(Credits: Bent Rej)
Thu 27 November 2025 12:08, UK
‘My Generation’ is the song that continues to define The Who three generations after it was actually released. In fact, it practically defines the whole 1960s, for that matter – and that’s no mean feat.
“In this song, people are trying to slap you around, slap you in the face, vilify you. They’re rude and they slam you down, take cheap shots,” Bob Dylan writes regarding the iconic track in The Philosophy of Modern Song.
He continues, “They don’t like you because you pull out all the stops and go for broke. You put your heart and soul into everything and shoot the works, because you got energy and strength and purpose. Because you’re so inspired they put the whammy on, they’re allergic to you, and they have hard feelings. Just your very presence repels them.”
From the moment it first landed on the airwaves through their literally explosive performance of the song in a 1967 episode of The Smothers Brothers TV show in the US, to its place as a cringe-inducing closer for the 2012 London Olympics, it has remained transcendent. It is, in short, very rock ‘n’ roll. And it comes complete with a strange quirk.
Roger Daltrey’s defiant declaration, “I hope I die before I get old,” the nihilistic sentiment that prophesied punk rock will live on far beyond he finally succumbs to old age. However, it’s another aspect of his vocal performance that saw the song censored by BBC Radio at the time of its release.
Roger Daltrey in the 1970s. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
The singer effects a prominent stutter at the end of every verse line, delaying the full annunciation of each final word until it’s completely out of time with the music. This feature is most effective in the first line of the second verse, when Daltrey sings, “Why don’t you all f-f-…” It sounds as though he’s about to drop the f-bomb for the first time in popular music history until he finishes with “fade away”. Still, he’s encouraging the listener to fill in the blanks before he skilfully dodges the censors.
Four-letter words weren’t what motivated Daltrey’s delivery style, nor were they what led to the BBC ban. The broadcaster apparently believed that the song’s use of stuttering might offend actual stutterers. Which was an odd interpretation since that constituency actually included the man before the microphone.
It was a speech condition, then?
“I have got a stutter,” Daltrey told Uncut in 2015. “I control it much better now but not in those days.” He wasn’t planning to bring the condition into his music, though. Until songwriter Pete Townshend reworked his latest composition, telling the band he wanted it to sound like bluesman John Lee Hooker’s ‘Stuttering Blues’.
The Who’s manager at the time was insistent that Daltrey mimic Hooker’s stammering vocal. “Kit Lambert came up to me and said ‘STUTTER!’,” Daltrey recalled. “I said ‘What?’ He said, ‘Stutter the words.”
When the singer asked for Lambert’s reasoning as to why he should act out his speech condition in a song, Lambert explained, “It makes it sound like you’re pilled”. He was referring to the trend among the mod subculture with which The Who identified in the 1960s to get hyped up on amphetamine pills before a night out. Daltrey joked that he was already on the pills and followed his manager’s orders.
Daltrey had already agreed with Townshend to elongate out the word “fade”, giving the false impression that he was about to say “fuck”. “But the rest,” he says, referring to his famous stammer, “was improvised.”
It worked a treat, imbuing the already rollicking proto-punk rocker with extra bursts of manic energy, creating the sense that the band is right on the edge of losing control. It captured the mood of a youth demographic angry with being patronised and silenced, and about to occupy college campuses and streets on a massive scale.
The track really was about vocalising the thoughts and feelings of an entire generation, struggling through the process of articulating its anger with the status quo. And it still is.
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