Roger Daltrey wasn't initially excited about the songs Pete Townshend has written for the next Who album.
Townshend tells Rolling Stone, "I had to bully him to respond and then it wasn’t the response I wanted. He just blathered for a while, and in the end I really stamped my foot and said, ‘Roger, I don’t care if you really like this stuff. You have to sing it. You’ll like it in 10 years time.’”
Daltrey acknowledges that he did take a while to respond, but says it was because he suffered a perforated eardrum in December. He says they are "great songs,” but he's not sure what he can add to make them "better than what Pete has already done. There’s at least five or six I can lay into and I’m sure they’ll come out incredible. Now that I’m healed up, I’m going to spend time getting into them..."
The two bandmates aren't close when they're not working. Townshend says, "We don’t communicate. Over the years we haven’t really developed a dialogue. I don’t think that the fault is on my side. He feels a bit intimidated, perhaps, because I over-complicate things. We think very, very differently. We do talk on the phone. That’s the most significant way we communicate, though we don’t decide much on the phone. He doesn’t text and he’s just now starting to use E-mail, but he isn’t very good at it.”
Daltrey agrees, saying, "I’ve gotten quite insular, I suppose. I don’t know why that is, but I accept it. Is the chemistry between us still there? I hope there is. It’s been a year since we worked. We’ll see soon enough.”
They'll start rehearsing in March after Daltrey cruises the Caribbean next month on the Rock Legends Cruise.