Roger Daltrey discovered he had three love children on his 50th birthday.
Roger Daltrey
The 74-year-old rocker has revealed he wasn't aware he had more than five offspring until he received a letter in 1994, when he turned the milestone age, from his secret daughter.
After receiving the note, two more women came forward and claimed that The Who frontman was listed as their real father on their adoption papers, and Daltrey took the news well and says they all keep "in touch" to this day.
He recalled: "They all came into my life after my 50th birthday.
"It was great - it's all worked out. They stay in touch and they're close, so that's great.
"I've tried to do my best about a situation that couldn't change because it happened a long time ago."
The Daily Mirror newspaper reports that the 'Pinball Wizard' hitmaker had the three children after the breakdown of his marriage to his first wife Jaqueline Rickman - whom he divorced in 1968 - and before marrying his current wife Heather Taylor in 1971.
Daltrey - who has Simon, 54, with Jacqueline and Jamie, 37, Rosie, 46, and Willow, 43, with Heather, and 50-year-old Mathias with Swedish model Elisabeth Aronsson - heaped praise on his spouse Heather for "understanding" his past wild rock 'n' roll lifestyle and sex life, and for sticking by his side over the past five decades.
He told the tabloid: "Heather is amazing. To find a woman who understood what this business was like, who I was and who we were, and to accept that and still want to be with me when I came home was a gift from the universe.
"Whether that's an open marriage or just a matter of being honest with her, because I was never going to be the perfect husband in that sense.
"So when I come back off tours, we don't talk about it. She accepted that.
"And you can criticise it, you can say whatever. But all I can say is, whatever we did it worked because we've been together for 50 years and I'm starting to like it."
The 'Won't Get Fooled Again' hitmaker previously revealed how Heather - who also dated the late rock icon Jimi Hendrix, who penned the 1967 song 'Foxy Lady' about her - allowed him to sleep with other groupies, but that his rampant ways stopped when his children became parents.
Speaking in 2011, he said: "It's not an open marriage, but in the early days of our relationship she never put restrictions on me.
"I was in one of the biggest rock bands in the world, going out for four months at a time.
"At that gage do you expect me to come back and say, 'Oh yes darling, I was a good boy?'
"Over the years we have developed something a lot deeper than that - she is the most extraordinary woman I know."
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