The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 26 February 2000
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HERE
OL' TIME ROCK 'N' ROLL Even a deaf, dumb and blind kid could tell something special was about to happen. If the warmth of the crowd didn't get you, that trademark whiz of a microphone being whirled around like a toy plane on a string was unmistakable. At the Burwood Dome in Perth on Wednesday night, to the sounds of the overture from Tommy, Roger Daltrey _ the legendary frontman of The Who _ stepped onto an Australian stage in anger for the first time since his band was kicked out of this country for drinking beer on a real aeroplane back in 1968. Daltrey may be 32 years older, and that's a symphony orchestra behind him rather than his more familiar gang of instrument demolishers, but as he belted out the opening notes of Pinball Wizard, it felt the clock had suddenly wound back faster than that mic circling his head. �It's just getting people to understand that this ain't muzak,'' explained Daltrey in his dressing room a few moments before running on stage for this first show of the Ultimate Rock Symphony Australian tour. �People don't get it. They don't understand it until they've seen it. �You know, I'm still in The Who,� he continued in his 100-mile-an-hour Cockney-rant manner. �The Who are playing a tour this year, we played just before Christmas. So I've still got my own greatest rock band in the world, I'm doing that all the time. �This is just another way of presenting the music that might just make it more acceptable to a few other people who wouldn't come to see The Who. �That's what music should be about - just trying to make people open up their minds. That's how I feel about it.'' There�s time for another quick laugh with his co-star in this show, Alice Cooper. The two are comparing the size of their noses when Daltrey hears those familiar strains from Tommy. �Fuck, they�ve started,� he shouts at the orchestra which is on a stage about 100 metres from here. �I�ve got to go.� IT�S A JOVIAL mood backstage at the Ultimate Rock Symphony. Considering the heights of fame many of the folk here have scaled at some point in their lives, there isn�t a whiff of an ego to be smelt. Quite the opposite. For example, watch Alice Cooper and Paul Rodgers (the singer of Free and later Bad Company) pose for photos with the little girls in their choir, standing patiently and forever smiling as one of the little singers takes over two minutes to get her camera working. Then there�s guitar legend Peter Frampton, also posing for photos and signing autographs, this time for a bunch of competition winners invited in during the show�s interval. �I didn�t recognise you,� one of the fans tells him. �I was looking for the long hair.� �So was everybody else,� smiles back the balding guitarist. For all the good vibes, you quickly realise there are two subjects you don't toss around loosely while in the Ultimate Rock Symphony camp. One is a concept: Cabaret. The other is a fact of life: Age. �The thing about this,� declares Gary Brooker, the voice of Whiter Shade Of Pale, �it�s not a time-warp, it�s not like reliving old glories. It�s actually people that are still able to perform extremely well. And the fact of the matter is that the music they�re playing has also stood the test of time. �So you�ve got the two things: You�ve got the songs that have lasted and, secondly, you�ve got the people who�ve managed to survive it, that have come out of it alive and well, as opposed to getting knocked by the wayside by drink, drugs or too much work. Or lack of talent.� The Australian element of the show, Billy Thorpe, couldn�t agree more. Thorpe�s having the time of his life. He and Daltrey have already become life-long pals. �They all know me a lot better than I know them because I�ve given everybody my books,� he laughs. �But I was just saying to my wife it�s so refreshing to be with people who�ve been around. I�ve been around a bit so it�s refreshing. Roger�s a joy. Alice, everybody. They�re all wonderful people.� Thorpe laughs louder as he recounts a tale about his new mate. During a break in rehearsals in Melbourne earlier in week, cast and crew headed down the beach for a dip. After a while, Daltrey turned to one of the young roadies and blurted out, �F�, I�d love a cup of tea. Oh, and scones. I haven�t had a scone in ages. I love scones.� �My mum makes a good scone,� mentioned the boy. Within an hour, Daltrey was back at the roadie�s house, sitting around the kitchen table with his mum and dad, having his tea and scones. �Nobody drinks, nobody smokes, nobody�s into dope, none of that,� observes Thorpe while taking sips from his own tea cup. (Thorpe later offers us the contents of his backstage rider: Copious amounts of beer and vodka. He too is a tea-totler.) �Everybody�s really healthy of mind and body,� he continues. �It�s fantastic. They�re into doing their gig and they�re really serious about it. Like me, they enjoy what they do and I think the audiences are in for a fantastic time. I�ve found myself standing on stage going, �Wow!� �At rehearsals last Saturday, I had nothing to do, so I had a choice. �What will I do? Sit in my hotel, go out in the 40 degree heat or go and watch Peter Frampton, Paul Rodgers and Roger Daltrey. �It�s a thrill for me. I feel very privileged to have been asked.� Thankfully, what everybody here is arguing is true. The Ultimate Rock Symphony, at least this opening Perth show, is a wonderful music experience. Any gig that can hold out bringing on an act like Alice Cooper until the second act must have something going for it. The young Australian Pops Orchestra -- ``We've renamed them the Australia Rock Orchestra,'' Daltrey joked on stage -- has a big sound but never overwhelms the core rock band in front of them. Hearing Cooper bash out Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall immediately followed by his own School's Out, accompanied by a choir of girls seemingly no older than 13, is magical. Watching Frampton, once the most famous guitarist in the world, attack his instrument with 30 years more experience is worth the admittance price in itself. Paul Rodgers, well, he's seriously pumped, and the revival of his own All Right Now is one of the highlights of the night. Is it cabaret? The evening's playlist would suggest yes, but the pace of the show, the quality of the performance, the fact that -- for half the show at least -- these people are singing their own hits, many of them anthems to the kids of the '60s and '70s, lifts it way above being a tacky revivalist rock cabaret. Can you see the difference between this and, say, The Rolling Stones running around a stage behaving like 20-year-olds? Now that's tacky revivalist rock cabaret. Whatever this is, you just have to look at the faces in the crowd, most in their 40s. Their expressions suggest that this is as close as they're ever going to get to rock 'n' roll Heaven while still here in Perth. Anyway, as Thorpe said, most of these old bastards are in pretty good shape for their age. Daltrey, who turns 56 on Wednesday, looks great, sounds great. In fact, he looks almost identical to the Roger Daltrey of the 1981 video clip for The Who classic, You Better You Bet. Daltrey says he doesn't celebrate birthdays any more. After all, he's one of the few survivors of his vintage in an industry where too much experience is often looked down upon. Just ask Peter Frampton. While his seminal 1976 album Frampton Comes Alive remains the biggest selling live record ever, Frampton had to endure more than a decade in the wilderness, just because he no longer possessed the fresh face and frizzy hair of the boy on the album cover. But things have turned around again for Frampton and he says he's been the busiest he's been in the past 10 years. He's written songs for, and appeared in, two new movies, including one by his old mate Cameron Crowe (director of Jerry Maguire). Most recently he was bestowed the greatest accolade any modern guitarist could dream of, invited into the Gibson guitar factory to help design the Peter Frampton Signature Edition Les Paul electric guitar. ``It's such an honour,'' says the bespectacled Frampton. ``Ever since I started playing guitar when I was eight years old, I never thought anything like this would happen. All the times I've fantasised, `One day I'll have a guitar named after me.' So it really is truly an honour.'' Like everyone else, Frampton is loving doing another run of shows with this Ultimate Rock Symphony tour, which travelled through both the UK and US last year (as the British Rock Symphony). ``It's just a thrill to play with all these people, obviously. We bump into each other in airports all around the world. But I've known Roger since I was 16 (Frampton's first band got its break opening for The Who on a British tour in the '60s). So this has come full circle. We're on the same stage again.'' Ironically, even though Daltrey chooses to ignore his birthdays now, it was the party for his 50th in 1994, held at Carnegie Hall, which is the direct ancestor of this tour. That night (and, due to popular demand, the following night as well), Daltrey sang the songs of his old friend and Who guitarist Pete Townshend, to the backing of a symphony orchestra. He had such a great time that he decided to take the show on the road around the UK, losing $2.6 million in the process. So when Daltrey was approached to go back out again with a symphony orchestra, producer David Fishoff told him that in no way was the tour going to be a failure. ``I told him he was mad,'' laughs Daltrey. ``I'd lost an absolute fortune on my one, just carrying an orchestra about. ``But those nights at Carnegie Hall -- when it was good and came together -- showed me what you can do with an orchestra and really good rock music. ``It doesn't work for everything. Who music, in particular, Queen music, certain Beatles stuff. I don't know whether we do the right Beatles stuff. ``There's a million other songs but you've got to pick them very carefully. Because whether it works is down to the quality in the writing of the song -- the structure.'' See, age has nothing to do with it. The Ultimate Rock Symphony plays the Wollongong Entertainment Centre on Wednesday, the Sydney SuperDome on Friday, Canberra's Bruce Stadium next Saturday (March 4), and the Sydney Entertainment Centre on March 5.
