Roger Daltrey - Dinner With the Daltrey’s

Excerpt from: Roger Daltrey and the Bright Shiny Object 

The lights of the cozy kitchen glowed as the summer evening settled  in, and before us was a trout feast fit for rock and roll royalty. “Sit  down – go ahead, eat!” Heather said from behind the counter as she  tossed a big bowl of salad. I sat down and went right for the pile of  steaming trout, then spooned out a big spat of mashed potatoes.  Heather brought over the huge bowl of salad and I took a good helping  of that too. Lush green lettuce and deep red tomatoes. Scott was  already woofing it all down gleefully. 

“Somebody’s hungry!” Heather said amusingly. 

Roger bellowed out that Mr. Magoo laugh of his as he uncorked a  bottle of wine. 

“Where’s Jamie?” Roger asked as he poured the wine. “Come on  Jamie. Eat some dinnah!” he said loudly so that Jamie could hear him  in the other room. 

“I’m not hungry Dad,” Jamie yelled back. 

Just then Willow came in. 

“Mom!” she was horrified, “trout! you have to be kidding me!” “You know we have plenty of trout around here,” Heather said. “It’s the best trout fishing for hundreds of miles,” Roger boasted,  filling his plate. 

“This is so delicious Heather!” Scott said garbling his words, his  mouth full of fish and potatoes, going for a fork full of salad. “I love trout!” I said. 

“Oh good! You can have mine then Don,” Willow said sitting down  and not looking too happy. I was surprised that she even knew my  name. 

“Is Jamie gonna skip dinnah again? How many days has it been this  week?” Roger asked. 

“Three,” Heather said as she sat across from me and next to Willow,  “I don’t know what he’s been eating?” 

Something was moving around under the table. I couldn’t see what  it was. 

“Jamie, come on now! We’re having Willow’s favorite,” Roger said  laughing, Mr. Magoo style. 

I took a sip of wine. I had been getting to know wines a bit hanging  out with Gerard. 

“How’s the wine Dhawn?” Roger asked looking at me intensely as if  my opinion would determine whether it was worthy to drink or not. I  took another sip. Savored it. Roger waited for an answer. I savored it  some more. He waited some more. 

“Really good Roger – amazing actually.” 

“It’s port, and it ain’t cheap,” he said as he began pouring everyone  a glass. “I sell it for 400 pounds a bot-el.” 

There were three “bot-els” on the table.

Jamie finally came in and sat next to Scott. 

“Scott, did you get a chance to show Dhawn around the farm?”  Roger asked. 

“Yeah, he met the cows – and he was driving them crazy.” “WHAT!” Roger snapped back in his chair, sat up perfectly straight,  and stared at me in bemusement. I stared back. His eyes were piercing  and bright. Regal like a king. Defiant like a rock star. 

“Yeah, he was mooing at them,” Scott added. 

“What were you saying?” Heather wanted to know. 

“It must have been a mating call!” Scott said. 

“Why is that Scott?” Roger wanted to know. 

“You should’ve seen the way they came running over to us.” “REALLY?” Heather said. 

“Show us the moo Dhawn,” Roger demanded. 

“Yeah Don! Show us!” Willow wanted to hear it too. 

I took a deep operatic breath and mooed from the diaphragm the  same half crazed moo that got the cows all crazy and wild. “Do it again Don!” Willow said, laughing away. 

“I can see now why they came running over,” Heather said. “That’s what we have cows for Dhawn!” Roger said seriously. And now I saw it. The thing under the table. It was a scraggly farm  

dog with greasy black hair and whiskers like a catfish. Its snout was  sticking out from under the table. Willow was feeding it her trout. “Oh Willow,” Heather said. 

“Well, its better than throwing it away Mom.” 

Jamie had a bit of a grin. He had been feeding the greasy farm dog  his trout too. 

“Where’s Rosie?” Roger asked. 

“She said to say she was sorry,” Heather said, “but she couldn’t  make it back from London in time.” 

Willow with one foot up on her chair, in relaxed elegance, picked at the trout and then burped loudly. 

“Willow!” Roger said, but not in a reprimanding way. Other than Willow’s burping from time to time, I thought the  Daltreys had nice table manners. Heather sat nicely, as did Roger who  never put his elbows on the table and didn’t eat over enthusiastically  as people do when they’re controlled by their food as Scott was,  hunching over his plate and engulfing his food, chewing with his  mouth open. Heather was a delicate eater, more interested in the  conversation than the food. She loved all the back and forth. “Scott, did you get a chance to read over the Keith Moon screen  play?” Roger asked. 

“Almost half way through,” Scott said affirmatively. 

“I think it would make a great movie, Don’t you?” 

“Yeah – that script should absolutely be made into a movie Roger.  What’s going on with that?”

“You wouldn’t believe it! It takes forev-va to get these things off  the ground. I’ve been taking it around for three years now. But I’m not  giving up until the movie gets made.” 

I was surprised Roger would have such a hard time getting money  for the movie. With all the people he must know. 

“I asked Mike Meyers to play Keith. I think he’d make the perfect  Keith, don’t you?” 

Scott assented. 

“Everybody knows Keith for all the crazy things he did. This movie  would be about everything he did outside of all the craziness.” Roger  was very animated as he spoke. “The real Keith, the way I knew him,  was an absolute sweetheart and I do miss him. I miss him everyday.” 

Roger washed his emotions down with a good gulp of wine and began  opening another “bot-el”. 

Just then the dog stuck his greasy snout up from under the table  onto my lap nosing around for some trout. I put my fork down and  went to pet it. 

“No, no don’t do it Dhawn!” Roger said. “I mean it!” 

“No it’s OK, what’s his name,” I asked. 

“Oh my God Mom! he’s petting him.” Willow looked disgusted. I always like to think that I’m very good with dogs. I started to lean  down to talk with the scraggly thing with his strange catfish-like  whiskers. The Daltreys froze. 

“Oh no Don. Seriously his breath is really bad,” Heather said  urgently. 

“It’s OK” I said, “I had a lot of dogs growing up.” 

The dog licked my face once. 

Willow screamed. The Daltreys stared at me in horror. Jamie had  that grin. Scott didn’t know what the hell was going on. Then it hit me – the foulest stink I ever smelled. A stink of a  thousand disgusting rotten things as if there was something dead inside  that dog that had been decomposing for years and it came to life in the  putrid saliva on my face. And when it did they couldn’t stop laughing  at the look on my face. 

“Oh poor Don,” Willow said sympathetically. 

In the middle of dog slime hysteria Roger pushed back his chair and  went off somewhere. Heather gave me a damp cloth to wipe my face,  and some minutes later, Roger was back with a guitar sitting at the head  of the table. 

“OK, so what would you like to hear?” 

“Play some Doors Roger!” requested Scott. 

“Oh no, you can’t be serious!” 

“Come on Roger!” 

“Absolutely not!” Then he sang Riders on the Storm substituting the  words with: “Another boring song, that goes on and on and on,  another boring song, that goes on and on and on.” 

We were all laughing. 

“I’m not playing a Door’s song – you can get that out of your head  Scott! They don’t write songs. They’re the most overrated band ev-va!  And I mean ev-va!” 

Roger started playing some old time blues instead. Maybe it was  some Lead Belly or something, I’m not sure, but whatever it was it  transformed you, and you went away with the wine and the twang of  it – away somewhere into the Louisiana swamps. Where the frogs  croaked and dogs ate so much fish they got whiskers like catfish and  rolled in the dead things and stank and were greasy. Roger rolled these  blues songs from one to another stopping only to drink wine or pour  more for anyone who needed some. And as he played, I started  slapping out a beat with my hands on my thigh. 

It was the perfect last act to a perfect day where I got to exist in  some other world so far from mine. But that day it was all mine too  and for a little while I lived as fully as Roger lived always. I forgot  everything and the wine sure helped. What wine! I never had wine so  good. Nectar of the Gods! He opened yet another “bot-el” and poured  everyone another full glass to the brim and sang on and on and on.  Who was I? Where had I been? Another glass of wine – another song  from Roger – another glance at Willow’s pretty face.  

 Sometimes it would hit me how I’m sitting next to Roger Daltrey.  He’s only two feet away. One of the most famous singers in the world.  He sings for stadiums full of people, but before I let my mind pollute  the moment with such thoughts, I pushed them out and concentrated  on being in the moment. And to do that all I had to do was listen to  Roger sing, enjoy the laughter, look at Scott laughing, glance at Willow  looking upon her Dad with adoring eyes, and keep my hands up when  the dog came around so he couldn’t lick them. Then it was easy enough  to forget, forget about all those things people think about elsewhere.  All the things I used to think in some distant place I used to exist, all  wiped clean. We didn’t think about them there in the cozy kitchen – none of that mattered anymore, least of all to Roger. We went far away  like the Robinson family lost in space. 

 His strumming was clean as he ran the pick clearly across the strings  and the chords rang clear and true. His guitar perfectly in tune. He was  playing a 6/8 blues now, and with eyes closed I started beating out my  beat on the wooden table, thumping the heal of my foot on the down  beats. Then Roger really dug into it, and I remember thinking that he  kept really good time as he started singing and laughing at the same  time, “Oh, we had trout for dinnah, and Willow, she loves that trout – we had a trout dinnah – OOOH, YEAH, and willow loves that trout!  Willow loves that trout! Willow loooooooves that trout!” Then looking  over at Scott, “Take it Scott! Take it away!”  

 Scott waved oh no, no – NOT ME! And then started singing, “I’m  a singing in the kitchen! (out of pitch) I’m a singing in the kitchen – I  don’t know what I’m a singing but I’m singing anyway – I’m singing  anyway . . .” And then Scott got carried away, in a good way, picked  up some spoons and a fork and started banging out a spoon beat on 

his legs, a little spastically while singing: “I’m a singing! I don’t know  what the hell I’m singing!!!” laughing more than singing and Roger was  laughing so hard he could hardly strum. Suddenly there was a horn – a  flugelhorn. Jamie was playing along with his flugelhorn, blowing it right  in Scott’s ear, doing his part in working it all up into a fun frenzy, in  the way these things do on a hot summer’s night when you drink and  drink and drink and play and play and play, on and on and on, until  long after the swamp dog disappears to wherever such things sleep at  night. 

It was early the next morning when I woke to Roger singing through  the open kitchen window of the cottage, “Another boring song – it  goes on and on and on . . .” Scott yelled from the loft, “I love that song Roger!”