The fact of the matter is, I'm f**king brilliant. Not 'was' brilliant. 'Am' brilliant.
Pete TownshendWater is more precious than oil. Both are more precious than music. Music won't heat a house or help a plant to grow.
Pete TownshendI have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion.
Pete TownshendThe circling horse was an oblique warning that i would repeat the same mistake eternally. Would the law of averages allow it? Can anything continue without change? Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.
Pete TownshendRumors 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 TownshendOnce she woke with untamed lover's face between her legs, now he's cooled and stifled and it's she who has to beg.
Pete TownshendSongwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline.
Pete TownshendI have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.
Pete TownshendDance is the only thing that lets you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time.
Pete TownshendI felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'
Pete TownshendBackstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.
Pete TownshendI don't really know any other musicians like me. I grew up backstage with my dad who played in a post-war dance band, so I always feel at home at a venue.
Pete TownshendI bought a Dutch barge and turned it into a recording studio. My plan was to go to Paris and record rolling down the Seine.
Pete TownshendKeith Moon is not interested in Jazz and won't ever be a Jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.
Pete TownshendWhat 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.
Pete TownshendTough boys running the streets, come a little closer. Rough toys under the sheets, nobody knows her.
Pete TownshendFor a while I was perfectly happy not performing with 'The Who.' From 1982 to 1989 I felt 'The Who' did not exist. I let the band go, in my heart. However, Roger Daltrey had other ideas. He would not let go.
Pete TownshendBut 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.
Pete TownshendIf it screams truth rather than help, if it commits itself with a courage that it can't be sure it really has, if it stands up and admits that something is wrong, but doesn't insist on blood, then it's rock n' roll.
Pete TownshendThere's a man upon that ledge, he's only cleaning windows. What a shame for the pain we're missing. Gonna lean back on my wall and pray for him to fall.
Pete TownshendBob Dylan did the first really long record - Like A Rolling Stone - I think it was four minutes.
Pete TownshendThe music we play has to be tomorrow's, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.
Pete TownshendWhat 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.
Pete TownshendIt 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.
Pete TownshendFor an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines.
Pete TownshendThe 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.
Pete Townshend