Posterazzi Pete Townshend in Mid-Jump Photo Print (8 x 10)

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Pete Townshend of The Who has revealed Keir Starmer was the lawyer who challenged him in Townshend’s infamous child pornography case. I’ve been enjoying working with other musicians, and we’ve been doing that work in my studios. I’ve got two studios in the U.K. I’ve kept myself busy musically.

Rachel, my wife, suddenly decided with her Siddhartha project that she needed a narrator. Our friend Des McAnuff, who was the director and co-writer with me on the Broadway Tommy, was doing a version of Faust with Christopher Plummer. He said, “Chris Plummer might be keen to do this. He might do it for you.” In a sense, one of the things that my generation of musicians has has to cope with is the ground, the moral ground, the political ground, the legal ground, but particularly the moral ground, moving under us to such an extent that we have to accept that our rage against not being noticed after the Second World War was probably a little overdone. With the orchestra, it’s a similar effect. It’s almost like I could stand there for a good 50 percent of the show and play nothing at all. What’s interesting about that is that it gives me a chance to make sure what I do play, what I do do, where I look, how I behave on the stage, is more connected with the people around me, with the audience, and with, I suppose, to get prosaic about it, an inner sense. In other words, I don’t lose myself the way I did when I used to jump around, have a big adrenaline rush, and then come off the stage and someone would say, “Great show,” or someone would say, “Terrible show,” and I wouldn’t really know what I had done, to be honest, since I was like someone running a marathon. So the orchestra gives me space.

The 10 best Pete Townshend-fronted Who songs

I don’t exercise. I walk quite a bit, but my hobby of choice is sailing, and that’s not very physical. It’s mainly looking at the wind and trying to figure out where to steer. But that’s my main sport hobby, which I do and I love doing it. I do it as much as I can. You know, I think I laughed when you asked that first question because I knew it was going to be the first thing you’d say. I am looking forward to it, but I don’t like touring. I have to be honest with people. I’m not going to bark at people I meet. I like what happens when we tour. I like the whole feeling of it. I’m somebody that if someone says, “Do you want to go to a party? There are going to be a lot of your friends there,” my first response will be to say, “No.” [ Laughs.] Pete Townshend: Who Came First — 45th Anniversary Edition". American Songwriter. 18 April 2018 . Retrieved 16 August 2022. When we phoned up Pete Townshend last week at his new home in the English countryside, our only real goal was to talk about the Who’s upcoming American tour where the band will be paired with local symphonies. Before we knew it, an hour had passed and we’d covered everything from the Neil Young–Joe Rogan spat to the inflation crisis, the unlikelihood of a new Who record or solo LP, the brilliant use of his music on Freaks and Geeks, and his hatred of NFTs.

Coming right in the middle of Who’s Next, Townshend is celebrating all of the music finally being written and having the opportunity to shout his salvation from every mountaintop he can. Although Daltrey eventually takes over for the choruses, Townshend’s voice overpowers his in terms of pure emotion, almost sounding like a spirit leaving his body as he ascends towards musical Nirvana.

Pete Townshend — vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass guitar, drums, percussion; harmonica on "Day of Silence" It’s never easy to spot Townshend’s contributions when listening to some of The Who’s classics. While he contributed an odd line or two to some of their best material, there was no real need for someone like Townshend to step up to the mic when they had someone like Roger Daltrey delivering some of his generation’s most muscular vocal lines. Then again, the only way to appreciate what Townshend gave to the band is to put his voice beside Daltrey’s on ‘The Song is Over’. Essentially, in the past month, two months, I’ve been working on a charity project for Teen Cancer America, which will be announced in a couple of weeks. That’s hopefully going to produce a big chunk of money for them, and possibly a podcast and some … not new music, but old music that’s been re-recorded.

Yes, I did. It was a real buzz. I remember being very moved by it and very honored. It was a dark comedy show with deep, swinging connotations about performance and education and all the things I’m talking about. The uses were very, very smart. In a sense, it redeemed and gave credence to the fact that I’ve always felt the worst person … Let’s get into real trouble here. The worst person to have control of Neil Young’s catalog is Neil Young. [ Laughs] Give it to me. I just think there’s so much stuff there that could be just turned into joy. He’s such an incredible writer, and so much of his stuff is just unknown, partly because he keeps it tied so tight to his chest.

Atkins, John (1 February 2000), The Who on Record: A Critical History, 1963-1998, McFarland & Company, ISBN 9780786440979 , retrieved 18 June 2016 What happened was that everything went very well until the people at Polydor suggested that we need a producer. We got a producer [Dave Sardy] in and he spent a million dollars. [ Laughs] He made a great record, of course. I think it was a better record than had I produced it because I certainly wouldn’t have done a lot of the things that he did. I’m very pleased with the record. I have somewhat of a random question, but I just re-watched Freaks and Geeks. They used a ton of your songs in really poignant and interesting ways. I’m wondering if you ever saw it. So by the time we got to Monterey in ‘67, Pete’s going, ‘Well, that’s my whole show! And it was always a great finale.”