QUESTION OF THE WEEK TIED INTO THIS STORY: ROGER DALTREY SAYS THE WHO INVENTED HEAVY METAL, DO YOU AGREE?

Roger Daltrey has claimed that The Whow was “the first heavy metal band,” having laid the groundwork for the genre more than six decades ago.

The 82-year-old rock legend made the comments during a new interview with Rolling Stone. Asked how he sees The Who‘s legacy and what he and his bandmates did better than everybody else, Daltrey replied: “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.”

He continued, “Jim Marshall invented the 4×12 [speaker cabinet], 100-watt stack for [The Who guitarist] 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 ass in a way, you could say it. We were doing it before anyone, but it’s not important in the long run.”

Back in 2019, Townshend told the Toronto Sun that The Who “sort of invented heavy metal” with the band’s first live album, 1970’s “Live At Leeds”. “We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin — you know, heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar and some of those bands, like Jimi Hendrix for example, did it far better than we did,” he said. “Cream, with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, they came along in ’67, same year as Jimi Hendrix, and they kind of stole our mantle in a sense. So people who want to hear that old heavy metal sound, there are plenty of bands that can provide it. So it’s not really what we can actually do today. Even if we wanted to, it was never high on my list of wishes.”