Townshend, Pete

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Pete Townshend

Singer, songwriter, guitarist

Pete Townshend, The Who’s principal songwriter and lead guitarist, is a respected seminal figure in modern rock ’n’ roll. As a raging young rocker in the late 1960s, Townshend made concert history by smashing his guitar in frenzied moments onstage; his music both mocked and mirrored the anger and alienation of a whole generation. Townshend is practically canonized for the songs he wrote for and performed with The Who, including the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, and the driving singles “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “My Generation,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” “Who Are You,” and “You Better You Bet.”

According to a Rolling Stone Record Guide contributor, Townshend and The Who were initially considered “much better in live performance than on record,” but today the group’s albums “transcend their flaws” and rank among “the most influential rock albums ever released.” Speaking directly to Townshend’s contribution to modern music, the critic adds: “Using a few standard … chord progressions as motifs, Townshend constructed a virtual theory of essential rock forms, running each progression through its possibilities.” Now well into his forties, Townshend continues to write and record as a solo performer. His more recent work deals with “the problems faced by an aging rocker who wonders if he can still keep it together,” to quote the Rolling Stone Record Guide, as well as the political and social malaise of the late 1980s.

Peter Townshend was born in London on May 19, 1945. His parents were both professional musicians, and as a child he accompanied them on dance band tours. By the age of twelve Townshend was experimenting with a guitar; he was quite taken with rock ’n’ roll, especially Bill Haley and the Comets. A shy teenager, he spent hours by himself practicing the guitar, and later the banjo, which he performed in a Dixieland-style band founded by his friend John Entwhistle. Initially Townshend preferred jazz to rock, but his high school friends—Entwhistle and a maverick named Roger Daltrey—were gravitating toward rock and incorporating elements of rhythm & blues in their music. Soon after graduating from high school, Townshend, Entwhistle, and Daltrey formed a band called The Detours. They held daytime jobs while performing in small London clubs at night.

England’s youth scene in the early 1960s featured sometimes bloody clashes between “Mods,” dandyish middle-class teens, and the rowdier “Rockers,” or “skinheads.” The manager of Townshend’s group decided to direct his musicians toward the Mod audience. Soon The Detours were known as The High Numbers and were playing in Soho in the Wardour Street clubs. During this time the group picked up its fourth member,

For the Record…

Full name, Peter Dennis BlandfordTownshend; born May19, 1945, in London, England; son of Clifford (a musician) and Betty (a singer; maiden name, Dennis) Townshend; married KarenAstley, 1968; children:Emma, Aminta. Education: Attended Ealing Art College, England.

Professional musician, 1960—; with John Entwhistle and Roger Daltrey, formed band The Detours, 1962; added drummer Keith Moon, changed band name to The High Number, 1963, and The Who, 1964; member of The Who, 1964-84; solo contract with Atlantic Records, 1979—; owner, Eel Pie Recording Ltd. 1972—; established Eel Pie (book publishing company), 1976; composed and appeared in motion pictures “Tommy” (rock opera) and “Quadrophenia” (rock opera); author of Horse’s Neck: Lyrical Prose, 1985.

Awards : With The Who, numerous gold and platinum records; Academy award nomination for soundtrack to movie “Tommy,” 1975.

Addresses : Home—The Boathouse, Ranelagh Drive, Twickenham, TW1 1QZ, England. Office –Entertainment Corporation of America, 99 Park Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016-1502.

drummer Keith Moon. Fortunately for The High Numbers, their contract was bought out by new management, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. Townshend in particular benefitted from the management transition; Lambert introduced the young artist to traditional musical forms and state-of-the-art recording techniques. Lambert also allowed the group to change its name to The Who, and he promoted his charges tirelessly. By 1965 the band had an enormous following in England, especially among the Mods. The Who also broke through in America with two songs, “Can’t Explain” and “My Generation.” Some critics feel that in the latter song, with its stuttered phrases, hard beat, and defiant “hope I di e before I get old,” Townshend and The Who created nothing less than an anthem for the times.

The Who’s first tour of America was in 1967. The last was late in 1982. Throughout that fifteen-year period the group reigned as a premier rock attraction—even though none of its songs ever went to number one on the Billboard charts. Analyzing his band’s constant popularity, Townshend told Rolling Stone: “Always, always, there is a very, very strong grab—a deep, instant grab—which lasts … forever. It’snot like a fad. People who get into The Who when they’re thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, never stop being fans. The Who don’t necessarily captivate the whole teenage generation—as each batch comes up every year—but we certainly hit a percentage of them, and we hold them.” Fans were fascinated first by the sheer physical catharsis of the live performances, then by the albums featuring Townshend’s melodic hard rock and emotionally-charged lyrics. As with many rock groups, however, problems beset the band almost from day one. Moon died of a drug overdose, Townshend had several close calls with drugs himself, and in 1979 eleven people were trampled to death at aWho concert. Those events, coupled with the onset of middle age, forced Townshend into what he describes in Rolling Stone as a “two year binge” of cocaine, tranquilizer, and alcohol abuse, from which he emerged, more introspective than ever, in1983.

"I ultimately had to stop using [The Who] as a vehicle for my songwriting,” Townshend told Rolling Stone. “In a way, I’vegot the punk explosion to thank for making that decision. Commercially, leaving the Who was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But artistically, it was undeniably the most logical thing for me to do. It was the most important thing I’veever done for me—to allow me to have a new beginning, to actually grow.” Certainly Townshend’s solo albums have not generated the sales that his Who albums did, but critics have praised them as a step in the evolution of a mature artist. A reviewer in the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock ’n’ Roll argues that Townshend, “now a generation older than the fans he had initially spoken for,” has begun to “agonize over his role as an elder statesman of rock.” This is not to suggest that Townshend’s work has lost its bite, however. His recent single “Give Blood” is an angry denunciation of violence in all its forms—state-supported and otherwise. Having sworn off drugs and alcohol, and having somewhat regretfully ended his tenure with The Who, Townshend plans to continue making music on his own. He is also becoming better known as a prose writer, contributing essays and short stories to periodicals in England and America.

Townshend reflected on his singular career in Rolling Stone : “At [one] time, rock & roll to me was another word for life.’… What I was experiencing in rock then was a great introduction to what might have been a closeted and isolated, protected view of life, but one that I wouldn’t have swapped for all the world…. I still feel I hold that key. I am one of those characterswho, like a teenager, sits at home witha guitar infront of a full-length mirror, and I do it. And I can do it nowjust as well as Idid it then. And it gives mejust as much pleasure as it did then…. Once you’re in, you’rein."