There’s no shortage of stories in the rock history vaults concerning superstar bands dealing with bad luck, oftentimes in the form of some supremely talented individual dying long before their time. But some of those tales take a turn into legitimately spooky territory, which is the case with one particular song by The Who that singer Roger Daltrey refuses to play ever again.
In a 2015 interview with Howard Stern, Daltrey responded to the question of which songs take him back to a “really bad time” that he doesn’t “even like to think about.”
“There is one, and I won’t ever play it again,” Daltrey began.
“There’s a song on the Who Are You album, it’s called ‘Music Must Change.’ Every time we played that in the studio, Keith couldn’t play the drums to it,” Daltrey continued, referring to late drummer Keith Moon.
“It was in a three, four. Keith couldn’t play normal drums. Keith could play great Moon drums, and that was it,” Daltrey explained. “He just couldn’t do that, so he had to do it with a pair of squeaky boots walking the pavement and do a squeaky walk to do the rhythm. Anyway, Keith is not on that recording on the record, and straight after we made that record, he died.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the first time “Music Must Change” seemed to make an ominous prediction.
“We played the song when we got back together with Kenny Jones as drummer, and then we dropped it for a long, long time. We brought it back in 2002 for the last tour with [The Who bassist] John Entwistle, and we rehearsed it, we were going to do it in the show, then John died,” Daltrey revealed.
“So it’s become unlucky, that song,” Stern suggested.
“Well, I kind of got a weird feeling about it because it is about how it’s got to move on you know, and that is our time to move on really, and we were all getting in the way,” Daltrey said.
What happened to Keith Moon and John Entwistle
As Classic Rock reported, though Moon famously struggled with drugs and alcohol, he’d cut back on drinking in the days leading up to his death. However, on Sept. 7, 1978, Moon fatally overdosed on Heminevrin, a sedative he’d been prescribed to help with alcohol withdrawal. He was 32 years old.
Entwistle was found dead in a room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 27, 2002, according to The Guardian. It was later confirmed that he died of an undiagnosed preexisting heart condition which was triggered by taking a “moderate quantity” of cocaine. He was 57 years old.
Related: The Who’s Roger Daltrey Makes Poignant Change to Hit Song’s Lyrics for Farewell Tour
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 10, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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