I'm going to take some time to write about my favorite human being in the world. I'll try to keep it short, because I could go on forever about him.
His autobiography is released on October 8th. I have a lot of hopes and a lot of fears regarding the contents of this book. Pete is an absolute genius, and there is not a musician alive that gives more insightful, cogent and humorous interviews. But he is 66 years old (67 in a week and a half) and he recently sold the publishing rights to The Who's catalog for a handsome fee. He's retired. The chances of him touring again, with The Who or solo, are very slim.
He has to sell books. Rock autobiographies are quite popular these days. Keith Richards recently released one, and Slash had his a few years ago, Nikki Sixx and Anthony Kiedis had popular autobiographies as well. Each one of those is identical to the others. Each one contains the same rehashed-heroin-confession rock star story. And surely Pete could tell that story as well as anyone, and it would sell well.
What might not sell as well would be an honest and critical reflection by the artist on himself and his art. Will Pete tell me what I want to know about art and being an artist in this book? I hope so. He certainly can. He's obviously a good writer and has a lot to say on the subject. But Pete is not necessarily above "selling out," as it were.
But of course he's a complex man. He often changes his mind and frequently contradicts himself and I'm not entirely sure he has a clearer picture of his artistic vision than we do. That's the price of genius. It's reflected in his music. The Who was a band that often changed its mind and frequently contradicted itself. One moment it was a loud punk band, devolving into pure noise and destruction, and the next moment it was a progressive rock band playing dynamic, delicate and difficult concept pieces.
Very few bands ever covered so much ground, and when they did, they were only treading the paths that Pete and The Who forged. I am of the controversial opinion that Pete Townshend is the most influential musician of the 20th century. I could go into dozens and dozens of reasons for that and I might later. Or I might now. I didn't plan any of this.
So there were always at least two sides to Pete; the punk side and the prog side. But even in all of the wildly divergent styles that Pete created the subject matter was usually the same. Pete wrote music for socially troubled young men, and I think he may have been the first person to ever do so. Sure, the old blues men wrote about their troubles with life and women (particularly women), but no one that I'm aware of wrote introspective songs about estranged youths. Certainly the Beatles never wrote anything approaching "My Generation" and could never have dreamed of coming up with anything as grandiose yet personal as Quadrophenia. And Dylan, while hugely influential, never touched on that subject matter much either.
That is what I want Pete to talk about in his book. Sure, he's going to mention his drug use, it was a large part of his development as an artist. And so was giving up drugs. All of that information has been covered, though, in books like Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend by Mark Wilkerson. But I've had that book sitting on my shelf for years. I'm less than halfway through it because it is a tedious read filled with endless footnotes and the prose is encyclopedic and sterile.
So I'm certainly looking forward to reading Pete's own thoughts but I pray he gives me information that I can't find elsewhere.
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