Lenox — When Roger Daltrey came to Tanglewood in 2018, he was there mainly to sing all of the songs from the rock opera “Tommy.” That didn’t take long, so he kept going, getting to pretty much every one of the Who hits fans had been hoping to hear that day. The band was tight, and the mix on the lawn was so good you could hear the lyrics. Daltrey returns to Tanglewood on Saturday, June 22, this time with a “semi-acoustic rock-based band,” performing Who hits, as well as Who rarities and solo hits.
But don’t ask for a setlist.
“I’m not gonna talk about songs,” Daltrey told Billboard Magazine this month. “Too many people reveal songs. There’s no surprises left with concerts these days, ’cause everybody wants to see the setlist. I’m f***ing sick of it.”
And yet he doesn’t mind divulging his setlist after the fact, so he posted on his own Facebook page all the songs from his Keswick Theatre show on June 10:
- Let My Love Open the Door
- Freedom Ride
- Who Are You
- Waiting for a Friend
- After the Fire
- Days of Light
- Giving It All Away
- The Kids Are Alright
- Another Tricky Day
- Squeeze Box
- Won’t Get Fooled Again
- Going Back Home
- As Long as I Have You
- Baba O’Riley
- Have You Ever Seen the Rain
- Without Your Love
This is not Daltrey’s Tanglewood setlist, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect. What you can expect is great songs and a lot of spontaneity, because that is the way he likes it. “I’m out there to have a good time,” he promised Billboard.
Daltrey spilled some of the on-stage details to the Associated Press this month:
I’m bringing a band over from the U.K. of eight people, a very different sounding band with different instrumentation. No synthesizers. It’s just about having a lot of fun playing different songs, and obviously some Who classics. But we do them different.
Here is the lineup:
- Simon Townshend (Pete’s younger brother) on guitar
- Violinist Katie Jacoby
- Billy Nicholls on mandolin and vocals
- Jody Linscott on percussion
- Guitarist Doug Boyle
- Bassist John Hogg
- Harmonica player Steve Weston
- Geraint Watkins on keyboards and accordion
- Drummer Scott Devours
“Having a band like this,” he explains, “gives me an opportunity to do a lot of things that I’ve done over the years with different artists, like the stuff I did with Wilko Johnson 10 years ago. I will do some solo stuff, plus some covers of other people that I really admire to make a night of entertainment and fun.”
And there you have it. Daltrey is an entertainer, and he knows how to please an audience. There is, however, one thing his fans desire that he declines to deliver on this tour: his famous scream. One of the two or three most famous screams in rock ‘n’ roll history occurs midway through the song “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and some people attend Daltrey’s shows mainly to re-experience that one blinding moment in pop music history.
Daltrey understands this all too well.
“I’m not gonna do the scream,” he told Billboard Magazine. But he realizes someone has to do it. That is a problem to which he has an ingenious solution: “I’m gonna get the f–king audience to do the scream,” he proclaims. “I’ve done that scream for 55 years, and I’ve had enough of it. I don’t even want to try it now; it’s brutal on the vocal cords … They can do the scream, and I’ll do everything else. I’m more into singing these days. At the age of 80, I think I deserve to be.”
Tanglewood will be Daltrey’s eighth stop on a 12-city tour, which, according to his fans, has been going very well.
KT Tunstall opened for Squeeze at Tanglewood in 2017, making a lasting impression. She wasn’t well known to the Tanglewood crowd, so she had to prove herself on the spot and did so convincingly with no backup band. Now she is opening for Daltrey, and there is good reason to believe her act is better than ever. She describes her latest album “NUT” as “the final part of a trilogy of records that has spanned probably the most extreme and profound period of change in my life.”
Hear Roger Daltrey and KT Tunstall at Tanglewood on June 22, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available here.
