Bankrate: What was the turning point?

Roger Daltrey: I don't think the turning point was really even in the studio. The studio was kind of ... the only way to describe it was to say that I'd found a wardrobe full of clothes, and I'd gone in naked. The studio was like, putting this on, then putting a pair of shoes on, and putting a shirt on, and a jacket, and a hat, and finally coming out and then, boom you're cool. You're you. This is you. Look at you. But that didn't come for me until we actually came on stage.

Bankrate: When you sing "Tommy" now, does it still feel as special to you as it did back then?

Roger Daltrey: Yes, it does. I can never sing "See Me, Feel Me" without literally inhabiting the same space that I inhabited when I (first) sang it. That's what interpreting music is all about for me, finding the zone where that song really lives -- where's the heartbeat of it.

Bankrate: In the film, the footage of the band from the early '60s was incredible. When you watch that, what goes through your mind?

Roger Daltrey: (I think), weren't we good? Because I can see it in its totality, I can see the whole thing now. If I saw a band like that in a bar tonight, I would sign them up immediately, as I'm sure most people would. You could see the talent is immense, isn't it? I'm not blowing my trumpet, I'm just being factual about what you're actually looking at in that piece of film. There's something special going on. We are babies.

Bankrate: For your first single, "I Can't Explain," it says in the film that you sold 104,000 copies and made only 250 pounds each. Looking back, was everyone in the band just that incredibly naive about money and business?

Roger Daltrey: Oh, for years, yes. Totally. It was never ... I mean, we wanted to make a living at it, and we all had a dream of being rich and famous, but we didn't have a clue about it. As long as we were playing our music and getting as many women as we wanted and traveling, it was fantastic.

Bankrate: Was there a point where the reality of that kind of hit you over the head and you said, maybe I'd better get a handle on this?

Roger Daltrey: That point came in the '70s, when sadly the management lost control of themselves and started taking drugs, and we had to get to grips with the situation because the tax situation in England was so serious, we would have gone down. It would have buried us. So we had to wake up then.

Bankrate: These were the days of, like, 90 percent rate or something?

Roger Daltrey: Ninety-eight percent.

Bankrate: Wow. That's crazy.

Roger Daltrey: That's Britain.

Bankrate: When did it actually hit you that The Who were an incredibly successful act?

Roger Daltrey: We always felt successful. The success is in the sight of the audience. The success is knowing that you're actually reaching someone and touching them with music. Because that's all you really want to do, and you can never give them enough of yourself when you're doing it. I always feel successful, because it's organic.