Roger Daltrey says social media is “destroying civilisation”.
The 82-year-old frontman of The Who launched a critique of Gen Z and online influencers for their reliance on social platforms, insisting that everyone’s shouting at one another online while hardly anyone is listening.
As cited by DailyMail.com, he spoke to the crowd during a recent performance at Yaamava’ Resort Casino in Los Angeles: “When you think about it, we’ve got this new world of social media which seems to be destroying civilization. I think. A platform for everybody to scream at each other, but nobody’s f** listening.
“So, everybody’s screaming. Oh, yeah. What’s that all about? And how many friends have you really got when you look at ‘Oh, I got all these likes’. That’s just your ego. Let it go. Let it go. It’s not worth it. So, when it comes to the end, and I’m getting close. Closer than you think.”
“How many friends have you really got? We did a song once. How many friends have you really got? You can count them on one hand. Never a true word was written.”
Daltrey’s tirade about contemporary youth was followed by his teen rebel anthem My Generation.
Daltrey helped establish The Who in London in 1964, forming the group with Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon.
Moon passed away at the age of 32 in 1978, while Entwistle died at 57 in 2002. And, last year, Daltrey acknowledged that The Who were the "first heavy metal band”.
The frontman of the legendary ’60s and ’70s rock outfit — whose hits include Pinball Wizard, Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again — weighed in on the debate after Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice asserted that neither his band nor Black Sabbath deserved the credit for the title.
Speaking on the Metal Sticks podcast, he stated: “We helped create what I call ‘the second coming’ of it. “Everything else, the band that did it first – The Who did it before everybody.”
He went on: “They were the first on the big amp; they were the first to push rock ‘n’ roll beyond pretty little pop songs. “Let’s not forget the importance of The Who. They just changed everything for kids who wanted to do something a little more violently.”
Nevertheless, Daltrey maintains that such a label is not at all crucial to the band’s enduring legacy.
He told Rolling Stone: "We were just different than everybody else. Americans don’t really know The Who from the early ’60s, but as the drummer of Deep Purple [Ian Paice] said recently in a magazine, “The Who started it all.” We were the first heavy metal band. Jim Marshall invented the 4×12 [speaker cabinet], 100-watt stack for Pete Townshend. All the guitar smashing that Jimi Hendrix became famous for, in his style, was basically copied from Pete Townshend, first of all. And the first rock opera, of course, we elevated rock to be maybe up its own a** in a way, you could say it. We were doing it before anyone, but it’s not important in the long run."
