I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit-and eventually a profession-of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.
We didn't need light & shade, irony or humor. An iconic Daltrey bellow could convey an extrodinary range of human emotion; withering sadness, self pity, loneliness, abandonment, spiritual desperation, the loss of childhood, as well as the more obvious rage & frustration, joy & triumph.