Magic Bust: Here’s What Roger Daltrey Is Helping Boehner and Kerry Unveil

<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Daltrey_2000.jpg">B.ciggaar</a>/Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The US Capitol’s National Statuary Hall may be full of white supremacists. But tomorrow, it will also be full of Roger Daltrey.

On Wednesday, Daltrey, lead singer of legendary English rock band The Who, will perform at a ceremony honoring Winston Churchill. Secretary of State John Kerry and congressional leaders are expected to attend the event, where a bust of the former British prime minister will be unveiled.

“I am pleased to be part of the celebration of Winston Churchill and the longstanding relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States,” Daltrey said in a statement. “I am honoured to be able to show my appreciation to this great man who, as our Prime Minister, fought for and secured freedom for Britain, America, and the citizens of the world.”

You can watch the ceremony here when it streams live at 11 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. What will Daltrey sing? “A Man in a Purple Dress?” “Won’t Get Fooled Again?” “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” perhaps? You’ll have to watch to find out; Daltrey’s representatives, the Churchill Centre, and the office of House Speaker John Boehner are keeping the set list a secret until show time.

“What better way to celebrate Winston Churchill’s friendship to the United States than to have one of Britain’s most legendary recording artists perform in the halls of the Capitol,” Boehner said in a statement. “Roger’s performance is sure to guarantee that the Churchill bust receives the first-class welcome it deserves.” The Speaker’s office also posted this “teaser” video to YouTube last week, praising Churchill as the “best friend America ever had.”

The dedication ceremony—and Daltrey’s latest gig—is the culmination of Boehner’s nearly two-year effort to place a bust of Churchill in the US Capitol. In December 2011, the House passed a resolution that tasked the Architect of the Capitol with finding an “appropriate statue or bust” of Churchill. This was the fourth piece of legislation sponsored by Boehner after he became House Speaker in January 2011. Here is the resolution that Boehner submitted:

 

Republicans have a track record of really caring about busts of Winston Churchill. In 2009, President Obama returned to the British Embassy a Churchill bust that graced the Oval Office in the Bush era. The British press freaked out over this, and it became a conservative meme stateside that was revived in an extraordinarily dumb pseudo-controversy during the 2012 election. “This man, Winston Churchill, used to have his bust in the Oval Office, and if I’m president of the United States, it’ll be there again,” Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said to a cheering audience at a GOP debate in September 2011.

But the bust being offered a home in Statuary Hall is refreshingly controversy-free. The Chicago-based Churchill Centre, which donated the bust, came up with the idea several weeks ago to invite Daltrey, and contacted Universal Music about bringing the rock star to the US Capitol. “He is an iconic figure in the world of British music of the past 40 years, and he responded very enthusiastically to coming over from the UK,” says Lee Pollock, the Centre’s executive director. “I don’t want to sound flippant, but [Churchill] contributed so many good things in his time, as did the British musicians of the ’60s and ’70s. They are similarly iconic, in their own rights.”

According to Pollock, Daltrey is playing the gig pro bono. He is expected to perform two songs, and to be accompanied by an acoustic guitar player, a pianist, and a local choir during the hour-long ceremony. Separately, the US Army Chorus will perform “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was reportedly one of Churchill’s favorite pieces of music.

This mini-concert isn’t Daltrey’s first encounter with Washington politicians. Here is President George W. Bush honoring Daltrey and Who guitarist Pete Townshend in December 2008:

UPDATE: Here is footage of Wednesday’s event. Daltrey sang “Stand by Me” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Boehner referred to Daltrey as “rock royalty.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate