Roger Daltry has said he feels like he’s approaching the end after turning 80.
The Who frontman said it’s the ‘last night of [his] prom,’ and added: ‘I have to be realistic, I’m on my way out.’
For the ‘first time in his career’ the Baba O’Riley hitmaker said he found performing ‘hard’ at a recent concert.
‘The average life expectancy is 83 and with a bit of luck I’ll make that, but we need someone else to drive things,’ he continued in a piece for The Times, explaining his step back from frontman duty for the Teenage Cancer Trust’s annual concerts.
The London-born musician hasn’t had an easy ride health-wise, as he contracted viral meningitis while touring America in 2015.
After falling ill, Daltry explained earlier this year how he saw the ‘exit sign’ and never thought he’d make it through – and this lingering feeling appears to have stayed with him since.
‘I didn’t think I was coming back and I thought about my life,’ the My Generation rocker said.
Roger added in an interview with the same publication in January: ‘My dreams came true so, listen, I’m ready to go at any time.’
He added that his family – wife Heather Taylor and his eight children – are well taken care of in this scenario.
He and Peter Townshend, 78, are the only surviving members of The Who.
Heather and Roger, who married in 1971, live a quiet life in the Sussex countryside.
Roger only found out about three of his kids later in life after their mothers gave them up for adoption.
In 2018, he admitted the three children came into his life after his 50th birthday, and were born between his divorce from first wife Jackie and marriage to second wife, Heather.
He received a letter from a woman claiming to be his daughter, and over the following years he got two more from other women born in the late 1960s.
Roger welcomed his eldest son Simon in 1964 with his ex-wife Jackie Rickman.
He was 20-years-old when he married Jackie, and the couple divorced in 1968.
Swedish model Elisabeth Aronsson welcomed Roger’s second son Matthias, born in 1967.
A year later he met model Heather and they went on to welcome three children – Rosie in 1972, Willow in 1975, and Jamie in 1981.
Speaking to The Mirror ahead of the release of his autobiography in 2018, he claimed that ‘it’s all worked out’ with the children, and that they ‘stay in touch and they’re close’.
He also went on to explain his marriage to Heather, saying that they tied the knot with the provision that she accepted whatever he got up to on tour.
‘Heather is amazing. To find a woman who understood what this business was like, who I was and who we were, and to accept that and still want to be with me when I came home was a gift from the universe,’ he said.
'Whether that’s a marriage where both partners are free to have other relationships or just a matter of being honest with her, because I was never going to be the perfect husband in that way. So when I come back from tours, we don’t discuss it. She understood that.'
'And you can criticize it, you can say whatever. But all I can say is, whatever we did it worked because we’ve been together for 50 years and I’m starting to like it.'
