Pete Townshend

0:02Hello, I'm Matt is Pete Townsend. How are you doing? I'm okay. How are you? I'm doing well. I just literally finished the book half an hour ago So, I guess maybe we'll start with them What did you realize about yourself and what did you learn about the band? I mean looking back at 50 years of making music What you things must come across that you must not have realized until you actually put them down to paper You know, I don't yeah, maybe maybe I mean I think the one main thing was you know being sort of amazed that we lasted as long as we have and that You know that Roger and I wouldn't say that that was the happiest very well and very efficiently and

1:03something that I never The British classes doesn't teach that so much. So but you know, I think I think The things that I learned about the band I suppose were things that you know, I you know now what I was going to write about was you know this unique view that I felt changing in pop music and would continue to change and

1:52You know apart from the fact that I think pop music has probably stopped I think I was right in most cases and when you look at somebody like Lady Gaga, you know on the one hand Money making pop there's something far far more, you know much much more serious much more tell where everything's gone But you know with I got something I was really really wrong Well, not really I mean you're talking about I guess

2:38Lifehouse being the main at least reading the book it seems like that was the main theme of being wrong about something But it's still well, I'm just speaking. Yeah, I think I think I was really I'm really talking about, you know where I made my Mike my life choices, you know, I think You know, I Had you know, I had an opportunity to To say no more often than I did. It's very strange being a man because you're in a kind of a democracy There's many democracy. I want to go on to many occasions in my life I would say to my wife Karen I would say I don't want to go and she would say well if you don't want to go don't fucking go and I

3:25Would say well say well, why do you have to go and I would say well because because I needed the money because we lived Very very modestly in those early days. So I don't know, you know, I think that Those that's what I mean by choices and what I got wrong and right. Yeah, we're sweet Go no, no, I was gonna follow that thought up But you still knew I guess somewhere deep inside that you still had a crew and all these people You know, you're feeding a lot of mouths if you go on to it. Yeah, bye. Bye. Bye, you know by the by the late 60s early 70s we You know, we had we had quite a team around us and but of course by the 80s

4:11We had a massive team We had one of the biggest crews in the business and they would enable us to do we otherwise couldn't do and who set up was Pink Floyd with their company return your bro, but we Since you mentioned Pink Floyd and you're touring quadrifonia right now or if you near right now Are you have you found a way to employ the the quadraphonic sound into these shows that you couldn't do back in the 70s? No, no, we haven't I in fact I haven't had anything to do with this production creatively Okay I I put the book working in front entirely to Roger few ideas pass and he didn't want my fingers and then we we

6:03went for the first time and and Who was gonna perform in the band and what size the band was gonna be so I didn't have a lot to do with it But you're having fun I never had fun Then yes, maybe we'll go back to that original thing of making some wrong choices

7:06But you have well, I think that's the fundamental thing about my life is I think there is a fundamental Realization in the book, which is of course that I think I would have been much happier As a kind of a Brian Eno, you know, I kind of know that somebody you know, Brian Eno did the same He did it ten years later than I did but he did the same course You know that he's actually had resting and intriguing and more art school oriented love You know, so I think such a things too much, you know I can only point and just say that's really achieved a lot of the things that they were trying to

8:06what sort of Created an art form at least in the in the sense of making an album an album which is now kind of leaving again I mean it became a thing because because of you the Beatles Beach Boys Pink Floyd very few seminal albums That happened and it's and it's kind of going away with the way people listen to music now And I think it's gone. It's already gone according to you. Okay, so yeah thoughts on that. Is that a shame? Is that just something that happens something that happens? Yeah, I think I do think that the way I just think that the way that what we've done

8:59I reading music I want tougher than they turned it down to mine. There is at the back a movie's, you know I think files, you know, they can run a couple of gigabytes for gigabyte on single downloads

9:46How much do you want to charge? They just said we're gonna sell your stuff for 99 When you when you music video books all kinds of other media you start to so to some extent those mediums have survived A little bit better but but my publisher here said that you know the different age many times

10:46Since it was first, you know 78 records 33 minutes, you know long players and then CDs and then mini discs and then You know age many times and so we've kind of got used to this the fact that it changes far more So I just think Apple didn't think it through properly Yeah, I agree, you know because I kind of think now I kind of think well, you know I'm sure if I if I said you know, I want to you know

11:36But but but you know what I mean? I think there's a space main thing is is when you think that Tommy and quadra Fania were played. That's why I don't work in radio anymore There was that you said something The reason I brought it up was it was because you said something about Apple putting one percent of their profits back into artists And I thought that was such a great idea an innovative idea that I hadn't heard from anyone else before Um, I just can't see them doing it

12:27What they would probably argue is that well at Pete Townsend is talking about Young evolving musicians then what we'll do is we'll put one percent of our profits from iTunes back into artists Well that would be pitiful. I think in a way the I think what I was talking about was the fact that these wonderful machines such an intuitive level and they

13:14They work so brilliantly But you know, they're they're the one of the most successful companies in the world Yeah, I could say the same by Microsoft. Why should they get off lightly? You know let them all pour some money into back into creative work Even if it just means to create foundations for artists or support Universities and music schools and acting schools or whatever it is that they do You know, you know samsung are at it as well. They'd be all these companies are riding on the back of the film industry and music industry and you know creative writing and so on and um

14:02and and You know to some extent to on on on journalism Changing the way that we all have to work And they're riding on our backs like this great big massive beetle like fucking parasites sucking the blood out of us And then we'll be turned around to them and say well listen, you know, we use your equipment You know, I buy a new fucking computer every three years because you make them so fucking badly I know the feeling Yeah Would uh on the topic of the computers though would it have made it? I don't know It certainly would have made it different to create the records you created with with protools and what we what we create records with now But would it have made it easier?

14:50I think protools has made it easier to you know When I worked on the tommy soundtrack without computers, you know to make all the subtle changes that you have to make along the way Because the edited fork, you know, I did music for about my friend peter blake a piece of cake now It's just really really easy to do with computers, but computers. Yeah. Yeah, I ever did, you know

15:52And when I'm freaking new sounds part of it is creation and what musicians call noodling You know where you just kind of wander around trying to find something that inspires you and of course that's what I did a lot of when I first got my first synthesizers and Some things like that that I used so I got hudson dad in it did in the band But but you know korean I use them as a composer too digital technology is that you know that you can pick up your arm

16:50But you know you also need You also need some other stuff and unfortunately The other time I was here in new york from where i'm speaking to you now I was I was because there were two months one to hold the microphone from my guitar And the other to hold the microphone that would record my voice And I took them on so I went online and I tried to find a much lighter weight Music stand something and you know, I managed to find one. There's your iphone tom, you know

17:40And where do you sing and what do you play into it? And if it happens to be a A Hammond organ then um, then you still need a fucking truck, you know, you and a rodent Why are you uh, why are you traveling with mike stands in your suitcase? Are you working on a new material? I I always carry if I can I always carry A recording rig a small recording rig with me. Yeah, and this is for floss. I take it And no, no, no, not only for that I am working on floss But I i've already done a lot of the work on floss and the only decision that I have to make now on floss is take me Back to talking about and I realized that a level of investment that I want to think of ways to

19:00Happening so we shall see i'm i'm that's kind of screen a laptop folding picnic table I think that you know, I've talked about one of the most important things for the creative process is to have a nice Empty table. It's where that's it's kind of where you end this ordinary thing to do, you know, you start to see

19:53There's a number of different I think it's called right room right room And what does it do? It's just a big called right room. That's one word. It's like typing The old things You know those things that you see when you you see in movies you see, you know old movies of guys

20:40From throwing it into a bin and and you you you know that they're in trouble because there's lots of paper all over the room But you know, it's kind of it looks like that. It's kind of just an empty sheet But that that that a nice clean table so that the picnic table was a really and on the last leg of a tour I had three picnic tables A kind of a u-shape of it felt like a proper little studio. Yeah, that's what i'm envisioning right now Talking talking about just blank pieces of paper. It's making me think and I don't think you touch on this in the book at all Were you were you a pen and paper songwriter or were you a typewriter songwriter before we had computers both? Okay Yeah, I did both. Yeah, I

21:27I tend to think a little bit differently. I tend to be a little bit more I tend to just throw the ideas down, but then I add it before you've got music in your head. There's all refine The lyric to fit the music later If you just sing and play then of course There's no pattern in front of you and you tape what you've done and then you might put it down on paper later on so All three ways either just sitting and noodling around

22:13But of course the other is, you know where I become a little bit more which is much more like conventional composition There's the stuff in cordial and and along those lines when like taking all that stuff and mixing it for two months How do you know when a project like that is finished when it's such an epic? Of epic proportions. How do you say? Okay, you know what i'm done now. I do I did come up with you know, I had so many Musicians saying to me, you know, you know, or you know, I've just done a bunch of music

23:10And I just know that it's nobody's ever gonna say, you know I'm doing loads and loads of shows and people love what I do, but I can't we start the creative process But there's a finishing line and I think every artist where that finishing line Kind of lean into using lady gargoyle as an example for everything at the moment because I think she's Just done everything so far across the board, but there was a time king, you know

23:57She used to sit in an office and write songs which other people used to sing and she could make sometimes She would write with other people and then would have been that at some point in her life She decided there was going to be another finishing line moving fashion and sexuality and and uh

24:45So obviously art is finishing things. I like it or I don't like it but you have to decide sometimes i'm quite content just to Do the demo and think one day Somebody will find this and dig it up and they might like it or they might not I might be dead and gone But I just must have to be finished something is finished but know whether you've reached it or not

25:35It's gonna be and it would be easier. I think I would be easy in 1970 and the who were you know a touring band I just kind of go well This will be a two songs and then we'll drag it around the world and any bits of it that nobody understands You know i'll do an interview with rolling stone like No, it's a lot more fragmented now at least in terms of the journalistic stuff very different I was gonna ask you so what's your next finishing line? I think i've i've got two or three projects happening Um in the northeast here

26:26And the usa then we we in in the uk we've now Committed to a uk two world shows and they including two at stadium Arena where we never played and the whole tour sold out in a heartbeat So i'm really pure of amsterdam paris and then we're doing a charity show to july And then got kind of falling in love

27:24Put her way back in 1995 96 when we first met be something that would Further down the line around the world. It's she's really brilliant. And so i'm supporting her in that des mackinoff is uh A torontonian as you probably know

28:10And it's in rehearsal me that he and I did together With many garlands pretty much in its original form with some minor changes At strapford that that's going into rhett. I'm looking at is of course floss and you know as I would say You know i'm starting to get a sense of how that might go. I don't want to say too much, but you know starting to kind of Get a sense. It's interesting to think about creative work when you're actually on the road performing because you see a very

29:01What you say and do as a performer on the stage And the way that people I was aware of was that the audience was really Was suddenly gone You know, we've had shows where we've been playing to the local university in hamilton

29:55It was dark and some of them were pretty big quite old guys You know, they were want to be derogatory. I was looking at them. I found myself thinking one of the more subtle songs in codofenia I wonder whether they really want to attend to the debate The issues that I want to visit in floss

30:43You know which are about the you know, the the the the anxiety that this is something that they can I wonder whether they feel somebody who can give them temporary respite from having to worry Rob comes again with one of his messages But that's the point of going to a concert right to take yourself out of the world to lose yourself in the music I think that's right. I think you know, I think you know i'm I'm 68 in may I just think I'm on a daily basis into a bit of a joke sometimes, you know

32:05You end up with something, you know, you don't my just that that You know you end up in a plan In the music business becomes well in my life. So was that 9 11 or faster, you know

32:53We live on a daily basis in our immediate neighborhood and this reminds me of the way that I grew up, you know because I grew up You know between the ages of like every other kid of my life I mean hopefully eventually in a good way because it brought forth, you know This new wing of pop out loud in masters of war which was just that you know

33:44It's a shit because you play with your guns and your toys, but you know where people would think, you know whoever Designed the human being was very very smart. I fucking thought about it for 15 seconds We'd be much much much more core cautious. Do you know what I mean? I think things are It's a very difficult time to think about the future

34:31so anyway I want I will use a piece of work and maybe I don't know we shall see a little bit of everything I was trying to think of a way to segue into something more pleasant. Well, you know, what's what was interesting I was watching um, Uh synecdoche Charlie Kaufman The guy who's a direct sound humor and love tenderness but also

35:30A real sense of understanding you know, some people do various things happen and yet in his one and I think it's that other story that you know, there's If i'm on the stage And we're doing five things about a young kid gets on a train takes loads of drugs a young man and he was a mob

36:23Unity for a guitar solo then I start to Maniac and then I start to bang the guitar on my knee and then I start to crash at it And then I start to machine gun the people in the front of the stage very very badly indeed What they like about is that sense that there is no arms And you know and often I end that solo with both arms beside myself, you know feeling completely whacked down

37:18go back to my fuzz box and push a button and And continue to play along with roger daltry It's it's interesting and I think so what I find myself thinking is is that Just something that i've always felt I tend to when I write songs and when I write music To walk right up to the edge and just say is how much further can we go? I like that. Just talking about the performance how I mean obviously it's different since john's passing and since keith's passing But but when you when you get lost in a song on stage, do you ever feel their presence? Do you ever do you ever I don't know look and not see a hallucination of them

38:05But but but feel them in some way while you're playing those those songs further than that. He's got movie of them playing so What brings on that out 15 is the fact that it's bass Okay And in the end, you know because i'm not you know, usually when I am alive

38:59And that's as good as it gets But yeah, they're both there Uh roger has introduced people love and he does this bass solo always was when he did it Uh, but but also in uh, it's very very endearing, you know, I don't know I think that roger and I today do feel very different the way that we work together on the way that we operate together on The ground that we cover together. It does feel very different as I said earlier, you know being in a band is like a democracy and You know when there's just two

39:51There's no there's no casting vote right so Now while you said earlier it might not be fun To be on tour you have said that it's uh, it's still a learning process to play to support roger's vocal something something new for you That you look forward to this new challenge. You said that before going out on this tour So now that you're midway through almost on the north american leg, what's it been like fulfilling? I've I suppose what i've done is i've you know, not only crossed my fingers to a presentation which it So it's obviously working very well. I can't see it very well from where I am, but I can feel that it works

40:40I've always felt you know and that has actually just playing guitar and transist to the turn and um And I'd you know, I'd you know, i'm really fucking good at that, you know There's no point being you know, and sometimes though on stage, you know in hamilton roger one song where his his sound went to pieces

41:28I think his in-ear monitors went ironally grinned and laughed back and I thought You know, that's not something that I would ever have thought of when I was a younger man. I would have thought well Want him to be okay and I you know and I want to not happy I like I don't mind accompanying myself But i've got so spoiled For years of playing my own music that i'm doing you know doing a good job and roger's doing a good job

42:16I don't think i may be back and been happy back then too So he does have it's working very well. So it's good Before I let you go just because we I mean, I don't want to take up too much of your time here Um, I do just have a couple questions just things you wrote in the book that i'm curious about. Um Something like saying magical mystery tour was inconclusive when you compared it to the who sell out See, I love that record. So i'm wondering why you felt it to be inconclusive magical mystery tour

43:04Had it not followed pepper would it would it have been different? No, I think it ran out of steam. I think magical mystery tour Sort of signaled really the end of the of the wild audacious creative years of the b-tours I think that's what I love it too. Of course, it's got Hasn't it got? Uh, I guess it would well that track is from that era. Yeah, anyway, it was It was when the studio techniques jumped up And but I I think it was the big one before yoko came on the scene or maybe not long before but around the time Perhaps when was absent I you know, who sell out felt ultimately like a great, you know

44:24And i'm sure that people's had exactly the same kind of issues That we had, you know, i'm sure there was somebody behind them saying, you know, we need this album next fucking week You know this impression that we have that That you know that they were playing the other day and somebody found some very very well Remember the conversation that they had with him about he he was working for him as a guard to pay me more money And I want to spend more money on plants and and jewish said listen, you know, don't buy into the dream split up. I had and um

45:20You know probably a thousand quid in the bank You know and you think that they were billionaires You know, but they weren't you know, their their royalty rate was very very low and although You know mccartney of course from having written all the songs, you know, george wrote good songs But he didn't write many for the Beatles. So History tour I felt that that album It was heading somewhere and it wasn't just as a film food in london at the time of you know

46:12The in a sense that kind of kind of got lost in comedy and silliness and almost like a revisit to the days of hard days night, you know, we are a silly pop group and we have lots of fun and you know You know what? It's a magical mystery tour Was it not a precursor to the idea of the rock and roll circus? It was wasn't it? I suppose so when was your sir? Yeah, when was your thing with the stone 69? No, well when we first had the idea it was it would have been It would have been 74 Okay, so quite a few hours later. Okay, that's interesting Um, but if that idea of the idea of the english magical mystery tour was that you would get on a bar

47:05It would take you on this mystery tour. You know, you wouldn't know where you were going Well janice did that in the states with festival express With a couple of who did it janice droplin with a couple of people now who's now? Names are escaping me But they just put out a film about it a few years ago. Oh, wow Um, yeah, just taking a train through the states and basically doing that the rock and roll circus on the road Stopping in places setting up a stage playing back on the train out you go Fuck I didn't know that that's so great. I just think of her as a complete washout. It's too bad It really is because I I you know, I used to drink a lot but said yeah, sure give it a try

48:05Anyway, I ended up drinking brandy straight out of the bowl You mentioned bran and cognac a lot and I didn't know if I was gonna bring it up or not But since you mentioned it, what was what was it about that particular liquor that you seem to bring up a lot in the book? I think it of course it's a depressant as alcohol is but it also has a huge amount of You know, I suppose respond very positively to sugar So it would kind of it would wake me up and it would wake me up. It makes your heart beat faster I know i'm reading a book by swedish writer because he whenever he talks about people drinking it. He says it's disgusting

48:56You know, I I love I loved it Haven't had any for a very long time Yes, congratulations on that It's not always the easiest thing Um something that plagued me even through high school people would call baba orailey teenage wasteland Now this you must have been plagued with that a lot too. Maybe you didn't care. It didn't really matter But why didn't you call it teenage wasteland? Where's that? Well, it was in the assessment. John stripped down to a single album. Oh Another song called teenage wasteland Rumor dispelled thank you. Brian the refrain and barbara. Riley. It's only teenage wasteland was a refrain borrow

49:52There we go, well i'm gonna share that with a lot of people I always wondered that Um before I let you go we do something called five questions five quick questions one word answers And I think I know the answer to this first one after talking to you for a little bit rotor studio Leonard or mccartney When you hear a song what usually hits you first lyrics melody or rhythm? Song you've written you're most proud of and in one word pete Townsend That's a great way to close this out, thank you

50:42So very much. I really appreciate it. You have no idea And i'm sure you hear this all the time Oh, it must I can't I don't know if it would be if it's nice to hear if it gets tiring But it's just such an honor to speak with you Oh, no, no, no, that's it's always great to hear that. Thank you. You know, you know, remember how old I am I'm at the age when you know, i'm not getting any other kind of honors. So it's nice nice to Kind of watch tv's matt. Yeah, check out the festival express movie. I think you'll like it. I think it'll be cool for you And what's it called festival express festival festival express? I will do that, but she was adorable. You know one side if

51:42On the other side She looked like somebody that had kind of you know, come up off the street. Her face had been ravaged by some Like maybe chicken pox when she was a little kid or something But she was a singer and such a I just thought that you know, she just kind of got lost in the teenage wasteland It's great to hear that they they did that something that we always wanted to do. I think Yeah, it's not too late. Fantastic. Thanks so much. My pleasure. Thank you