The Who's Roger Daltrey on Why Death Brings Us Closer To Life

Shoshana Ungerleider: Roger, it’s a tremendous pleasure to meet you and to talk about both your work with Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America, and also your experience coming so close to death with meningitis.

You and Pete Townshend have been tremendous advocates for teenagers and young people with cancer. Your charities in the UK and here in the States are doing such amazing work. What motivated you to create them?

Roger Daltrey: My motivation was that the adolescent and young adult age group, which we now recognize as being totally different from young children and older adults, wasn’t being seen.

They’ve got their own language. The way they live is totally different. Emotionally and mentally, they’re a completely different species.

For adolescents and young adults not to have the ability to be around their peers when they’re going through a serious illness is a really sad reflection of the fact that we hadn’t noticed them. It needed to change.

I maintain that this age group has been terribly underserved when it comes to research because they haven’t been recognized as a distinct group. They’re either placed in pediatric medicine or adult medicine.

Well, cancer isn’t quite like that when it sits between those two ages. There’s this kind of fuzzy middle area.

I’m fighting for Teenage Cancer Trust and Teen Cancer America to receive a small endowment from the cancer research community because we are providing a service for those researchers. We’re identifying this age group so they can be studied as a group for the first time.

We want to have a Teen Cancer America unit in every big city across America. We’re in 42 hospitals already, and we’ve only been going for eight years. But it needs to be done now.

Once it is done, they will find that because this age group is growing so fast and their hormones are changing so rapidly, they sometimes develop incredibly rare cancers that are never seen in either of the other age groups.

Researchers may find answers to cancer that they would never have found otherwise, because this group hasn’t been isolated enough for us to see it.

Shoshana: What you’ve been able to do in the US in such a short amount of time, and of course in the UK for much longer, is absolutely incredible.

Did your experience talking to young people with cancer help you through your experience with meningitis?

Roger: Not really, no.

My experience with young people with cancer is that they never cease to inspire me. They never feel sorry for themselves, and I’ve met some really sad cases.

The thing that hurts me most is when I meet the parents. That’s another thing I could talk about for hours, because no one ever thinks about the parents.

You look into the eyes of a mother whose 16-year-old son has cancer, and if you want to see terror, that’s terror, I’ve got to tell you. The same goes for a father and his daughter.

Before we were there, within the hospital system, they didn’t know anybody else whose teenager had cancer. There was no communication and nowhere they could unload what they were feeling or talk about the emotions they were going through.

Now we have more of a communal atmosphere in our units, or hospital wards, whatever you want to call them.

They can meet other parents. They can unload. They really support one another.

That is of immense value, not only to the welfare of the parents, but also to the welfare of the young person going through it, because they see the weight being lifted from their parents.

Shoshana: I understand it took some time for you to be diagnosed with meningitis.

That’s a really difficult situation to be in, particularly when your symptoms are progressing and you don’t have answers. Can you share a little about that time with me?

Roger: I was in terrible pain. I just remember that. It was awful.

But the worst thing of all was not knowing exactly what was wrong with me.

Obviously, they did lumbar punctures and all the things they do, which didn’t bother me too much because I was so out of it.

But on about the second or third night, I just lay there. It was so awful.

I remembered something one of the physiotherapists I used to have on the road had said to me years ago, way back in the ’80s.

She was an Austrian lady who had come through the war and the whole gamut of Germany being taken over. She’d had a really tough life, but she was an amazing spiritual person.

When she used to treat me and work the knots out, she would say, “What are you holding on for? What are you hanging on to? What are you hanging on for? Just let go. It’s easy. Let go, and it becomes easy.”

Suddenly, I thought about what she had said to me.

Why are you hanging on so hard?

Because when you’re not quite sure what’s happening to you, yeah, there is a little bit of fear involved. There must be.

I lay there and thought, “What am I hanging on for?”

Suddenly, my brain went through what my life had been and what I had expected it to be.

I thought, who would ever have imagined it?

I was someone born during the war, in an air raid. I was thrown out of school at 15. I just wanted to be a singer and a musician, to make music and do the things I loved, including acting.

I never thought I could actually make a living from it.

But look at what happened. Look at what happened.

I’ve been honored by the Queen and all those things. I was thinking, “How much better could it have been, Roger?”

Then I thought about my family and all my friends, and I felt I wasn’t leaving anyone behind.

So, all of a sudden, I just let go.

I thought, “That’s all right. You can’t end it better than that.”

I didn’t see any lights at the end of a tunnel. Do I know whether I was near death? I don’t.

But I felt I was. I really did.

I seriously didn’t think I was coming out of it.

Then, all of a sudden, it was like being wrapped in cotton wool. I’ll never forget the experience. I was so calm.

I slowly started to get better from then on.

It was a long, long haul. I spent another three and a half weeks in the hospital. But I slowly started to get better.

I can still remember that feeling when I finally said to myself, “Let go,” and I actually let go.

I thought, “Well, I don’t mind. The next bit is going to be an adventure, just like the first bit.”

I’ve always looked at life as though it’s a queue. You know, it’s a very long queue.

But we’re all in it. Some of us get to the front before we realize we’re going to get to the front.

And I think that anything worth queuing for usually has something worth having at the end of it.

Shoshana: I love that. That’s an amazing metaphor, the queue. And what a powerful experience to have had and to be able to reflect on.

Roger: Well, I’ve had quite a few brushes, quite a few close calls.

I was in The Who for 55 years. That was a close call, I’ll tell you.

I survived Keith Moon.

I think I just go through life and try to treat everybody the same. And I do mean that.

Even the royalty I’ve met, I try to imagine them sitting on the toilet. We’re all the same.

I treat everybody the way I would like to be treated myself.

And I don’t hold grudges. I must say, I don’t hate anybody.

The one devastating word for humanity is “hate.” It should be struck from the dictionary and never used. It’s horrible.

There are things I dislike, but hate is a whole new level of something evil.

So I don’t hate anybody. I don’t hold grudges. I let things go very easily.

I think I was like that before the meningitis, but the meningitis really brought it home.

Why hang on? Just let go.

Let it go. Get it out of your life. If it’s dragging you down, let it go.

Shoshana: Absolutely. I have one more question for you.

What is your personal philosophy about being mortal and our relationship, if any, to something larger than ourselves?

Roger: I look at what we are as a ball of energy.

The energy of the universe basically remains constant, but energy transfers. The universe only survives and exists because it’s transferring energy all the time.

Black holes are swallowing stars. Things are being regurgitated. Things are breaking up, smashing into other things, and being reborn.

I think there’s one life, and it’s eternal.

You can’t be free of the energy of the universe. You cannot. You can never be free of it.

So my philosophy is that nothing leaves. It just moves.

This old taxi wears out, but the thing that drives it moves on somewhere else.

And it doesn’t matter where it is. It will always be part of the whole that we live in.

Shoshana: Roger, thank you so much. It’s been wonderful to chat with you, and thank you for all the amazing work you’re doing.

Roger: All right, Shoshana. All the best to you.

Shoshana: Bye.