“Rock ‘n’ Roll might not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them”
― Pete Townshend
“Life’s a bitch and so am I.”
― Pete Townshend
“If you don’t want anyone to know anything about you, don’t write anything.”
― Pete Townshend
“Do you realize why is it I’m so driven to operate within the Establishment? It’s vengeance. ‘Hope I die before I get old’ is something I still have to live with, but not for the reason many people think. I have to be very, very vigilant not to become one of those people I despised.”
― Pete Townshend
“Keith Moon, God rest his soul, once drove his car through the glass doors of a hotel, driving all the way up to the reception desk, got out and asked for the key to his room.”
― Pete Townshend
“Enjoy life. And be careful what you pray for – remember, you will get it all.”
― Pete Townshend
“Don’t cry
Don’t raise your eye
Its only teenage wasteland.”
― Pete Townshend
“Can’t pretend that growin’ older never hurts.”
― Pete Townshend
“Stars are attributed w/ intelligence they don’t have, beauty they haven’t worked for, loyaly & love they are incapable of reciprocating, and strength they do not possess. They are treated like a beautiful vase of cut flowers. When wilted, simply replaced w/ new blooms.”
― Pete Townshend
“Announcer – “And where are you from Pete?”
Pete Townshend – “London, I’m from London.”
Announcer – “London where, exactly?”
Pete – “London, England”
― Pete Townshend
“Like so many addicts, I’d thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around”
― Pete Townshend
“The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.”
― Pete Townshend
“Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.”
― Pete Townshend
“Barriers were being torn down. Where Freddie Mercury was trying to keep his homosexuality from the front pages, Boy George was openly & outrageously gay.”
― Pete Townshend
“The music we play has to be tomorrow’s, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.”
― Pete Townshend
“All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.”
― Pete Townshend
“Since so much of this music bubbled up urgently from my subconsious mind, I’m left to interpret it much like anyone else.”
― Pete Townshend
“I was surprised at how much I enjoyed meeting fans face to face. They’re less scary when they aren’t going nuts at a Who show. But then, so am I.”
― Pete Townshend
“I am growing old of course, but I am still in the early stages of disintegration, and regarded as just about cool enough by some fashionable young ppl to be permitted to think aloud.”
― Pete Townshend
“His broken heart was unfeeling, like shattered glass in an acid bath.”
― Pete Townshend
“In Tacoma, Washington, I speared myself on my guitar’s whammy bar – it went right through my hand. I went into shock,”
― Pete Townshend
“Punk rock was the tsunami that threatened to drown us all in 1977.”
― Pete Townshend
“Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one’s sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood.”
― Pete Townshend
“Roger Daltrey had been expelled for smoking, but was still impudently showing up on campus to visit his various cronies. I’d first met him after he won a playground fight with a Chinese boy. I thought his tactics were dirty and when I shouted as much, he came over & forced me to retract.”
― Pete Townshend
“I heard in my own voice the tulmult of a young man playig a role, uneasily, repackaging black R&B music from America, relying on gimmicky outfits, and pretending to be wild & free when in reality he needed to be looked after by his mother.”
― Pete Townshend
“When you’re part of a gang, you soon find the parts of you that don’t fit. These apparent defects can become assets; they’re the things about you that make you interesting & useful.”
― Pete Townshend
“We didn’t need light & shade, irony or humor. An iconic Daltrey bellow could convey an extrodinary range of human emotion; withering sadness, self pity, loneliness, abandonment, spiritual desperation, the loss of childhood, as well as the more obvious rage & frustration, joy & triumph.”
― Pete Townshend
“Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.”
― Pete Townshend
“For the first time, a whole generation had the economic & educational opportunity to turn their backs on the dead end factory jobs of their parents, who, traumatized by two world wars, had responded by creating a safety blanket of conformity.”
― Pete Townshend
“I wrote to my son. ‘Be a pessimist,’ I advised Joseph on his first birthday on 21 November. ‘It is the safest, most pragmatic way to be. Being an optimist may enrich the lives of others (with good cheer and smiling), but it leads you unaware to danger.”
― Pete Townshend
“People say, “You’ve gotta go on, man, otherwise all those kids, they’ll be finished, they’ll have nothing to live for.” That’s rock and roll!”
― Pete Townshend
“There’s no easy way to be free.”
― Pete Townshend
“The people on the hill, they say I’m lazy, but when they sleep, I sing and dance.”
― Pete Townshend
“I heard that Harry Nilsson had died. The secret to being a successful hellraiser, it seemed, was to stop raising hell before hell razed you.”
― Pete Townshend
“I was regarded by my parents as having little musical talent other than a thin, nasal soprano voice. I was forbidden to touch my father’s clarinets or saxophones, just my harmonica.”
― Pete Townshend
“I slept badly that night, my vivid dreams populated by ghosts. As much as it revived ailing spirits in day light, the fizzy energy of NY seemed to feed on human frailty at night.”
― Pete Townshend
“Wiggy & I were drug buddies. There is no tighter compact for friendship. There is no greater potential for deceit.”
― Pete Townshend
“Judging by the faces of those around me, just the fact of Roger speaking to me meant that my life could very well change.”
― Pete Townshend
“In 1945 music had a serious purpose; to defy post war depression & revitalize the romantic & hopeful aspirations of an exhausted ppl.”
― Pete Townshend
“So remember when you’re looking for trouble
That trouble is already busy with weaker men”
― Pete Townshend
“I also had the ability to create alpha-state music in my head, go into a creative trance, have musical visions, and”
― Pete Townshend
“Some kid writes in to me and says, ‘I’ve got all your records and I listen to your music all day long and I look at your pictures all the time and I write to you and all I get is a bleedin’ autographed picture. You don’t know how much time I spend thinkin’ about you lot.’ I write him back and say, ‘You don’t know how much time I spend looking at and thinking about teenagers.”
― Pete Townshend
“Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss.”
― Pete Townshend