Roger Daltrey 7: Under A Raging Moon

Without The Who to take up his time (the brief Live Aid reunion notwithstanding) Roger Daltrey went right back in the studio to put together another album fairly quickly after the disappointment of Parting Should Be Painless. The brief was more or less the same; he gathered songs from a variety of sources, old and new, though this time he contributed to four songs himself.

The first single, and what sold Under A Raging Moon upon release, was “After The Fire”, which Pete Townshend wrote in the wake of Band Aid and Live Aid and everything. The song absolutely soars, despite a puzzling reference to Dom DeLuise, with the rhythm section from Big Country, so familiar from Pete’s own albums. Then strap yourself in for some downright boomy tracks. “Don’t Talk To Strangers” is a cover of a tune on one of the songwriters’ solo albums, while “Breaking Down Paradise” is the requisite Russ Ballard entry. “The Pride You Hide” crams a lot of words into a simple song about heartbreak, and while “Move Better In The Night” is fairly cliché, it still rocks. (The CD and cassette included an extra song here, “Love Me Like You Do”, which mostly takes up six minutes for a guitar solo from Robbie McIntosh, playing hooky from the Pretenders.)

Bryan Adams was one of the faces and voices of 1985—in this hemisphere, anyway—and he and writing partner Jim Vallance serve up two songs for Rog. “Let Me Down Easy” is a carbon copy of Adams’ “Somebody”, an undeniably catchy tune in its own right. Kit Hain is brought back from the last album for “Fallen Angel”, which Roger delivers first in a lower register that mostly sounds like a bad Bowie imitation, then starts yelling his way through it but for a “sweeter” bridge. The yelling continues on “It Don’t Satisfy Me”, which he wrote himself with the producer, suggesting that he might actually be channeling some of the anger over the Who ending. Beyond that, the drums are right out of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love”. “Rebel” is the other Adams/Vallance track, and sounds a little more convincing out of Roger’s mouth; after all, real rebels don’t go around telling everyone that’s what they are. Finally, the title was supposedly intended to call up the spirit of Keith Moon, but we’ll be damned how that’s supposed to be given the lyrics (courtesy of John Parr, then riding high with the St. Elmo’s Fire soundtrack). The backing track is too obvious an homage to “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, the guitars slash like Pete, and seven all-star drummers are listed as contributing, with a closing solo that’s a battle between Mark Brzezicki and Zak Starkey in a stroke of foreshadowing.

While certainly produced and mixed for contemporary rock radio by one Alan Shacklock, Under A Raging Moon actually works, despite itself; call it a guilty pleasure. Even though he’s always at his best in his original band, the album suggests that maybe Roger would be fine on his own after all. Maybe.

Roger Daltrey Under A Raging Moon (1985)—3