Who I Am: Pete Townshend's memoir

Cafe Society
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Just finished it; thought I would share some impressions since I couldn’t find a thread on it.

It is interesting as a narrative, connecting the dots on famous Who achievements and exploits – his stories about the band and his music are reasonably straightforward. Most of his songs / works are explained pretty clearly – what he was trying to accomplish, where he was certain vs. uncertain, etc. He explains his Lifehouse concept (Lifehouse as a project was a follow-on to Tommy that didn’t come together as a concept piece, but whose songs ended up as the core of their landmark album Who’s Next). He refers to the Lifehouse idea throughout at the remainder of the book when he is trying to involve with others in the creation of his music - he comments a lot on his need to create alone and how it is tied to his self-image – his Lifehouse concept (immersing yourself in creative feedback with others, to find that “one note”/pure music that connects us all), as I came to understand it, is his way of overthinking collaboration – something other artists take for granted.

Pete has a complex self-image and dwells on it. I am not giving anything away – the book is peppered with situations where he comes across as self-absorbed and high-maintenance to those around him. This is not a complaint from me – just trying to report what the focus of the book is. He spends a lot of time, over the course of middle of the book, on the slow failure of his first marriage and his problems with alcohol leading to boorish behavior. He punctuates many stories with specific exchanges where he is shown to have tenuous relationships, and you can see how it would affect his perception of self and inform his art – but you can also see how he brought them on himself through his behavior. His last interaction with his dad is especially raw and Pete just hangs it out there. I can also see him crafting the story for its impact – how could he not? He lived it and chose to write about it this way – which adds another layer. *No one knows what it’s like to be the bad man, to be the sad man. * That is a big part of Pete’s self-image and what leads to a lot of his dysfunction even as it drives his art.

His internet scandal from the early 2000’s doesn’t come across as an issue – he talks through what happened and it kinda makes sense, given the Pete you’ve come to know in the book. He comes at the topic of sex throughout the book in awkward ways and this feels like part of that. But he doesn’t come across as a pedophile or that he is trying to hide anything about who he is, other than high-maintenance and a bit misguided in what he was trying to do. That specific issue feels like it is part of the bigger issues of Pete Townshend himself – he’s just a deeply smart, deeply creative, deeply self-absorbed-and-awkward guy inside. The fact that he is achieving huge success in his art, hanging with historic characters and bedding beautiful women while feeling uncool about it – and in many cases apparently treating them pretty poorly – is part of him.

I wish he spent a bit more time on specific songs – the music is almost assumed to be understood and used as a backdrop for his creative process and his developmental journey. As a geek, I wish he spent more time on guitars or even his playing of guitars. Keith Richards discussed his change to Open G tuning, both mechanically what he did and conceptually what it did for his music. Pete speaks of innovations he can rightfully stake some or all of a claim on, but doesn’t really discuss the process of doing them – “I innovated in using suspended chords and power chords” is about the extent of his commentary on those techniques. He discusses his thinking about synthesizers and using them as foundations in his music a bit more.

All in all, a worthy read for fans of The Who, Townshend, or that period of music in general. I preferred the overall tone and approach of Keith Richard’s book, but they aren’t really meant to be compared. It would be interesting to follow up with books by folks like Neil Young or Rod Stewart, but recent publications…

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Thanks, WordMan…I’m still near the beginning of it, and am enjoying the read as well. I agree with you about Keith’s bio being the better of the two in its delivery, although I’m looking forward to more insight into PT’s feelings and attitudes regarding his work and his decisions over the years.

So, do you agree that Pete wishes he were a Jewish homosexual?

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My first thoughts when completing the book were I can’t believe his wife stayed with him as long as she did, and I’ll never hear “Who Are You” quite the same way because it encompasses Pete’s whole life.

I enjoyed the book, but I wish there had been more “making of” or “inside the studio” stories. He really glanced over most of The Who’s albums.

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I liked it a lot, but I found myself wishing there’d been more about the 60s/70s and less 80s/onwards.

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The Who is one of my all-time favorite rock groups, but I am really not interested in the continuing adventures of Townshend’s giant-sized ego.

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An odd book, to be sure. The original manuscript was twice as long–I wonder what ended up on the editing room floor. To me, there were a lot of “important” incidents that were glossed over/not mentioned at all. Who knows, maybe a “deluxe” version will come out in a couple of years. I was really taken aback by how he treated his wife, who knows why she stuck around so long? (their kids seemed to have come out okay and were kept out of the media, so they did something right)

He seems to have been fighting one kind of demon or another for most of his life. The book kind of signals his “coming out okay in the end”, I think. He was pretty gracious to almost everyone in the book and acknowledged his fans as “the best bosses I could ever have”, which I thought was a nice touch.

I finished the hardcover a couple of days after it came out. He reads the audiobook as well–I’m looking forward to my next long roadtrip so I can listen to the story straight from the horse’s [del]neck[/del] mouth.

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I read a review of the book, which I can’t find now, in which the reviewer said that Townshend intended to write the book that you would have preferred, but his publisher wanted it to cover up to the present day. Did the part from the 80s onward seem a bit like an afterthought? I think the reviewer claimed that it did.

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If you don’t already have it in your collection, you might try keeping an eye out for an affordable copy of A Decade of the Who, which contains priceless handwritten notes by Townshend on many of his songs (solo as well as the Who), including alternate tunings and details of the more unusual chord voicings and what inspired them. Although the book was published in 1977, it only covers up to Quadrophenia and some of the Odds and Sods songs.

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IMHO, quite the opposite; 80’s onward was covered in excruciating detail, in terms of his role at the publishing company, his solo works such as White City and the Iron Giant and his internet scandal. If anything, you get the impression that, from then on, he was super-busy and looking at moving forward with non-Who stuff, but got kind of pulled back into the band.

**Biffy **- I will look for the book; thanks.

As for the treatment of his wife - yes, her and others as well. He doesn’t really discuss his relationships with his bandmates other than to reflect on their friendship - when, in the past, he has said some harsh things, especially about Keith Moon’s instability and approach as a drummer.

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I read excerpts of the book in Rolling Stone a few weeks ago, and it was intriguing enough that I’ll probably pick the book up in the near future. He’s always been one of my favorite musicians (even with his track record of jerkish behavior), and probably one of the more complex personalities in rock. (That, and he also may be a distant relative of mine, on my mother’s side. :slight_smile: ) Thanks for the review, WordMan!

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Re-reading this thread, I realized I hadn’t commented on this. I know it was meant to be more funny than serious (and it was!), but it is interesting. To the extent you are saying that Pete overthinks and overworries, and feels like he has one or two deep issues that make him feel like an outsider relative to the people he interacts with, then yes, he does kinda wish that.

However, he dwells on his childhood and points to a few things, but there is no definitive event or issue he ends up pointing to. Regardless of a specific category of difficulty, he peppers his story throughout with little anecdotes of awkwardness and rejection, where he states them and kind of steps back in his writing to say “See? Another case where my childhood baggage plays out in my life.”