Daltry talks of the Tommy film happening, then not, then happening, then not. "And then, all of a sudden, Ken Russell arrived, things started happening very quickly, and I was cast as Tommy".
Just a reminder Ken's influence "Anybody who was in touch with anything in the 1070s was a Ken Russell fan. He was an icon, a hero, and we idolised him".
Daltry says Ken thought Tommy was the best modern opera since Berg's Wozzeck.
The filming involved 50 or 60 people together for four months, staying in a motel in Hayling Island near Portsmouth- "the intensity of life on a Ken Russell set meant we all developed a close bond quickly".
Daltry had to learn how to act deaf, dumb and blind. Admirably he talked to disabled extras.
On the Acid Queen scene "Ken tried to work out which tropical creatures I should share a sarcophagus with... First, Ken tried snakes... then he tried butterflies "they were not normal butterflies. They were giants: plate-sized with bodies the size of a fist". Ken didn't use any of the footage, he went with poppies.
Some good insights- "Everybody loved Ken. He was always open to ideas. If he got stuck on how to shoot a thing he'd always ask, well, what do you think? And if he liked it, he'd try it."