Pete Townshend

• 1. Introduction

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  Pete Townshend helped make what the Guinness Book of Records once listed as the loudest concert ever. On the 31st of May 1976, the Who played Charlton Athletic Football Club, and a reading taken 32 metres from the stage reached 126 decibels.

  Townshend was the band's guitarist, keyboardist, second lead vocalist and principal songwriter. He wrote more than 100 songs for 12 of the Who's studio albums, and more than 100 more for his solo records. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him as a member of the Who in 1990, and he received Kennedy Center Honors in 2008.

  Yet nothing about his start suggested a life in rock. How did a boy from west London, with no formal music training, become a guitarist who destroyed instruments on purpose? Why did he keep reaching for stories as long as whole albums? And what did decades of that volume cost him?

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• 2. Acton Boyhood

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  Ten days after Nazi Germany surrendered in the Second World War, Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend was born at Chiswick Hospital in West London, on the 19th of May 1945. Music ran through the family. His father, Cliff, was a professional alto saxophonist in the Royal Air Force dance band the Squadronaires. His mother, Betty, whose maiden name was Dennis, sang with the Sidney Torch and Les Douglass Orchestras.

  The marriage was volatile. Both parents drank heavily and had fiery tempers, and Cliff was often away touring with his band. When Pete was a toddler, the couple split, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother, Emma Dennis. He later described her as "clinically insane", and he said the experience had unknowingly shaped the plot of Tommy.

  The two-year separation ended when Cliff and Betty bought a house together on Woodgrange Avenue in Acton. The neighbourhood was about one-third Polish, and a devout Jewish family upstairs shared its housing and cooking with the Townshends. Many of his father's closest friends were Jewish.

  Townshend says he had few friends as a child. He filled the time with adventure novels such as Gulliver's Travels and Treasure Island. In the summer of 1956, on a family seaside trip, he watched the film Rock Around the Clock again and again. That obsession with American rock and roll led him soon afterward to see Bill Haley in London, his first concert.

  After passing the eleven-plus exam, he enrolled at Acton County Grammar School. Classmates bullied him over his large nose, and he says the experience profoundly affected him. At Christmas in 1956, his grandmother Emma bought him his first guitar, an inexpensive Spanish model. His father showed him a couple of chords, but Townshend taught himself the rest and never learned to read music.

  At school he met John Entwistle, and the two formed a short-lived trad jazz group called the Confederates. Townshend played banjo and Entwistle played horns. They played at the Congo Club, a youth club run by the Acton Congregational Church, covering Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball and Lonnie Donegan. Then Cliff Richard's debut single, "Move It", pulled both toward rock and roll. Townshend left the group after a fight with its drummer, Chris Sherwin, and picked up a Czechoslovakian guitar from his mother's antique shop.

  His brothers Paul and Simon were born in 1957 and 1960. Lacking the grades for university, Townshend chose to study graphic design at Ealing Art College, enrolling in 1961. A fellow student there was Ronnie Wood, later a guitarist with the Rolling Stones. Townshend left in 1964 to play music full-time, and by then a band was already waiting.

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• 3. Becoming the Who

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  In late 1961, John Entwistle joined a skiffle and rock and roll band called the Detours, led by Roger Daltrey. The new bass player soon suggested that Townshend join as a second guitarist. Early on, the band played instrumentals by the Shadows and the Ventures, plus pop and trad jazz covers. The lineup settled with Daltrey on rhythm guitar, Townshend on lead, Entwistle on bass, Doug Sandom on drums and Colin Dawson singing. Townshend remembered that Daltrey "ran things the way he wanted them".

  Colin Dawson quit in 1962 after too many arguments with Daltrey, who then took over as lead vocalist. Encouraged by Entwistle, Townshend became the only guitarist. Through Townshend's mother, the group won a management contract with a local promoter, Robert Druce. He booked them as a support act for names such as Screaming Lord Sutch and Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. In 1963, Townshend's father arranged an amateur recording of "It Was You", the first song his son ever wrote.

  In February 1964, the Detours learned that another group already used their name. Townshend's roommate Richard Barnes suggested "The Who", and Daltrey decided it was the best choice. Keith Moon, who had drummed semi-professionally with the Beachcombers for several years, soon replaced Doug Sandom. Then a mod publicist named Peter Meaden talked the band into becoming the High Numbers. Their one single under that name, "I'm the Face" with "Zoot Suit", failed.

  The band dropped Meaden and signed with two new managers, Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert. The pair had teamed up to find new talent and make a documentary about it. The musicians went back to the name the Who.

  With Lambert's help, the band caught the ear of an American producer, Shel Talmy, who got them a recording contract. Townshend wrote "I Can't Explain" as a deliberate sound-alike of the Kinks, another Talmy act. Released in January 1965, it reached number eight in Britain. The follow-up, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", credited to Townshend and Daltrey, also made the top 10.

  That November came "My Generation", which climbed to number two and remained the Who's biggest British hit. Who biographer Mark Wilkerson said it reflected the feelings of thousands of angry teenagers. Its famous line, "I hope I die before I get old", was, Townshend told David Fricke, "very much about trying to find a place in society".

  The debut album, My Generation, followed in late 1965. It mixed Townshend originals with several James Brown covers that Daltrey favoured. More singles came, including "Pictures of Lily", "Substitute", "I'm a Boy" and "Happy Jack". Lambert urged Townshend to write longer pieces, and the result was "A Quick One, While He's Away". It gave its name to the album A Quick One, which reached number four in December 1966.

  The Who began their first American tour on the 22nd of March 1967. Townshend trashed hotel suites, though never as thoroughly as Moon did. He also experimented with LSD, but he stopped after a potent hit following the Monterey Pop Festival on the 18th of June.

  In December came The Who Sell Out, a concept album built around pirate radio, with humorous jingles and mock commercials between songs. It produced "I Can See for Miles", the band's biggest American single. It reached number nine, and Townshend was surprised it did not climb higher, because he considered it the best song he had written so far.

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• 4. Destruction and Sound

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  In June 1964, at the Railway Tavern, Townshend accidentally broke the top of his guitar on a low ceiling. He then smashed the whole instrument. The excited crowd cheered, and destroying instruments soon became a regular part of the Who's shows.

  The idea had roots in art school. His roommate at Ealing, Tom Wright, owned a large record collection, and Townshend absorbed Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, Booker T. and the MGs, Little Walter and Chuck Berry. He was also strongly influenced by the cellist Malcolm Cecil, who often damaged his cello during performances. Another influence was Gustav Metzger, a pioneer of auto-destructive art. Townshend wrote, "Destruction is art when set to music."

  There was a darker current too. Growing up amid postwar reconstruction, Townshend came to believe that trauma passes between generations. "I've unwittingly inherited what my father experienced", he said. In his autobiography he wrote, "I wasn't trying to play beautiful music." He says he wanted to confront audiences with the sound of a fear everyone shared, that one day a plane could carry a bomb that destroyed them all.

  Smashing guitars quickly became expensive, so he switched to tougher and cheaper models for the job. These included the Fender Stratocaster, the Fender Telecaster and several Danelectro guitars. He also developed a stage move that swung his right arm against the strings like the vanes of a windmill. He copied the motion from watching Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones warm up before a show.

  The habit sometimes happened by accident. During the Who's 1989 tour, Townshend tripped over a Rickenbacker and smashed it. He did not throw the pieces away. Instead he reassembled them as a sculpture, which appeared at the Rock Stars, Cars and Guitars 2 exhibit at The Henry Ford museum in the summer of 2009.

  Townshend is also one of the key figures in the rise of feedback in rock guitar. Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore said, "Pete Townshend was definitely the first." Jimmy Page was less certain about who started it. "I don't know who really did feedback first", he said, but Townshend was the one who made feedback more his style. Slash, Alex Lifeson and Steve Jones are among the guitarists who cite him as an influence.

  His volume depended on equipment as well. He stuck with Hiwatt amplifiers for most of four decades. He also helped create the "Marshall stack". Townshend ordered speaker cabinets holding eight 12-inch speakers in a housing nearly six feet tall. They were too heavy to move easily, so at his suggestion Jim Marshall cut each one in half. That produced two stackable cabinets with four speakers each.

  On Who's Next, he began working with analogue synthesizers, including the ARP 2600, which he first met at Cambridge University. He explained that a synthesizer put things in his hands that were not otherwise there, such as an orchestra. He said of his guitar playing, "I don't play fast, I just play hard." Since the late 1980s, he has used Synclavier digital audio systems for most keyboard composition on solo albums and projects.

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• 5. Operas and Belief

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  In April 1968, Townshend announced himself a disciple of the Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba. He had begun exploring spirituality the year before and had swiftly read every Baba writing he could find. For two years he had been searching for a basis for a rock opera. Now he built a story around a deaf, dumb and blind boy who experiences sensations as music, shaped by Baba's teachings.

  That piece became Tommy, released on the 23rd of May 1969 to critical and commercial success. The Who toured behind it, including an appearance at the Woodstock Festival on the 17th of August. During their set, the Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman jumped on stage to complain about the arrest of John Sinclair. Townshend promptly knocked him off with his guitar.

  In 1970, the Who released Live at Leeds, which several critics rank as the best live album ever made. Townshend started on another opera, Lifehouse, a multimedia project about the bond between a musician and an audience. His bandmates found the plot convoluted and simply wanted an album. Feeling alienated, Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown, and the project was abandoned.

  Much of the material found a home on Who's Next, which reached number one in Britain. It included "Baba O'Riley", named as an ode to Baba and the composer Terry Riley, and "Won't Get Fooled Again". Both made pioneering use of the synthesizer.

  Baba's influence reached his public statements. In a 1970 Rolling Stone article, Townshend said the teachings left him opposed to all psychedelic drugs, which made him one of the first counterculture rock stars to turn against them. Later years complicated that stance. In his autobiography, Who I Am, he wrote that he became addicted to cocaine in 1980-81, to the point of overdosing and needing resuscitation. By January 1982, he wrote, "I needed help to break my dependence on prescription drugs and heroin."

  In 1973, Townshend turned to the mod subculture and its clashes with rockers in early 1960s Britain. The result was Quadrophenia, the only Who album written entirely by him. He also produced it, because relations with Lambert had soured. Released that November, it reached number two in both the UK and the US. NME's Charles Shaar Murray called it "prime cut Who".

  Touring it was fraught. The band played along to pre-recorded backing tapes, which caused friction. When the tapes malfunctioned during a show in Newcastle, Townshend dragged the soundman Bob Pridden on stage and screamed at him. He then kicked over all the amplifiers and partly destroyed the tapes.

  On the 18th of March 1975, the film of Tommy premiered. Ken Russell directed it, with Roger Daltrey as Tommy, Ann-Margret as his mother and Oliver Reed as his stepfather. Cameos came from Tina Turner, Elton John and Eric Clapton. Townshend earned an Academy Award nomination for scoring and adapting its music. In 1993, he and Des McAnuff wrote and directed the Broadway adaptation.

  He kept returning to album-length storytelling. His solo work includes White City: A Novel in 1985, The Iron Man: A Musical in 1989 and Psychoderelict in 1993. The Iron Man drew on a children's story by the poet Ted Hughes. McAnuff and Townshend later co-produced The Iron Giant, an animated film based on the same Hughes story.

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• 6. Pages and Causes

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  In August 1970, Melody Maker ran the first of nine instalments of "The Pete Townshend Page", a monthly column by Townshend. It covered the media and the state of American concert halls and sound systems, and it also showed his mindset as Lifehouse evolved. Rolling Stone then published three long essays by him, in November 1970, December 1971 and November 1977.

  In 1977, he founded Eel Pie Publishing, which specialised in children's titles, music books and several books about Meher Baba. He also opened a London bookstore named Magic Bus, after the Who song. That year Eel Pie published The Story of Tommy, which he wrote with his art school friend Richard Barnes.

  In July 1983, Townshend became an acquisitions editor at the publisher Faber and Faber. He edited Eric Burdon's autobiography and worked on Charles Shaar Murray's Crosstown Traffic, about Jimi Hendrix. He also worked with Prince Charles on a volume of collected speeches. The job brought friendships with the Nobel-winning author William Golding and with Ted Hughes.

  Two years after joining, Townshend published his own book. Horse's Neck, issued in May 1985, collected short stories he wrote between 1979 and 1984 on childhood, stardom and spirituality. His autobiography, Who I Am, appeared on the 8th of October 2012 and ranked in the top five of The New York Times best seller list.

  His later fiction grew out of old projects. In September 2005, he began posting a novella, The Boy Who Heard Music, online, a chapter each week. A production described as a Townshend rock opera of that title debuted at Vassar College's Powerhouse Summer Theater in July 2007. In 2019, he announced a debut novel, The Age of Anxiety, which he called an "extended meditation on manic genius and the dark art of creativity".

  Generosity ran alongside the writing. In 1968, Townshend donated his former Wardour Street apartment for use by the Meher Baba Association. In July 1976, he opened Meher Baba Oceanic, a London activity centre for Baba followers with a cinema and a recording studio. He reportedly offered American pilgrims lodging for £1 a night.

  His first solo concert, on the 14th of April 1974, raised funds for the Camden Square Community Play Centre. The stage version of Tommy opened at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse in July 1992 as a benefit for the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation, which helps children with autism and intellectual disability. Between 1997 and 2002, he played five benefit shows for Maryville Academy, a Chicago-area children's charity, raising at least $1,600,000.

  In 2000, the Who began a series of concerts for the Teenage Cancer Trust that raised several million pounds. On the 4th of November 2011, Daltrey and Townshend launched a teen and young adult cancer program at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, funded by the band's charity, Who Cares.

  Drug rehabilitation was another cause. Two early 1979 Who concerts raised £20,000 for Meg Patterson's Pharmakon Clinic in Sussex. Townshend also formed Double-O Charities, sold anti-heroin T-shirts at UK Bruce Springsteen concerts and reportedly financed a trip for the former Clash drummer Topper Headon to receive treatment.

  In 1979, he gave Amnesty International three acoustic songs at The Secret Policeman's Ball: "Pinball Wizard", "Drowned" and "Won't Get Fooled Again". They were later cited as forerunners of the "unplugged" craze of the 1990s. The producer Martin Lewis said his participation helped bring Sting, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Phil Collins and Bob Geldof to the 1981 sequel. In 1986, Bono told Rolling Stone, "I saw The Secret Policeman's Ball and it became a part of me."

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• 7. Private Life

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  Townshend met Karen Astley, daughter of the film composer Edwin Astley, while at art school. They married on the 20th of May 1968 and moved into a three-bedroom townhouse in Twickenham overlooking the Thames. They have three children: Emma, born in 1969, a gardening columnist; Aminta, born in 1971, who works in film production; and Joseph, born in 1989, who studied graphic design at Central St. Martins.

  The couple separated in 1994. Townshend has since been with the arranger and musician Rachel Fuller, whom he secretly married in 2016. In August 2021, he sold his London home, The Wick, for more than £15 million. The Sunday Times Rich List put his assets at £40 million in 2009.

  His private life has also had a darker public chapter. Townshend accepted a caution from the Metropolitan Police as part of Operation Ore, a 2002-2003 investigation into child sexual abuse images. The Met stated that he was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images. He was on a sex offenders' register for five years from 2003, after admitting he used his credit card to access a child abuse images website. Townshend said he did so as research for a campaign against child sexual abuse, to show that British banks were channelling profits from paedophile rings. Authorities could not prove the website involved children, and no incriminating evidence was found on his computer.

  He has also been candid, and sometimes ambiguous, about his sexuality. In a 1989 interview with the radio host Timothy White, he apparently acknowledged bisexuality, calling his song "Rough Boys" a coming out. In a 1994 Playboy interview, he said the interviewer had misread him, and that his "gay life" meant friends who are gay. In his 2012 autobiography, he wrote that he is "probably bisexual".

  Politically, his record is mixed. In 1961, while at art school, he joined the Young Communist League, and he later became a prominent figure in its 1966 "Trend" recruitment campaign. In 1974, he told Penthouse that he was a capitalist in practice but communist in ideals. By 1998 he was named among the biggest private donors to the UK Labour Party. He refused to let Michael Moore use "Won't Get Fooled Again" in Fahrenheit 9/11, because Bowling for Columbine had not convinced him.

  In a 2012 interview with ABC, he jokingly called himself "a bit of a neocon". In 2019, he told The Times he favoured Britain remaining in the European Union. Of his bandmate Roger Daltrey he said, "I'm a Remainer, he is a Brexiteer. I believe in God, he doesn't."

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• 8. The Cost of Volume

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  In 1989, Townshend gave the initial funding for H.E.A.R., a non-profit called Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers. He had reason to care. He suffers from partial deafness and tinnitus, likely caused by years of exposure to loud music. He has also blamed the explosion of Keith Moon's drum set during the Who's 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

  After the Who played the Super Bowl XLIV half-time show on the 7th of February 2010, his worry grew. He told Rolling Stone, "If my hearing is going to be a problem, we're not delaying shows. We're finished." Neil Young introduced him to an audiologist, who suggested an in-ear monitor. The band cancelled its spring 2010 touring, but Townshend used the device at their one remaining London concert, on the 30th of March 2010, to test whether he could keep performing.

  In March 2011, Roger Daltrey told the BBC that Townshend was having terrible trouble with his hearing and was seriously worried about losing it. Townshend answered on his blog in July 2011. He wrote that his hearing was "actually better than ever" since a feedback scare at the indigO2 in December 2008, and he credited studio computer systems that helped clean up frequencies beyond his range. At 66, he added, he still got tinnitus after loud music.

  The Who carried on. They had already survived the deaths of Keith Moon in 1978 and John Entwistle in 2002. In October 2006, they released Endless Wire, their first album in 24 years. In 2012, the Who were the last performers at the Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London, playing "Baba O'Riley", "See Me, Feel Me" and "My Generation". On the 6th of December 2019, they released Who, their first album in thirteen years and their second as a duo of Townshend and Daltrey.

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