CSI Once Featured A Member Of The Who

Across the "CSI" franchise, there are a few things you can count on happening in just about every episode. A grisly murder? Check. Lab investigators applying all their scientific knowledge to finding the killer? Check. The mystery solved, usually through some neato tidbit of esoteric forensic knowledge? Check and check. 

Then there's the music for the title sequence. Every single "CSI" entry — be it the original series, "CSI: Miami," "New York," "CSI: Cyber," or the reboot "CSI: Vegas" — starts with a song by one of the most legendary acts in rock history: the Who. It's a different song depending on the series, of course. "Who Are You?" plays for the original, "Baba O'Riley" for "New York," and so on. By now, it's become such a signature part of the franchise that if producers were to pick some other band to ring in a new episode, fans might riot. 

One would think it was only a matter of time until a member of the Who started showing up in the cast of "CSI." In fact, it took about seven seasons. In 2006, Roger Daltrey, the band's lead singer, showed up in an episode of "CSI," though neither his identity nor that of his character were revealed until the episode's final moments.

Roger Daltrey's episode is the aptly-titled "Living Legend," in which the car of a long-disappeared mob boss is fished out of a lake with a skeleton in the back and a bullet hole in its skull. Naturally, it seems that the thirty-year-old mystery of what happened to Mickey Dunn is solved. But when several of his old associates begin dying violently, an extra layer of mystery is suddenly added. When the team finally brings in their man, he removes his wig and state-of-the-art prosthetics to reveal that he is, in fact, Mickey Dunn, played by Daltrey. The legend, long disappeared and believed dead, is shown alive and played, of course, by a living legend.

Though Daltrey is recognized mostly as a musician, "CSI" was far from his first acting gig. After making his debut playing the title character in the film of the Who's iconic 1975 rock opera "Tommy," he must have gotten something like an acting bug. Since then he's appeared in episodes of "Tales from the Crypt," "That '70s Show," "Lois & Clark," and many other series. Given that his character was most likely sent to live out the remainder of his days in prison, it's probably no surprise that Mickey has yet to reappear in the annals of "CSI." Still, that will always be his voice in the opening credits.