OT: Townhend e/interview...
Lookingglass
Pete Townshend's answers to Sean's questions
Here are the questions pop music critic Sean Daly e-mailed to Pete
Townshend, and Townshend's complete answers.
(Author's note: At first, the idea of an "email" interview with Pete
Townshend sounded like a disaster. But after firing off a series of
(hopefully) casual questions to the guitar god, I was surprised by the
answers. The tone of the give-and-take played more like a chummy
correspondence than an interview, especially toward the end. If I had my
choice, I'd still rather interview Townshend face-to-face. Still, this
"experiment" worked better than I ever imagined. Enjoy, Sean.)
DALY: The Who, the Police, Genesis, even Van Halen -- the biggest, most
ballyhooed tours of the year (and last year and the year before that) are by
veteran rock bands. Why aren't new rock bands generating that kind of
excitement? Is the new rock 'n' roll just plain shitty, or is the old stuff
just so much better? What happens when the Who finally closes up shop? Who's
gonna get the kids going to concerts?
TOWNSHEND: I can't speak for Police, Genesis or Van Halen. I think of these
guys as New Boys. If you hadn't cited their tours in the same breath as the
Who's I would have replied thus: We were there at the beginning, we enjoyed
a period of great discovery of several American music traditions that -
because of our uniquely objective viewpoint from faraway Europe - we were
able to bring together. This give us a unique place in pop history. This,
combined with the clean sheet we had when we started, gave us roots that go
so deep they are really hard to ignore. Young musicians often complain to me
that I didn't leave many new ways of standing with a guitar for them to
discover for themselves. Just an example, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Elvis
took one position each and left the remaining five thousand to me. Again, it
seems to me that for years the Who were one of the few bands that continued
the tradition started by the Beatles, then abandoned too soon, of bringing
art school thinking and processes into Pop music.
The Police are big news simply because Sting has left this so long. He is
going back to his old band in good heart, and I'm happy about that. I hope
he won't mind me telling this story, but when he left Police to start a solo
career I met him in a London restaurant and suggested he really didn't need
to end Police to have a solo career. He could do both as long as he was
willing to be the sole man in charge. There I stood, exhausted and battered
from trying to run two careers (only Phil Collins had managed it) and he
said politely: Pete, I'm learning from your example.
There are dozens of 'new' bands that can compete in our marketplace. Many of
them - like Sting - choose not to do what we do. Flaming Lips, Raconteurs,
Pearl Jam - these three bands each do things in their own way. They get kids
to concerts. Festivals are the way to get people to concerts in future. The
internet and the Festival belong together.
SEAN DALY: January 2006 marked the worst-ever month for CD sales. The music
industry is hemorrhaging money and is unable to think outside the proverbial
box regarding digital sales/downloading. Dust off your crystal ball and give
us a glimpse of the music business circa 2011. Five years from now, have CDs
gone the way of the dodo? Will savvy indie labels have taken over the world?
Is rock music bleepin' doomed?
PETE TOWNSHEND: Why should I help these people? I predicted downloading back
in 1985. No one took any notice. I predicted the internet back in 1971, I
have been called pretentious for doing so by anyone who wants to make
themselves feel big by taking a pop at a 'genius'. Even my own people have
called my work as an Auto-Destructive Artist a 'gimmick'. I wasn't trained
to be commercial, to help anyone make money. I was trained to see the show
business future. If I told you what was going to happen you wouldn't be able
to process it. God only knows what I am going to say at SXSW. If I tell the
truth they'll put me away.
SEAN DALY: As far as I'm concerned, Mike Post has earned a place in heaven
for the "Rockford Files" theme. So (1) What was your inspiration for "Mike
Post Theme," my pick for best track on "Endless Wire." (2) What's your
favorite Mike Post theme? (3) What was your thought process about licensing
your biggest songs to television (and essentially becoming a Mike Post
yourself)? Was there a cringe moment when you said, "Oh the naysayers are
gonna slaughter us?"
PETE TOWNSHEND: Hill Street Blues was the inspiration.
TV music lives in a different pocket to other pop music. It is ubiquitous
and perennial, and we are constantly revisited by music from other eras as
series are rehashed over and over. This cycle of new and old music, woven
into the ordinary rhythm of our daily lives, creates a real sense of
timelessness. When we hear the theme from M.A.S.H we remember so many aching
feelings - of course we are reminded of the Vietnam war, but at the same
time of how old we were, and in my case how apolitical I was about it all,
who we were in love with, where we lived. We grow older and hopefully wiser,
but the music remains the same.
Music is merely time divided in a sense, but on TV it is time divided and
then scented by nostalgia and a feeling of powerlessness. The Russian
filmaker Tarkovsky (who may be regarded as a little bit too arty for a
discussion about pop music until you realize he looked just like Ronnie
Wood) said that in Russia the word nostalgia translated closer to
'sickness',
a kind of pathetic longing for what had gone before, for old values and
places that could never exist again. My song touches on that in a way. The
Who are constantly troubled by nostalgia and sentimentality - in our own
minds and those of our fans. It is a curse in a way, but also provides a
measure of where we really are, we know the truth about ourselves: we do
look back, however sad that might appear. Yes, art and pop music should
always move forward. It should always be about new ideas and fresh vision -
but it is not. It is often beset by and entangled in echoes of music from
other eras. In a way, British pop was built on music from other eras, as I
said above.
Naysayers? Oh those people who said downloading would never happen? It must
surely be apparent by now - to everyone - that I am pig-headed about this.
This is my music, not yours. I sell it wherever I like. If you want to stop
me doing this because it is so vital to you that Behind Blue Eyes remains
forever the song to which you and your wife first made love, then change the
copyright law. (Did you keep the unwashed bedlinen by the way?) Like
Tarkovsky I see this kind of engagement with a song as a sickness. It is one
I understand of course, but it is also one that I refuse to allow to
'freeze'
the timeless and evolving poetry of my work.
In a way I am being undermined and destroyed as I write. The internet is
dramatically undermining the rights of an artist to undisputed ownership of
his or her work at the same time as painters in the UK are claiming the
right to a commission on the secondary sale of their work. In other words if
you own a painting by a living artist or one with an active estate, you
should not try to sell it privately, you must use the artists agents so the
artist or the estate get new income. Music suffers because it is a real-time
entertainment and art form.
SEAN DALY: Mike Myers, of "Austin Powers" fame, is playing Keith Moon in an
upcoming biopic. Does that sound like a total disaster? Can you give Mike
some advice about playing your beloved bandmate?
PETE TOWNSHEND: Mike will be good. I'll give advice to whoever plays me. Get
it right, make me look good, or I'll cut your f**king balls off.
SEAN DALY: As I'm writing this, I'm listening to the Who on my iPod. Despite
your warnings, my volume level is steadily increasing. Yes, I'm a dumb-ass.
How did Apple respond to your warnings about volume control on iPods? If
anything, the new generation of iPods sound even louder.
PETE TOWNSHEND: Too late. Pray for implants. It never worked for hair, so
don't raise your hopes too high. I never asked for volume controls on iPods.
I never even mentioned iPods. What's an iPod? I suggested parents might
encourage their kids to go back to listening to music on speakers at home.
You know, gather around the fire, and listen to good old Ozzie (version 2),
like a real family!
SEAN DALY: With "celebrity journalism" now baring fangs unlike ever before -
and with news shows and magazines spinning wobbly stories out of the weakest
of threads -- do you regret having made public statements about your private
life?
PETE TOWNSHEND: What, like '..all journalists are parasites?' That one will
make me a lot of friends. I think we maybe need to let this period pass and
look back on it to get a sense of what is really going on. I think two
things are happening. One is that some of us really do need to see how the
might are fallen in order to get through our miserable working day and feel
like it is OK just to be a 'Joe' or a 'Mom'. The facts of our daily lives,
celebs and Joes, is that we are on a see-saw. When I communicate directly to
fans one-to-one, I find real eccentrics, individuals, people with unique
ideas and lives, strange relationships, deep passions. They are all as mad
as I am, or better. When they all stand in front of me at a Who show, they
become a crowd, just a crowd.
The other thing that is going on is that a journalist can make a living now
sitting at a computer cutting and pasting other people's words. But
newspapers have always built stories and reputations on their own
innaccuracies held on file. The thesis is that if they haven't been sued for
asserting that a public figure is a liar or a cheat then assume guilt. At
least extrapolations from the web come from various horse's mouths -
directly.
The manipulation of what popular artists think and say by a politicized
media has always been a fact. All that is happening now is that the media is
beginning to eat itself - data is going round and round and evolving like a
virus. McCluhan predicted this forty years ago.
SEAN DALY: Your current tour is a long, and no doubt highly profitable,
slog. How are you and Roger getting along? Carrying on the Who tradition is
a helluva burden for four people let alone two. How do you keep from killing
each other? How do you stay SANE?
PETE TOWNSHEND: We stay sane by counting our money. In fact this will not be
the most profitable tour of our career because we are not playing stadiums.
We are doing such a long tour to stay behind the new music. We want as many
people as possible to hear it, live or on CD or downloaded. Roger and I get
along really well. We don't spent much time together, and I travel alone by
the way. But we are both totally nuts. Why change the tradition of a
lifetime?
SEAN DALY: Thanks so much for your time and your answers. Looking forward to
seeing the show March 13 in Tampa Bay.
PETE TOWNSHEND: Thanks Sean. Fun questions. If you get a chance come say
hello.
Thanks to...
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
...who posted this at ALT.MUSIC.WHO
Slip Kid
> http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/09/Floridian/Pete_Townshend_s_answ.shtml
> Pete Townshend's answers to Sean's questions
<snipped>
Were you testing my filter?
If so, I can report that no vermin-replies slipped through.
Of course Pete did use big words and that's as good as my trap-door for
screening parasites.
Michael
Lookingglass
"Slip Kid" <"G-2"@att.net> wrote in message
news:SEiJh.141540$5j1.1...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> Lookingglass wrote:
>
>> http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/09/Floridian/Pete_Townshend_s_answ.shtml
>> Pete Townshend's answers to Sean's questions
> Were you testing my filter?
> If so, I can report that no vermin-replies slipped through.
> Of course Pete did use big words and that's as good as my trap-door for
> screening parasites.
>
> Michael
...Filters??? We don't need no stinkin' filters!
Slip Kid
"Any more lip out of you and I'll haul off and let you have it.
If you know what's good for you, you won't monkey around with Fred C.
Dobbs."
Michael