Pete Townshend Quotes (40 Quotes)


    Some of our early work was two minutes twenty when it actually came out on vinyl, very, very, very short. Sometimes if you made a three-minute record they would make you do an edited version for radio, particularly in America.

    Bob Dylan did the first really long record - Like A Rolling Stone - I think it was four minutes.

    It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

    What the Who is all about is exactly that and it always has been. If it exists today for this concert, it's in response again to a function which is happening out there on the street.

    Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.


    What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.

    Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

    Is your perception of 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' so shallow that it's violated by dancing raisins

    What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.


    I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.

    I only really started to go to plays and to be interested in drama 20 years ago when as an artist I was already well-rounded. I think I'm more disciplined today.

    I have said many times... that I am reticent about committing to a tour without a completed new Who album under my belt. As things stand I am still pushing to produce some more songs. So the announcement (of a 2006 tour) may seem premature. It is not.

    As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.

    We are going on. First show Hollywood Bowl. Pray for us John, wherever you are.

    The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

    What the English like to do is to face reality with a glass of port and a tear and fade off like Basil Rathbone into the sunset.

    Everything that I had done creatively related to two or three incidents that happened to me when I was a child that I'd forgotten. Everything, absolutely everything.

    I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man.

    He is the king. If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar.

    I have high hopes for the whole tour to be shared to a wide audience at home in a mixture of pay-per-view and free special Web casts. Some of the proceeds will go to charity, of course.

    What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.

    Roger and I (will) meet in mid-December to play what we have written, ... If we move ahead from there, we may have a CD ready to release in the spring. If the recording works out, we will tour with the usual band in the first half of 2005.

    But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.

    What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.

    I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.


    I think we are incumbent, I am incumbent, the Who is incumbent, anybody that produces anything by me is incumbent by my Englishness.

    My autobiography now offers me the chance to lay down my life story and place recent events in proper context, ... I have had a long and lumbering life -- this book will take time.

    I refuse to have my best efforts - already heavily filtered in advance and subjected to the constraints of finance and time - rejected by any criteria whatsoever.


    Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood,

    The fact of the matter is, I'm fking brilliant. Not 'was' brilliant. 'Am' brilliant.

    I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.


    We are musicians, entertainers. We can do it. We have the right tools. No worries.

    A lot of my audience are in their 50s. But they want me to pretend to continue to be pretending.

    If I keep at it, with luck we should see a great new Who record before I drop dead. What helps is that I love Roger and he loves me and we are both willing to work and wait.

    I simply believe we have a duty to go on, to ourselves, ticket buyers, staff, promoters, big and little people. I also have a duty to myself and my dependent family and friends. I also want to help guide Roger and the rest of the band at this time, all of whom have been shaken by John's death.

    left entirely to me the decision as to whether or not to go on with the tour.


    More Pete Townshend Quotations (Based on Topics)


    People - Work & Career - Time - Anger - Drama - Man - Music - Friendship - Worry - English - Decision Making - Performance - Musicians - Characters - Laughter - Home - Writing - Fathers - Woman - View All Pete Townshend Quotations

    Related Authors


    Paula Abdul - Dr. Dre - Clay Aiken - Julian Lennon - Janis Joplin - Ice Cube - Eric Clapton - Enrique Iglesias - Bob Marley - B. B. King


Authors (by First Name)

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

Other Inspiring Sections