Roger Daltrey 'bored' by Rock Band

by Kyle Orland { Jul 15th 2008 at 5:00PM }

"The Who recently licensed downloadable tracks for the video game Rock Band. Daltrey said he tried it and got bored quickly. He laments the way technology has shifted how people regularly interact with music, saying the scrapping of long-play records signaled the death of the music industry." (from CNN)

Roger Daltrey is 150 years old. (not from CNN; our estimate)

[Thanks Drake]

Tags: DLC, EA, harmonix, mtv-games, Rock-Band, Roger-Daltrey, The-Who, Who

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Nytemare @ Jul 15th 2008 5:05PM

I would love to see the death of the music industry, just because there's like no way music corporations will cease to exist.

mike_p @ Jul 16th 2008 11:52PM

Or corporations in general...

emotaku @ Jul 15th 2008 5:06PM

5 bucks says he tried it on easy.

Lone Starr @ Jul 15th 2008 5:40PM

10 bucks says he failed on easy.

Shagittarius @ Jul 15th 2008 7:55PM

So he hates the way albums have been junked in favor of singles.

Well, HMX wanted to release the entire Whos Next album, but guess what happened to the masters?

Lars @ Jul 16th 2008 3:32PM

"So he hates the way albums have been junked in favor of singles."

Personally I agree with him in that respect. I don't like buying singles, I like an album that's arranged so that the songs play well off eachother when played sequentially. There are still bands out there doing stuff like that though, that are kinda mainstream (see: Francis the Mute).

But I really don't see what Rock Band has to do with the music industry aside from getting me to re-buy my favorite tunes. I think the problem is that there's really no good fresh ideas in music that are enjoyable enough to be mainstream. All the best music out there I already own, and I have owned it for years. So yeah, I'm not pumping music into their pockets right now because, in other words, "been there done that."

Mitch @ Jul 15th 2008 5:08PM

Got bored quickly???

What, was he playing the Wii version?

Zippy5150 @ Jul 15th 2008 5:11PM

*Ba-dum psshh*

ihateemo @ Jul 15th 2008 5:09PM

I don't care about "the music industry" (hasn't Daltrey made enough money to not give a hoot about what happens to labels?) just good music and good bands which are happily in abundance.

Music is not a spectator sport.

I will get off Mr. Daltrey's lawn now.

Xoviet chiK @ Jul 15th 2008 5:11PM

The music industry is dying, giving rise to a brilliant independent scene. And most of them release on LP.

I love The Who, but this overall statement is just full of itself and missing out on the big picture. Rock Band is a great game, one of the few current gen titles I'd mention in my top 100... and I've been playing various musical instruments for upwards of 11 years.

Two things Rock Band helped me do musically, that I couldn't or could barely do before:

Pick Strum. Yes, I'm a life long Bassist. I like playing with my fingers, even on guitar I always play with my fingers. But I gradually got better at Guitar on Rockband with up and down strokes... And I can totally pick like a champion now! Woohoo!

Sing AND Play. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. I finished Band World Tour, and decided I'd try and go at it myself singing and playing. Took me a while, but I can finally do it in Rock Band. And now, I can finally do it playing Piano, Bass, and Guitar.

Rock Band (and Guitar Hero, etc...) is great for the Music Industry. To Daltrey (I love you, really!) and folks in this mentality and all the naysayers who say "Why don't you Play a Real Instrument!," I can comfortably say shove off! Music Games are keeping your aging records alive, you should be thanking them!

ihateemo @ Jul 15th 2008 5:13PM

x2

Awesome post.

waynski1457 @ Jul 15th 2008 5:15PM

This post wins every argument against all music games forever.

JohnMazz @ Jul 15th 2008 5:22PM

"Sing AND Play. Took me a while, but I can finally do it in Rock Band. And now, I can finally do it playing Piano, Bass, and Guitar."

Piano, Bass, and Guitar AND SINING at the same time?! Wow. Rock on, dude. ;-)

danny. @ Jul 15th 2008 5:37PM

hate to go off topic, but don't play your bass with a pick... please?

Lone Starr @ Jul 15th 2008 5:43PM

@ JohnMazz,

Personally, I prefer COSINING myself.

:|

Xoviet chiK @ Jul 15th 2008 5:45PM

@Danny

I don't usually. I haven't really for the 10 years I've played bass, but it does give off a nice sound when you are going for a specific style. It's always a nice option.

eipxen @ Jul 15th 2008 5:15PM

the music industry is dying the way it is going; executives are admitting it and changing the way they work

I guess maybe he means the death of the industry "as we know it"? LPs are a cool form, it is kind of sad that they're not as viable anymore = /

but I feel like his getting bored shouldn't be that much of a surprise... he's done the real thing, then thrown tv's out of a hotel window 2 hours after

JohnMazz @ Jul 15th 2008 5:15PM

The photo on this describes it all. Daltrey and The Who are great, but just like my dad, they just dont get it. A Rock icon and a high school math teacher who would think differently about every other issue officially agree on this. How's it feel, roger?

jsn @ Jul 15th 2008 5:16PM

why wouldn't he be bored? He can actually write, record and play real music and he has all the tools to do so any time he wants with any musicians he wants. I'd be bored with the game if I had those options too!

JohnMazz @ Jul 15th 2008 5:25PM

Your exactly right. If I was a mob leader, a big time gangster, I would call GTA boring. If I was a race car driver, why would I ever play Grand Turismo? Rock Band is mostly for people who cant play real instruments, or at the very least, for people who aren't already world famous rock stars.

Ghen @ Jul 15th 2008 9:39PM

I lay pipe for a living and I hated bioshock.

Haggard @ Sep 4th 2008 2:43AM

I think I'd still enjoy GTA if I was a mob leader. I mean, you've gotta do something in your office all day, right?

Alex @ Jul 15th 2008 5:17PM

I'm sorry to be the fanboy here but...

He freaking Roger Daltrey, it's because of him and what he made for the teenagers, that adolescence is an explosion of feelings and some people sees it as the best time of its life, if he says something like that, must have very good reasons and I want to hear them.

You just don't diss the man who wrote "We won't get fooled again"

Xoviet chiK @ Jul 15th 2008 5:22PM

He didn't write Won't Get Fooled Again... He didn't write anything on Who's Next. It was all Pete Townshend, and a track or two by John Entwistle.

He's just mad because these games are putting more focus on the people who play the instruments and taking the spotlight off the frontman. (Again, I really do love Daltrey!)

Draco Basileus @ Jul 15th 2008 5:21PM

Must be sobering up in his old age.

Rog, take a "phat" hit off the bong and then go back and play some more.

Greyseal @ Jul 15th 2008 5:22PM

I kind of want to give Daltry some benefit of the doubt... if he means the "music industry" as a nebulous idea, rather than the evil money-sucking companies in charge, I can kind of see his point. Music has become very focused on the easy availability of individual tracks, rather than sitting down and listening to the cohesive whole of an album. Albums used to have structure and an arc (the good ones, at any rate), and now it's a more single-serve environment. I can imagine some artists being frustrated that nobody listens to anything but one or two popular singles, and leaves the rest unheard.

But if he's bemoaning the fall of the big record labels, he can pluck a new tune on the world's smallest violin.

Neebs @ Jul 15th 2008 5:27PM

You sang you hoped you died before you got old, Daltrey.

Sorry.

sinai @ Jul 15th 2008 5:28PM

roger daltrey is also an asian man (joystiq estimate, not from CNN)

Jose @ Jul 15th 2008 5:33PM

Are you kidding me? LP is making a major comeback, sadly because it's a youth driven movement, old arse Roger Daltrey hasn't noticed. He just sounds like every other elitist 'tard: "Why don't you quit wasting your time and pick up a real guitar."

Because playing guitar is boring as all hell starting out and I can't play my drums in my apartment, alright?

Now STFU

bill51 @ Jul 15th 2008 6:01PM

It's still amusing to see people claiming something like Rock Band helped them with "real" music.

Maybe if you play emo.

LlamaFarmer @ Jul 15th 2008 5:35PM

Well, RD should be happy because his songs (sorry, Pete's songs) are being kept relevant and introduced to perhaps "kids" that did not grow up with The Who. IMO, he is talking out of two sides of his mouth, if he feared that the music industry was dying than he should not have sold the rights to RB for the songs. GN'R music is now over 20 years gone (I refuse to say old) and Axl and Slash (I know, no longer part of GN'R) are keeping their music and image alive and relevant without teh drama of how the music industry has changed and music is dying.

epobirs @ Jul 15th 2008 5:43PM

The guy has been doing it for real longer than most Rock Band player have been alive. Of course this does little to engage him. For him to get deeply into Rock Band would be like a man with a harem of great beauties hiding out in the bathroom to masturbate to newspaper lingerie ads.

why not the LS2LS7? @ Jul 15th 2008 5:44PM

I'm bored with Roger Daltrey.

Thor @ Jul 15th 2008 5:50PM

I like how as soon as someone disses something you like
you all have to jump on the attacking bandwagon. Roger Daltry doesn't like Rock Band... get over it.
He's the front man for one of the greatest rock and roll bands ever, and you expect him to enjoy playing a severely toned down video game version of what he's been doing throughout his life??
Rock Band may be fun to all of us, but we're not hard core rockers...

Leobebes @ Jul 15th 2008 7:56PM

Yeah! How come you guys don't drop those Ak 47's and M16's in Call of Duty 4 and enlist in the real army and kill yourself some real A rabs instead of some digitally duplicated ones that all wear that same old damn helmet or picnic blanket turban!

Besides in the real army you can call in more than one airstrike even if you have a 30+ kill streak!

Scott @ Jul 15th 2008 5:52PM

I'm a gamer. I love shooting things, casting spells, leveling up and such in the digital realm. However, I'm also a musician.

When both music and video games collide, it makes for a messy result. Personally, yes, I find Rock Band and Guitar Hero to be quite drab. When you can play a song on a video game that you can play in real life (or, in many cases for some, horribly attempt to), the experience comes up really short. It's like building a house out of Lego's after you've built a real one, brick by brick.

If it weren't for Roger Daltrey (as well as a handful of others), there would be no such thing as a "rock band". I wholeheartedly agree with him on his views about the digital age in music to an extent and how it has gone from an art form to something that has become integrated with everyday life and therefore met with less importance and much less expectations. Though, come to think of it, all art does that after its golden age, really. Yes, even video games (see: Army Men).

Video game companies are trying to make the plastic instruments more and more authentic to the point where it actually looks and possibly kind-of-sort-of feels like an authentic experience. However, that's all it will ever be: a simulation. Why simulate something you can do for around the same price in the end (if you're willing to live with horrible gear, for a lower price) instead of doing the real thing? Although Harmonix is composed of various musicians from respectable and established musical acts, and make feeble attempts to try and push the user into transitioning from fake instruments to real ones, the experience falls flat and is not really the best way to start. My biggest peeve about Rock Band is that, if Harmonix made any attempt to transition from fake to real drums, they would have included a hi-hat pedal. If people go from Expert Drums on Rock Band to real ones, they're going to have terrible balance and rhythm for a long time, leaving their experience half-assed and uneven.

Video games give us worlds where we can embark on a journey that we can't possibly achieve in our natural lives. We will never fight space aliens. We will never be mobsters. We will never master plan entire communities or theme parks, and so on. Video games give us the illusion of freedom and identity, which is cool, to an extent. However, when we have the ability to do something (albeit with a tad more effort), then why make a video game out of it? They might as well publish "File Clerk Hero".

My suggestion? Buy a cheap Epiphone or something and a small amp and get to it. The time it takes you to learn the basics of the guitar would be equivalent to how long it would take you to beat any of the music simulation games on Expert.

Jason @ Jul 15th 2008 6:05PM

This man knows what's up. Exactly my feelings 110%.

Ender @ Jul 15th 2008 6:13PM

"Go buy and play a REAL instrument!" Pretty Much sums that all up...but you forgot one thing.

Everyone ISN'T musically inclined. Some people don't have rythym. Some peoples fingers are fat. Some people don't have time. Whatever it may be, you can't just assume a person can even play an instrument.

Any musical game gives an opportunity for people to experience what it's like to make music, to have some part in it's creation. Not only that, but it allows for people to become more aware of bands they might not have heard otherwise.

Ender @ Jul 15th 2008 6:14PM

Scott @ Jul 15th 2008 6:24PM

If one doesn't have rhythm, then why play a rhythm game? That's what Guitar Hero et al. are. They require you to have rhythm to hit the right note at the right time.

Fingers too fat? Play a bass. Not musically inclined? I call B.S.. That's just lack of passion or care for the subject. If one would rather live vicariously through a digital cover band playing a fake instrument instead of a real one, eventually writing music of their own, then maybe they should question their existence, I suppose. Is that too harsh? Probably. It's still not being part of the music making process.

And there are better ways of discovering music (as well as better music) instead of music games. The Butthole Surfers have been around for over 20 years and the one thing they're reduced to is a shoddy cover version of one of their less impressive songs. It's not good to just cherry pick random artists and random songs that might not show what they're capable of and display them for the masses. People don't get the real effect that way. In September, millions of people are going to remember Dylan as "the guy that wrote that song 'Tangled Up In Blue' in Rock Band" instead of "the great artist who created 'Highway 61 Revisited'".

Jason @ Jul 15th 2008 6:48PM

You're all over thinking the whole thing. Its a damn game, it suppose to be quick disposable fun. It is not meant to train you to be the next Steve Vai or Neil Peart. It is not meant to educate you musically. It is not meant to improve your knowledge of musical artists. IT IS MEANT TO BE FUN. It might not be fun to everyone, but nothing is. If you like it, play it, if not, don't.

I play guitar and bass but I don't have any friends who can play so for me it is fun to have them over and play Rock Band.

GrossGreg @ Jul 15th 2008 7:26PM

Scott, that's one of the douchiest comments I've ever read on Joystiq.

Greyseal @ Jul 15th 2008 8:32PM

What the hell is this idiotic post?

I assume you also don't play sports games? You can play those in real life, too. Or fighting games... you could just go pick a fight. Or war games... you can go sign up for the Army.

Sure, video games allow us to enjoy experiences that we otherwise could not -- but there is great latitude in the meaning of "could not." Take Guitar Hero or Rock Band. For some, it means a lack of ability to play the guitar. For others, maybe a lack of time to learn. Or for others, maybe a lack of interest, but a genuine enjoyment of the feeling of being in sync with the music anyway. There is nothing "messy" about the fusion of games and music. Just because you have a stick jammed up your arrogant, holier-than-thou, real-guitar-playing cornhole doesn't mean that these innovative and well-loved games are invalid forms of entertainment.

Ignorant posts like this only prove that, despite what you say, you don't understand the point of video games at all. You understand the desire to enjoy otherwise out-of-reach experiences... you just seem distressingly certain of which experiences deserve to be included on that list.

OmegaVader @ Jul 15th 2008 6:01PM

Daltrey is right -- we've turned music into bite sized chunks. I love Rock Band as much as the next guy, but I do oh-so long for those true musc experiences on par with real concerts or whole albums in one listening. HE is a musician, don't be surprised if he's dissapointed by the watered-down music of rhythym games

and again, to emphasize, I love rock band. I just bought several of those Who tracks today.

why not the LS2LS7? @ Jul 15th 2008 6:05PM

So listen to some whole albums. I'm playing "Check Your Head" in its entirety from my iTunes library right now.

Levi @ Jul 15th 2008 7:47PM

And THAT is what Daltrey is really saying, not that Rock Band sucks. He refers to music is regarded as back ground noise these days in the article.

Marrvia @ Jul 15th 2008 6:04PM

I'm bored it Rock Band,too. And I haven't even played it.

A_B @ Jul 15th 2008 6:04PM

One of the greatest rock stars to ever live is bored by Rock Band because he's allegedly too old to, I assume, "get it." Not because he's been doing the real thing for the past 40 years and faking it with a console doesn't quite compare.

Brilliant work by Kyle Orland.