Roger Daltrey Cancels 2021 ‘Live and Kicking’ North American Solo Tour

The Who‘s Roger Daltrey had planned to play a handful of solo tour dates in the United States later this summer, but this week the legendary singer announce he has cancelled the outings, citing uncertainty surrounding the logistics of returning to the live stage at this time (specifically, the logistics of traveling from the U.K. to U.S. at this time).

“When I booked these shows several months ago, I was confident that things would be back to normal by August,” said Daltrey in a statement, “but due to the uncertainty of the current travel situation and the challenges for a UK act to be able to perform in the USA, I have reluctantly decided to cancel the shows. I hope to re-book them in the near future, and to those of you who have bought tickets, please accept my sincere apologies. I do appreciate your support and can’t wait to get back to work once the time is right.”

The cancelled tour dates included:

• Thursday August 19: The Shell, San Diego, CA.
• Saturday August 21: Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena at Harveys, Stateline, NV.
• Friday August 27: Santa Barbara Bowl, Santa Barbara, CA.
• Wednesday September 1: Northern Quest Resort & Casino, Spokane, WA.
• Friday September 3: Washington State Fair, Puyallup, WA.

This news comes shortly after the release of the Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out, the group’s ambitious and influential 1967 concept record. Speaking with Rock Cellar about the album and its back story, guitarist Pete Townshend had this to say:

Rock Cellar: Pete, the idea of a new Who album at that time was something that kind of came as a surprise to you. How did you land upon the concept of The Who Sell Out?

Pete Townshend: You’re right. It was a surprise, and there are a couple of shades to that surprise. One was that our managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, were diverted to a great extent away from being managers of The Who to running this record label they had called Track Records, which featured Marc Bolan and, of course, Jimi Hendrix. And it became a money machine for them, aside from the Who. But in the background, there was also a contractual obligation to the parent company, which I think was probably called Polydor back then and they just needed a Who album and we didn’t have one ready because we’d been working so hard.

Click here to pick up The Who Sell Out Deluxe on CD from our Rock Cellar Store
Click here to pick up The Who Sell Out Deluxe on LP from our Rock Cellar Store
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You know, we’d been on the road with Herman’s Hermits, we’d done Monterey (Pop Festival). We’d been all over the place. But, even without those huge events, we certainly had been incredibly busy. And although I had a lot of material, I didn’t really feel any of it was appropriate to The Who, only “I Can See For Miles.”