Roger Daltrey, the co-founder and singer of The Who, revealed at an event this week that he is going blind.
The British musician, 81, was playing two shows with The Who at London’s Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
During the first of these nights, on 27 March, Daltrey told the audience: “The problem with this job is that you go deaf. And now I’ve been told that I am going blind.
“Thank God I’ve still got my voice. If I lost that I’ll go full Tommy,” he said, referring to the protagonist of the 1969 rock opera Tommy.
Daltrey and his band are set to play a second night at the iconic London venue on Sunday 30 March.
Last year, Daltrey announced that he was stepping down as curator of the annual Teenage Cancer Trust concerts, a position he had held since launching the fundraising initiative in 2000.
The Cure singer Robert Smith has stepped in to assume the curator role.
Writing for The Times shortly after turning 80, Daltrey discussed ageing and the eventuality of death in frank terms.
“I have to be realistic,” he wrote. “I’m on my way out. The average life expectancy is 83 and with a bit of luck I’ll make that, but we need someone else to drive things.
“I’m not leaving TCT – I’ve been a patron since I first met the charity’s founders, Dr Adrian and Myrna Whiteson, more than 30 years ago – and that will continue, but I’ll be working in the back room, talking to the government, rattling cages.”
Daltrey admitted he experienced greater difficulty remembering lyrics in recent years, as well as nerves before performing.
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“On at 8.40pm and I’ve got to say I really feel it tonight,” he wrote in a published diary, adding: “We haven’t done anything for seven months and this winter’s been brutal. I’ve been in hibernation. For the whole of January, I lost my voice completely.
“I live like a monk and if I went on tour for a week I’d be fit as a butcher’s dog again, but tonight, for the first time in my career, I think, ‘Blimey, this is hard.’”
