Townshend Quotes & Sayings

Look. I was a superhero in the '90s. I said so at the time. McCartney, Weller, Townshend, Richards, my first album's better than all their first albums. Even they'd admit that. — Noel Gallagher

The Who is now a brand, not a band; but it is a brand that is upheld by its audience, not an industry or a cynical moneymaking machine. — 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

The bad part about growing older is I'm going bald. The good part is my nose seems to be getting shorter. — Pete Townshend

I'm only interested in rites of passage stories. — Pete Townshend

We won't get fooled again! — Pete Townshend

Looking back, I don't know why we needed it to be quite so loud all the time. — 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

We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer. — Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated. — Ritchie Blackmore

It's sad when people break up. — Pete Townshend

Give blood, but you may find that blood is not enough. — Pete Townshend

I sing my heart out to the wide open spaces
I sing my heart out to the infinite sea
I sing my vision to the sky-high mountains
I sing my song to the free. — Pete Townshend

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. — 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 was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth. — Pete Townshend

The fact of the matter is, I'm f**king brilliant. Not 'was' brilliant. 'Am' brilliant. — Pete Townshend

Pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday / And I get on my knees and pray. — Pete Townshend

I have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion. — Pete Townshend

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. — Frank Portman

When people keep repeating
That you'll never fall in love
When everybody keeps retreating
But you can't seem to get enough
Let my love open the door
Let my love open the door
Let my love open the door
To your heart. — Pete Townshend

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. — Pete Townshend

If I were to have my own brand of guitars, they would have to be industructable. — Pete Townshend

I don't view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It's a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator. — Pete Townshend

I wanted to be a writer when I was a little kid. Then I wanted to be Pete Townshend - the songwriting guitarist who occasionally sang. — Travis Morrison

Can't pretend that growin' older never hurts. — Pete Townshend

Rock 'n' Roll might not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them — Pete Townshend

People listen to music for different reasons. Some people, -its background music - but other people need it to survive. Other people need music to get things out and maybe that's just where I'm coming from, you know, when things weren't easy for me, growing up. You know, music, I felt, saved my life. Pete Townshend, wherever you are, Pete, you saved my life. You know, whether he knows it or not. I wouldn't be here. And I had absolutely nothing else besides music. And so that's still, you know, that's in me, and so if we're gonna play, if we're gonna get up and play, or write a song, you know, write about something that means something. You know, why write about, you know, 'Oh, pretty day', or, 'Pretty girl' or 'Pretty people', there's nothing ... people have different reasons for listening and playing. I need to - for me-, it's much more.. religious! — Eddie Vedder

I smash guitars because I like them. — Pete Townshend

My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good. — Pete Townshend

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. — Pete Townshend

Under orders from Kitchener himself, an attempt was to be made to bribe the Turkish commander of the Kut siege into letting Townshend's army go in return for one million English pounds' worth of gold. If Lawrence resented being the bearer of this shameful instruction, almost without precedent in British military history, he never let on. Then again, he'd very recently been given two reminders of the puffery and hypocrisy of military culture. — Scott Anderson

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

It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves
I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing. — Bob Mould

For 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 Townshend

In a sense, the god we trust politically is a slightly different god than the one we bring into the fray when we enter a rock concert. One of the things I can say with absolute conviction is that I worship that god. — Pete Townshend

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. — Pete Townshend

Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend. It would look ridiculous to do what we're doing now when I'm 40. That's why I want to destroy my career before it's too late. — Kurt Cobain

Man makes machines to man the machines that make the machines. — Pete Townshend

I saw the Internet as being something which would allow power mongers to control us, and that we would willingly go to that if it promised us salvation - if it promised to show us who we were and let us find ourselves as we had, uniquely in our generation, through rock music. — Pete Townshend

His broken heart was unfeeling, like shattered glass in an acid bath. — Pete Townshend

I kept the first Rickenbacker I ever got, a little short-scale John Lennon-type model. And I've got a couple of 12-string models, which are really nice, and I've got a Pete Townshend model, which Pete gave me a few years ago. But that's about it. — Paul Weller

When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment. — 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

Give love, and keep blood between brothers — Pete Townshend

Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color. — Pete Townshend

Tough boys running the streets, come a little closer. Rough toys under the sheets, nobody knows her. — Pete Townshend

Songwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline. — Pete Townshend

So remember when you're looking for trouble
That trouble is already busy with weaker men — Pete Townshend

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

Deep inside of every human being is this feeling that nothing is ever going to be complete, that the circle will never connect - and that itself is the secret to infinity. — Pete Townshend

People try to put us down
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold
(Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Hope I die before I get old. — Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend is one of my greatest influences. More than any other guitarist, he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band. — Alex Lifeson

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. — Pete Townshend

It's terrible feeling like an eligible bachelor but no women seeming to agree with you. — Pete Townshend

Keith 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 Townshend

Dance is the only thing that lets you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time. — Pete Townshend

The facts don't always reveal the truth, but the truth always reveals the facts. — Pete Townshend

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. — Pete Townshend

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. — Pete Townshend

I 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 Townshend

I believe rock can do anything, it's the ultimate vehicle for everything — Pete Townshend

Everything that has befallen you happened simply cause it crossed your mind. — Pete Townshend

There's no easy way to be free. — Pete Townshend

We've got to fool the fools, and plan the plans. We must rule the rules, got to stand the stands. — Pete Townshend

There'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 Townshend

Enjoy life. And be careful what you pray for - remember, you will get it all. — Pete Townshend

To be completely honest, I think if I hadn't been bullied into the band, I would have been happier as an art student. I would have been happier in a Brian Eno world. — Pete Townshend

It makes me angry when people insist that I have a responsibility to do what they think I should do. — Pete Townshend

In the midnight of a soul's unsleeping, hear the waterfall of women weeping. Hear the distant noise of traffic stalling, hear the prostituted children calling. — Pete Townshend

I 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 Townshend

Even as age humbles me it feeds my arrogance.
There is still nothing that interests me as much as myself. — Pete Townshend

Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term. — 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

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

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

It's like the mod thing is happening again. — Pete Townshend

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. — Pete Townshend

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

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

When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar. — Pete Townshend

In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief. — Pete Townshend

No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned — Pete Townshend

The day you open your mind to music, you're halfway to opening your mind to life. — 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

I respect those who follow religious routes only if they seem to me to be morally proper and in accord with the modern world. — Pete Townshend

Rough boys I wanna bite and kiss you. — Pete Townshend

Life's a bitch and so am I. — Pete Townshend

I see a boy with his mother's ambition, performing for love, trained in submission. — Pete Townshend

I'M FREE! - I'm free,
And freedom tastes of reality,
I'm free - I'm free,
An' I'm waiting for you to follow me. — Pete Townshend

Young and old will sit and judge unfeeling, while the empty churches' bells are pealing. And the green hills lay ignored, untended, lonely watchers remain unbefriended. — 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

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

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. — Pete Townshend

I needed to give back, give back, give back. I felt guilty about my success. I felt uncomfortable about how easily I had been delivered this extraordinary life that I had. — Pete Townshend

Rock music is important to people , because it allows them to escape this crazy world. It allows them not to run away from the problems that are there, but to face up to them , but at the same time sort of DANCE ALL OVER THEM. That's what rock and roll is about. — 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

I want fast food, pretty naked girls preferably tattooed. — Pete Townshend