Pete Townshend: "I made rock 'n' roll do a little bit more."
My 1978 interview, Part 2.
Part 1 of my interview with Pete Townshend from 1978 is good. But this here Part 2 is a lot better. Not only because there’s more of it – this is about two-thirds of the interview, a solid 6000 words best read on a laptop at leisure, rather than in a rush on your own phone - but because, as I typed it all out all over again, I really felt Pete Townshend’s engagement in the process. We were just a trio of 14-year-old kids (plus one 16-year-old) who had shown up an hour late for our interview with the rock star who happened also to be my true rock icon. (And remains so.) But as Pete noted at the end of Part 1, he had previously granted interviews to the only other two fanzines whose requests had reached him, and he was taking the process seriously. Hopefully he recognized that I knew The Who’s music as well as could be expected at my age, and that I was genuinely inquisitive, eager to hear him tell the back story in his own words.
And even though a cynic could say that he rather loved the sound of his own voice and that his answers meandered more than necessary, what I get from going back through this is his attention to detail, to painting the whole picture, to ensuring that we – mainly me, as I was the one asking all the questions – were properly informed, lest… you know, one of us ended up writing a 650-page book about the band’s recently deceased drummer down the line!
To that end, in the interview that follows, Pete discusses everything from the group’s first appearance on Ready Steady Go! to his love for Meher Baba (“I think he’s the best person that’s ever lived”). He gives a detailed explanation of the circumstances behind and the lyrics to “My Generation,” and he explains how he came about to write Tommy. He reminisces fondly about smashing up hotel rooms, talks about The Who’s internal problems, his use of synthesizers, the new wave, and not for the last time, admits that he’s “lost the urge” to play live and inaccurately predicts that he doesn’t think The Who will tour again. While I would interview Pete again for Jamming! and have had various additional contact over the years, I look back on this day in November 1978 with only the faintest of memories and with absolute amazement that it actually happened. I was incredibly fortunate in my youth, even if I did work hard to get lucky.
“If somebody put me on a rack and said, ‘Listen, either you’re gonna change and become the person that you feel is a right c*nt, or we’re gonna kill you,’ I’d say, ‘Alright then, kill me.’”
I make reference below to the fact that only one of The Who’s 17 performances on Ready Steady Go! has apparently been preserved on film – the rest were wiped, the tape re-used. Even at the age of 14, and even though many of us frequently taped over our cassettes out of financial necessity, I was never going to be that stupid with my better interviews, and I have a shoebox remarkably close at hand which still contains my Pete Townshend interview… from 1986. It also contains my Paul Weller, Adam Ant and Tom Robinson interviews from 1978, The Jam from 1979, memorable interviews with Madness, The Damned, Jello Biafra, and of course, my epic Paul McCartney interview from 1982. In a drawer close to my desk I even have cassettes of chart shows I taped off Capital Radio in 1975, and I believe that the fact that I haven’t thrown these out says more about my passion for pop and its inherent nostalgia and cultural resonance than implies that I’m a hoarder.
…And yet, I cannot find the cassette for this particular interview. I am certain it must still exist and I am hoping it will show up one day; at the same time, I don’t want to place too much stock in the search, as my McCartney tape has a pretty blatant hiss running through it and the audio quality is not much better on any of the others I’ve listened back to. Recording interviews was a rudimentary process back in those days; my mum’s portable player did yeoman duty for many years but it was not hi-tech.
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