistakes. Roger had no role on Rough Mix and ‘Parting Should Be Painless’ is found instead on the album of the same name. Because the text is confused about Rough Mix in several references, it may be useful to clarify that Pete’s partner on this project was Ronnie Lane.

        There is a segment that addresses Paul McCartney’s releases, with no relation or connection to Roger (Pp.48-50).

Roger Daltrey Biography For Curious Kids by “Leo Whittaker”

Published by Little Big Giant, sold on Amazon. Last page Bar Code: 14796674R00066. Amazon indicates that the book was originally published 5 August, 2024.

        The cover is an animated figure that looks like a Halloween Mask, with no relationship to Roger’s appearance. Written as a children’s book. Chapters end with a “Key Takeway” such as: “Teamwork can help you achieve success” or, “Don’t be afraid to explore and find new things you love.”

        Unfortunately, there are glaring mistakes. For example, we are told that the first public performance of Tommy took place at a “massive venue” (P. 55). The first public performance is generally considered as occurring at the Institute of Technology, Bolton, UK, on 22 April, 1969. The first widely reported performance took place on 1 May at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, on Frith Street in London’s Soho. Neither venue could be remotely considered as massive. 

  Furthermore (P. 75), we read, “In Tommy [the movie], Roger played the role of the ‘Hawker’, a character who sold everything from toys to dreams.” It would be hard to cram more misinformation into one sentence. The only role for Roger in any version of Tommy is, of course, the lead character, Tommy Walker. The hawker is a pimp who offers up a woman as a cure for Tommy’s woes, perhaps not an appropriate aspect to include in a children’s book, albeit rather amusing when reflecting on the chapter’s Key Takeway: “Trying new things can lead to exciting adventures” (P. 79). 

SUMMARY

The plagiarism in two of the books and the lack of proper fact checking or editing in all four are disappointing at best. None should be considered as appropriate reviews of Roger’s career.

        The versions of these four books appear to be run off at the same time, with the same date (“23 December 2024”) and the same last page format. For reference, I received my copies here in Hawaii on 24 December, 2024, after ordering them several weeks earlier.  

THANKS A LOT MR KIBBLEWHITE – ROGER DALTREY: MY STORY

Amongst their many virtues, The Who were disgustingly honest. Jagger only told you what he wanted to tell you, Led Zep were taciturn, Floyd aloof and Bowie lied. The Who, on the other hand, were models of indiscretion, so it comes as no surprise that Roger Daltrey’s autobiography lays bare the hopeless disarray, financial under-handedness and personal angst that lingered beneath the surface while outwardly he, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon put on rock shows the likes of which haven’t been seen since Moon died and which we probably won’t ever see again.

         With no aspirations whatsoever towards being judged as an author of literary merit, Roger Daltrey tells his story, via ghost writer Matt Rudd, in an unpretentious, breezy and colloquial style. It reads a bit like a one-sided conversation, chatty, a bit confrontational, with justification for his actions seemingly an underlying motive for putting pen to paper. Not for Daltrey the navel-gazing contemplation, spiritual philosophy or rock theorising that is the hallmark of his Who partner Townshend. In keeping with his reputation for blunt assessment followed by immediate action without regard to the consequences, a trait he shared with Moon, albeit less recklessly, Daltrey wades in like a bull in a china shop, laying it on the line in a remarkably candid though at times wayward, selective and occasionally imprecise (“our 1970 single ‘Substitute’,” [page 40] indeed!) assessment of his life and career.

         First off though, it’s very short. The extent is 346 pages, but the spacing between the lines is excessive, there’s eight pages of back matter and each of the 20 chapters is separated by two or three blank pages, so the actual number of text pages is more like 280, and at a generous 300 words a page that’s only around 85,000 words, probably less, hence the padding. It took me about six hours start to finish. Implausibly, the text on the jacket flap states that the book was ‘four years in the making’, so that means Daltrey and/or his ghost writer managed only about 21,000 words a year, a snail-like pace to say the least, especially as the writing style suggests it was slapped down without much reflection apropos literacy. In contrast, the current edition of Dear Boy, Tony Fletcher’s biography of Moon, is around 297,000 words, ie 3.5 times longer – and Moon only lived to be 32.

         Then again, unlike Daltrey’s book Dear Boy wasn’t displayed in Sainsburys next to Michael Caine’s most recent book, Blowing The Bloody Doors Off, the latest in a long line of titles by the revered actor whose rags to riches story and laconic persona is not a million miles distant from Daltrey himself. So we can assume that the publisher’s target market is not the rock fan who relishes the extraordinary detail that Mark Lewisohn brings to his Beatles books, nor even rock bibliophiles who savour the literate prose of, say, Dylan’s Chronicles or Elvis Costello’s Unfaithful Music And Disappearing Ink. No, what we have here is a brash play for the mass-market, with all the promotional appearances on TV chat shows and lurid extracts in tabloid papers about illegitimate kids, health scares and – still – Moon The Loon’s destructive tendencies that this entails.

         The Mr Kibblewhite of the title is the headmaster of Acton County Grammar School at the time of Roger’s 15^th birthday in 1959 who, on expelling him over a misunderstanding involving an air gun, delivers the crushing judgement: “You’ll never make anything of your life, Daltrey.” Mr Kibblewhite had no doubt passed on by the time his errant pupil knelt before the Queen to receive his CBE in 2005, but the choice of title surely reflects the relish that the newly ennobled singer must have felt that day. Revenge must have been sweet, but it nevertheless makes for a rather clumsy title. I’d have plumped for See Me Feel Me.

         After a dramatic opening about the health scare that caused a 2007 concert to be cancelled, we begin at the beginning, in Shepherds Bush, where the Daltrey family eke out a living in circumstances not far removed from Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen. Daltrey ladles it on a bit thick, laundering his only shirt so he won’t have to wear his only sweater, which scratches. Being small, he becomes handy with his fists, a bit of a tearaway, but he’s rescued by Elvis and Lonnie Donegan so builds his own guitar and forms a group which in four years’ time, when the right four have found one another, becomes The Who.

         Much of what follows more or less tallies with the Who biographies and reference books that line my shelves, many of which are among the best ever written about a rock band. Daltrey, the eldest of the four, confirms that in many ways he was the odd one out, the least sociable, the one who stayed sober to drive the others home, and the one most likely to decline when the pills and joints were passed around. “Pete used to say that, as individuals, we were three geniuses and ‘just the singer’,” writes Daltrey, in the first of many asides that draw attention to their combative relationship, conceding that, “We were different from all the other bands. We were different from each other.” That’s certainly true.

         Daltrey was also the first to marry – and divorce – and his decision to abandon first wife Jackie and son Simon triggered a row with his father that ended in blows. When able, however, Daltrey nobly takes care of the family he left behind, just as he does the three other children that have resulted from his libidinous habits. At heart, he’s a home-loving (and home-improving) family man, the dad to an additional son and two daughters with his wife Heather, whom he married almost 50 years ago and to whom he is clearly devoted. Heather was raised in America but they discovered quite recently that her grandparents lived in Shepherds Bush two doors along from Daltrey’s father and his six sisters. “Two doors,” he writes, dumbfounded by the coincidence. “What are the chances?” Throughout the book there are many touching references to Heather, the implication being that without her Daltrey’s life would have been immeasurably poorer.

         But back to The Who. Aside from the perpetual chaos, much of it initiated by Moon, a running theme is the group’s finances, with Daltrey at pains to emphasise that he (and Entwistle and Moon but not songwriter Townshend) were nowhere near as rich as the world imagined them to be. This is partly due to Moon’s behaviour on the road, where Daltrey limits himself to one hamburger a day in the vain hope that at the end of a tour he’ll be able to bring home some money for Heather, but mainly due to the profligacy of Who managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. While acknowledging their debt to the partnership in the group’s early days, Daltrey spares no sentiment when it comes to castigating them for subsequently helping themselves to vast sums that by rights ought to have been banked by the members of the band: “If it had been up to me, we would have got rid of Kit and Chris sooner,” he writes. “We would have got rid of them the moment I knew for a fact they were ripping us off. I knew they were shifty for years…” Later on he lays into the movie Lambert  & Stamp for glossing over their dishonesty, and into Stamp for never admitting the duplicity even after they became friends in later years. 

         So Daltrey appointed a new manager, Bill Curbishley, to look after his affairs, and eventually the other three see the sense of this and so Curbishley, who’d done time after being framed for a bank van robbery he didn’t commit – all details offered here for the first time in a Who book – becomes the manager of The Who as well and they start to make proper money at last. For me, these passages are the meat of the book – the period between Who’s Next and Moon’s death – when we really do get Daltrey’s take on what was going on behind the scenes in Who central, how he and Townshend fell out over innumerable issues, how Moon screwed up and how Entwistle simply turned up and played, sometimes too loudly but always with immense skill.

         Much of this is fairly well known to Who observers but it hasn’t been laid out quite so frankly before. Some of the Moon stuff reads to me as if Dear Boy was a research tool and when Daltrey is genuinely mystified by Townshend’s behaviour he suggests we read ‘his book’, ie Who I Am, for clarification. Daltrey paints a portrait of his three bandmates as Jekyll & Hyde characters, all capable of spitefulness one moment and compassion the next. But like a grown-up, decent son who can’t escape the clutches of his errant family, Daltrey is pulled back into the fold time and again even when he knows the course being taken might end in tears. And the reason is not just financial – he knows that on a good night nothing he’d ever known could beat what he calls the ‘drive’ of The Who. “Let’s drive, we used to say before a gig. Drive. Drive. Drive. I used to feel like we were trying to drive our music through an audience to the back wall.” I know precisely what he means.

         The second half of the book is an even breezier read than the first. Moon dies on page 265 and 72 pages later – 40 years – we’ve cruised past The Who Hits 50 Tour in 2014/15 and reached the chequered flag. So an awful lot – Kenney Jones in and out (his dismissal due in no small part to Daltrey), retirements and comebacks, plenty of acting roles, a brush with Ronnie Kray, Entwistle’s death, Townshend’s arrest and release without charge over that silly child pornography business, a surprising number of health issues, appearances at the Superbowl and London Olympics, and Daltrey’s role in the Teenage Cancer Trust – are skimmed through very hastily. There’s an interesting diversion when Daltrey unwisely elects a new manager to promote a solo tour of the US, only to come a cropper and be rescued by the faithful Curbishley, and a plausible explanation as to why he and Townshend felt obliged to continue after Entwistle checked out.

         Mr Kibblewhite now becomes the 53^rd Who or Who-related book to sit on my shelves. It’s slightly ironic that this and Who I Am – the only other one actually written by a member of the group – don’t really rival the better ones – Marsh, Barnes, Fletcher, Neill & Kent, Unterberger, Blake – by these professional writers, and I can reveal that a full-length Entwistle biography by a seasoned author is now in preparation. Still, in his own in-yer-face way, Roger Daltrey has added meaningfully to my Who library, not so much in quantity, nor even quality, but in offering his distinctive point of view and shining an even brighter light on The Who’s troubled internal affairs. If the best that can said of his book is that it is disgustingly honest, then that’s not really a bad thing.

        

        

ROGER DALTREY, Melody Maker Interview from April, 1973

Towards the end of March 1973 I was driven by Who PR Keith Altham to the village of Burwash on the Kent-Sussex border where Roger Daltrey occupied The Manor House. My interview with Roger was part of the promotional exercise for Roger’s first solo album, Daltrey, released that April, and in many of the interviews surrounding its release Roger was referred to as ‘Squire Daltrey’, which evidently displeased him. Keith asked me not to do this, nor to write about the estate that Roger owned and I was happy to go along with this.

Nevertheless, I remember looking around the estate, the land, the lakes, the outhouses and, of course, the Manor House itself. Above the fireplace in the spacious living room was a huge oil painting of Roger’s head and shoulders, the Roger of the Tommy years, all golden curls, bare chest and suede coat with long tassels. Unlike the other three members of The Who he was a picture of health, tough-looking, without an ounce of fat, his skin healthily aglow, clearly a man who preferred the outdoors to the smoky clubs favoured by his bandmates. In this regard I remember thinking that Roger was the odd man out in The Who, slightly apart from the other three, but it was his drive and ambition that kept the wheels turning, a bit like McCartney in The Beatles and Jagger in the Stones. If Pete was the brains in The Who, John its musical muscle and Keith the engine room, Roger was its pilot. Someone had to keep a clear head up there on the bridge to steer the ship.

This is what subsequently appeared in Melody Maker, dated April 7, 1973 under the headline: GIVING IT ALL AWAY.

Next week Roger Daltrey follows in the footsteps of his Who colleagues Pete Townshend and John Entwistle by releasing his first solo album.

Most of the material on the set is written by David Courtney and Leo Sayer, and there’s little resemblance to The Who in any of the songs. It’s a quieter, relaxed Roger singing over strings and acoustic guitar. The album is called Daltrey, and there’s also a single, ‘Giving It All Away’.

“It was the Tommy opera we did with Lou Reisner that made me think seriously about a solo album,” said Roger. “It was just nice to get out of the group environment for a change and learn more about singing. I wanted to sing other people’s songs and this gave me, as a singer, a lot more scope and when I get back to signing with The Who it can only help the group.

“I definitely wanted it to be different from The Who, and I don’t think The Who would touch anything that’s on the record so therefore it doesn’t take away from The Who. I couldn’t touch any  rock and roll on the record because I can’t do that any better than I can do it with The Who, or if I could then it should be done with The Who.”

Adam Faith has produced the album – a partnership that stemmed from Faith visiting the Daltrey homestead to take advantage of the studio Roger has built in his barn. “He comes from the same area of London that I came from and you could say we’re old mates. We really got on well.

“I haven’t written any material for the album myself because I wanted to see what it was like singing other people’s stuff. Hopefully I might write some for my next album, but I will really have to force myself because it doesn’t come naturally to me. Through learning things from this album, I hope it will come a lot easier.  I’ve tried writing and come up with some ideas, but usually with me they never get any further.”

It’s doubtful whether the songs will ever get a live airing unless The Who try them out. Roger doubt that they will. “I feel if I did a live show with them I would be betraying The Who. The stage part of me belongs to The Who and I feel strongly about that because the main thing I care about is The Who. The songs don’t really suit chucking the mike around my head, do they?”

Roger is confident the album will sell, even though John Entwistle’s albums haven’t broken any records in this country. “I think it will do the Who some good if it’s a hit, and I think there’s a market for my album. There’s a very narrow market for John’s kind if stuff, but if mine gets airplay then I think it will do well.”

Conversation turned to The Who’s current activities – or inactivity – and Roger explained the silence we’ve experienced from this one mighty power of rock. “We’re waiting to finish the studio we’re building and then we’ll do our new album. Then we’ll be back on the road but not until we finish the new material.

“We’ve really got to change because the last few gigs we’ve done have felt meaningless to us. We’ve enjoyed them but we’ve milked all the material so much now there’s nothing more to come out of it. We’ve been criticised for playing the same stuff over and over again, but I know that whenever we do play it we do it bloody well. The other week in the Hague when we played with various other top bands I know that we showed them we were the governors.

“And you’ve got to remember that journalists who criticise see us, maybe, three times a year. The kids see us probably once in two years and that’s hard for us to understand as well.

“We needed a year off to follow our noses and we took it to do things we wanted to do on our own. We’ve been on the road for seven years now and because you are so tightly knit within the group, you lose track of things happening outside of it. It’s probably going to be difficult to get back together but I’m sure the break will have done us good.

“Whatever people say, there’s no possibility of The Who ever breaking up. We’re probably tighter now than we have ever been and more determined to do things as a band. I don’t think the kids will forget about us because we haven’t worked because we’re not that type of band.

“Even if they have forgotten I think we’ll grab them back gain. It hasn’t been that long really. Zeppelin didn’t work for 18 months once upon a time, and there’s a few others who haven’t worked for a while.

“We’ve done a bit of recording in the past year but we weren’t getting the sort of thing we were after. That’s why we built our own studio. We weren’t really happy in most of the studios we’ve worked in in London. Hopefully our own will work… we’ll have to make it work because it’s our last chance.

“I think maybe we’re a bit choosy but that’s Pete for you. I don’t give a toss where we work but I’m sure we’d be happier in our own place. We were getting an ‘Olympic’ sound with using their studio before, and I think for The Who to have an ‘Olympic’ sound is a bad thing to happen. Most bands aren’t as fussy as The Who when it comes to making records.”

The Who’s actual output over the years has been pretty small compared with some bands, but Roger maintains that everything they have recorded has been worthwhile. “That’s more than you could say for a lot of bands. We don’t believe in churning them out as quick as we can.”

Of all the artists who took part in [Lou Reisner orchestral version of] the [Tommy] opera, Roger seems to have come out the  best, probably because it presented more of a challenge to him than any of the others and because he played the title role. He still talks about it with genuine enthusiasm.

“I really loved doing the opera and had a good time making it and singing it live. It was great to work with that many people. The only bad thing about it was having to do it in the Rainbow.

“I’ve always liked orchestras and this was the first time I’ve worked with one. I’ve got an offer to go to do Tommy in Australia but I don’t want to go there because I don’t like Australia. There’s a charity performance of it in New York at the end of April and I’ll do that one. The whole cast is going, I think, even Pete. I think the whole affair did an awful lot for people’s careers.

“I suppose Tommy is dragging on a bit at the moment, even though I still like it. I’d still be happy to play it on stage with The Who because for a singer it’s the most perfect piece of music to sing, but I can understand why the group got bored with it.

“It’s been dragged out by our management which isn’t our fault, but it’s supposedly for our own good, our own financial good, but is that everything?”

Lastly, I asked Roger whether he had any views on the current teenybop revolution – and whether it would overthrow groups like his own.

“Good luck to them. It’s very healthy for the business. A kid has to start somewhere and this guarantees that rock and roll is going on for another ten years. Even if they’re not singing rock and roll, it will go to rock and roll.

“Slade are rock and roll, and I think kids will move along to a gradual process, along with people like [David] Cassidy, moving to Slade and ending up at groups like the Floyd and The Who. Slade are a good band.”

ROGER & WILKO - Going Back Home

Can it be that Roger Daltrey’s singing career has finally turned the full circle and his time with The Who was merely an aberration? Back before Pete started messing around with riff-driven songs about teenage angst and graduated to rock operas, Roger was an R&B singer through and through, thoroughly at home on those songs from the 1965 My Generation album like ‘I Don’t Mind’, ‘Please Please Please’ and ‘I’m A Man’, not to mention the out-takes from the album sessions that surfaced later like ‘Shout And Shimmy’ and ‘Anytime You Want Me’. And all the way along it often seemed to me that he was at his happiest singing those rock’n’roll standards The Who covered, like ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Shakin’ All Over’ and ‘Road Runner’. Then there was Pete’s ‘Long Live Rock’, a curio really, but it wouldn’t be out of place on this record Roger has made with Wilko Johnson, ailing guitar hero of Dr Feelgood whose back catalogue is plundered by the pair of them in some style and plenty of swagger.

         Indeed, the album’s opener and title track ‘Going Back Home’ doesn’t sound a million miles away from ‘Long Live Rock’. Is it sacrilege to suggest that this material suits Roger’s voice better than anything Pete has written since, well, maybe Quadrophenia, or at least since Keith died? That voice, together with Wilko’s trademark stabbing, choppy, echo-free guitar style makes for a rollocking good album, gritty and energetic, foot down, head for home and don’t spare the horses, as you would expect from seasoned professionals like Roger and Wilko, alongside Blockheads über-bassist Norman Watt Roy and drummer Dylan Howe, who have made up Wilko’s most recent touring band.

         Going Back Home was recorded in seven days – and there’s nothing wrong with that – at Roger’s home studio at East Burwash on the Kent-Sussex Border, its speedy gestation suggesting an element of urgency in view of Wilko’s fragile state of health. It’s long been a contention of mine that music recorded quickly conveys an urgency that is lost when sessions drag on for months and this urgency can only be good for the music, well music like this anyway, ten no-nonsense old fashioned (Maximum) R&B-styled Feelgood and Wilko originals plus a full-bodied stab at Dylan’s scornful ‘Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window’.

         It’s no surprise that Wilko and Roger share a mutual admiration for Johnny Kidd & The Pirates whose influence can be felt in both The Who and Dr Feelgood, and some years ago this became a topic of discussion for them when they met at some awards do. It evidently resulted in a plan to record together at some vague time in the future. Then Wilko’s diagnoses made it a matter of urgency, hence Going Back Home and the live show at Shepherds Bush that accompanied its March release.

         I’ve been listening to Going Back Home for a month now, usually on the train between Guildford and Waterloo, and come to like it a lot. There is a vintage feel to the record which in many ways points to the fact that these two were made for one another. Roger is certainly at home on the two Feelgood classics ‘All Through The City’ (I particularly like hearing him enunciate ‘… See you in the morning, down by the jetty’) and ‘Sneaking Suspicion’ but he’s also very effective when he takes his foot off the gas to slow down for ‘Turned 21’. Wilko’s short sharp solos are as invigorating as ever, for which we can all give thanks, and Steve Weston, another Southend-on-Sea marvel, gives it his all on harp too.

         Roger himself probably put it best when asked to describe the album for Uncut magazine: “Fast, three-minute r&b songs,” he said. “No bullshit.” Great job lads, and here’s to Wilko staying strong for a good while yet.