The Who’s Roger Daltrey Pleads With Justin Bieber To Seek Help: ‘He’s Going To End Up Like Keith Moon’
In a recent interview, The Who’s frontman Roger Daltrey reached out to troubled troubadour Justin Bieber and pleaded with the young hit-maker to give him a call because “the boy needs help.”
Just to clarify, the “help” that Daltrey speaks of, is not an offer from the legendary Who, or what’s left of them, to stand in as Bieber’s backing band on a new world tour. It’s more the emotional, spiritual, and philosophical help that only an elder statesman in the music industry, such a Daltrey, can offer a young and upcoming starlet like Bieber.
Although still immensely popular with bad-tempered, possessive, and emotionally stunted baby boomers who refuse to grow old gracefully or disgracefully, The Who, in their prime, were once nearly as big as One Direction.
So for all your Bieber fans out there who are scratching their heads asking, “Who the hell is this Roger Daltrey? And how dare he offer our Justin his cruddy old advice.” Here’s the news. Daltrey is a seasoned bare knuckled bruiser, who’s been blooded and battered in a thousand and one different rock n’ roll wars. He’s been around the block more than just a few times and lost the return ticket. He’s been there, done it, and sold the T-shirt because it just didn’t fit anymore. He’s what they call in music magazines popular with family men of a certain age – a rock n’ roll legend.
In comparison, Justin Bieber is still a delicate young wallflower, dizzy, reeling and gushing with hormones in the wake of his first dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Yet it would appear that Justin Bieber has friends in the strangest of places. Who would have thought a grizzled old rocker like Daltrey would contemplate mounting a white charger and rushing to save a pop princess like Bieber from the road of excess and the path of self-destruction?
When The Who singer was interviewed by Gulf News backstage after a recent gig, the discussion turned today’s pop stars. Somewhat surprisingly, Daltrey had nothing but praise for One Direction.
“They’ve done incredibly well and you can’t knock the fact that they’ve become the biggest pop band in the world. We (The Who) were a pop band once, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
However, when the subject turned to Justin Bieber, the discussion took a sombre turn. Likening Bieber’s habit of making headlines for legal trouble and controversial behaviour to The Who’s iconic drummer Keith Moon whose hard-living and hell-raising ways finally caught up with him in 1978, when he died of an overdose at the age of 32, Daltrey pleaded with Bieber to get some help.
“Shame. I mean, what a shame. The boy needs help. Justin, give me a call. Otherwise, you’re going to end up like Keith Moon, and it’ll be goodnight Vienna — and I’ve lost too many friends. You don’t need to go. You’ve got a lot to offer.”
Justin, are you listening?
