The Who frontman Roger Daltrey sticks to his word after saying band will ‘never play’ one song live again

The Who frontman Roger Daltrey once said the group would never play one particular song, and they stuck to their word.

A track from their Who Are You release, which features the iconic title track used on the opening credits of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, was performed hundreds of times by the band over three years. But the group would never perform it again, and Daltrey, speaking in an interview before The Who’s farewell tour, stuck to his word. There was seemingly no temptation to bring the song back, despite its popularity with fans and the band themselves. Speaking to Howard Stern on The Howard Stern Show, Daltrey said the song had a bad history and despite it featuring on their Who Are You album, would never grace the stage again.

Stern asked him about songs which remind him of particular times, with Daltrey replying with a story about a song he believes is cursed. “There is one,” he said “and I won’t ever play it again.”

Elaborating on his decision to never play Music Must Change again, Daltrey said: “There’s a song on the Who Are You album it’s called Music Must Change, and every time we played that in the studio, Keith Moon couldn’t play the drums to it as in three/four, and Keith couldn’t play normal drums.

“Keith could play great Moon drums but that was it. He just couldn’t do that. So we had to do it with a pair of squeaky boots walking the pavement, squeaking walk, doing the rhythm Anyway, Keith is not on that recording on the record and straight after we made that record, he died.”

A stunned Stern assessed the making of the album, and suggested a bad experience for Moon and his untimely death could be the reason for not wanting to perform the song. He said: “Keith had a bad experience with that and then he died, it’s kind of unfortunate he died and probably his confidence was shook because he couldn’t play that song.”

Daltrey replied this was: “Part of it.” He explained: “It goes on. We played the song when we got back together with Kenney Jones as drummer and we played that for a little while on stage and then we dropped it for a long, long, long time. We rolled it back in 2002 when we toured the last tour with John Entwistle and we rehearsed it and we were gonna do it in the show, and John died.”

The deaths of Moon and Entwistle so close after performing the song seem to have condemned Music Must Change for good. Daltrey added: “I kind of got a weird feeling about it [the song] because it is about how it’s got to move on. It’s our time to move on really, we’re all getting in the way.”

Who Are You released in August 1978, three years on from their previous studio release, The Who by Numbers. An LP compilation, The Story of The Who, released a year after TheWho By Numbers though band member Entwistle was critical of its release and suggested the lack of rights owned for The Who songs by the band limited its pool of tracks.

The compilation album peaked at two in the UK Charts, and while it may not have impressed Entwistle, the album charted higher than The Who’s return to new studio work with Who Are You, which peaked at number six. Rod Argent of The Zombies also features on the album, with his synthesiser work heard on the album, as well as piano efforts on Who Are You.