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Tags: George Harrison , Pete Townshend. Now he wants to keep his beliefs, about Jesus at least, to himself. This, of course, contradicts the bible. He used to talk about some guru called Meher Baba. Meher Baba was a Sufi mystic. It is a religion more related to Islam and Zoroastrianism than Hinduism. I had a seven hour conversation with a woman who was an Iranian Muslim mystic. It is very different than other forms of Islam. Townshend turned to this after a several day long bad trip on STP — in which he had hellish outer body experiences. He sad that after this he went looking for answers. I think there is something to it in mind training because his music changed a lot after this and The Who became successful — when they were bankrupt following their first three albums. It may have caused him to become demon possessed too. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Brent L. If Tommy was a positive interpretation of a negative memory, in , negative turned nightmare when Townshend was linked to an FBI investigation into online child pornography. He says he was doing research: "My plan was to run a story on my website illustrating that online banks, browser companies and big-time pornographers were all complicit in taking money for indecent imagery of children. Instead, I have relied on my friends and the general public to speak for me — until now. It's a horrible way to cap a legendary life, and yet if anyone was prepared for a depressing denouement, it's Townshend. After all, at the funeral of the destructive Moon, who died in at the age of 32, Daltrey was a mess; Stones drummer Charlie Watts was, too. As for Townshend: "My eyes were hard and dry. Townshend, it should be noted, never cries for himself either. Not through personal or professional pain, not through the muddying of his name. In the end, he reasons, he has been saved time and again by that windmilling arm, by that smashed guitar, by the songwriting demons in his head. In the end, Pete Townshend both takes, and offers, good advice: "If in doubt, just play. Subscribe Manage my subscription Activate my subscription Log in Log out. Much of what I read was much the same as the tales of my other pop heroes. I did learn about his great love for and understanding of the technical chores and challanges of recording. Also to be discovered is Pete's need to use 'big words' that chased me to seek the assistance of Webster sometimes three times on one page. Yes, I do feel mixed. I am both annoyed and challenged to better my own vocabulary It seems somehow appropriate to draw Much of what I read was much the same as the tales of my other pop heroes. It seems somehow appropriate to draw parallels of Pete and me. I am a generation younger than the bands of the British Invasion, but yet, I wanted the life that I believed they enjoyed. I had many joyful experiences in the garage band days. At some point, before it got to be too late, I came to understand that I wanted a settled family life, not the gypsy life of a touring band. And, I also admitted that I was 'pretty good' It is my belief that Pete and his peers were captives of the success they achieved. They coped by whatever means necessary I've got a head full of hair I think Pete is going to be okay Jun 18, Deborah Stevenson rated it it was ok. Painful read. Thought I would never get thru it! Was very highly reviewed which led me to choosing it for my book club. Not a Who fan and found he went on endlessly about recording each and every album with details I am sure even fans would find too much. In one breath he talked of no money, in the next bought a new house or a new boat. Would not recommend! Mar 11, Kirk rated it liked it Recommends it for: my generation. Shelves: nonfiction , music , memoir. Every year is the same And I feel it again I'm a loser, no chance to win Leaves start falling Comedown is calling Loneliness starts sinking in But I'm one I remember reading a Rolling Stone interview in the student bookstore of my university some eons ago, trying not to laugh too conspicuously while Pete held forth on various peers. The internets kindly allowed me to track it down and read it again. Kurt Loder was the interviewer, he seemed to suss out that Pete was in an unguarded, expansive mood, and dangled enough bait until Pete took it and went to town. It may be the best thing he's done in a while — it sounds real nice. KL: Well. PT: No, he never did. He's got a couple of years on me, but it could be ten years, we're so different. Whereas I don't think Little Richard mattered, you know? But one of the reasons I'm excited about Paul's latest project is because it's him and George Martin working together again; because he's making a conscious effort to really get into serious record-making, rather than pissin' about in home studios — which I, for one, think he's terrible at. When "Ebony and Ivory" came out, everybody was saying, "Christ, have you heard it? It's terrible. I thought, "That's it, that's McCartney! It's wonderful! It's gauche! It's Paul McCartney! I've always said that I've never been a big fan of the Beatles: to me rock was the Stones, and before that Chuck Berry, and before that, maybe a few people who lived in fields in Louisiana. But I can't really include the Beatles in that. The Beatles were over with Herman's Hermits. Because they were such a big pop phenomenon. I've always enjoyed some of their stuff as light music, with occasional masterpieces thrown in. But with a lot of their things, you can't dig very deep. Either you come up against Lennon's deliberately evading what it is that he's trying to say, so it's inscrutable, or Paul McCartney's self-imposed shallowness, because he sees music as being. I mean, he's a great believer in pop music, I think. But I wonder whether McCartney, perhaps, rests a little bit on the laurels of the Beatles. PT: Absolutely. I remember hearing "S. But it was too late, because I was already transported by it. I just thought it was such a great sound, you know — great bass drum and the whole thing. They make great records. Also, what's quite interesting is that Abba was one of the first big, international bands to actually deal with sort of middle-aged problems in their songwriting. And it was quite obviously what was going on among them — that song, "Knowing Me, Knowing You. Anyway, reading the entire interview there in the student bookstore was hilarious and exhilarating. Partly because I got the joke. I intuited that this was not all to be taken at face value various other interviews thru the years would confirm that Pete isn't actually so contemptuous of the Beatles as he was letting on , but it was even funnier knowing it would be taken that way by many and inspire a plethora of angry letters from readers in the next Rolling Stone. Which it did. The Abba bit was just icing on the cake, as I have always unapologetically liked and defended Abba. So the short version of my 3-star rating for Who I Am is that the above isn't the Pete we get in this book. But he eases up a bit when he surveys the musical landscape, very much in elder statesman mode. Pete mentions this with a completely straight face, offers no comment whatsoever. I mean, can you imagine the Pete referenced above being served such a factoid and not grabbing it with both hands? The interview would have expanded three more pages on that alone. Or, if instead of Moon it had been Roger Daltry who had an untimely demise and had been replaced with, say, Billy Joel. One problem is there seems to be too much effort to be comprehensive, to cover everything. Answer: a whole lot less than this. There are various boats Pete bought that get more ink than his all-too-brief comments on The Who By Numbers , an underrated album I would have loved to read much more about. Which, yeah ok, but…really? However, there is a lot to like. The material on the inner workings of The Who, how these four personalities meshed, and often clashed, is generous and fascinating. Here, there is no sense of papering over past conflict. Each of them at different times comes off as petty or spiteful or selfish, except possibly John Entwistle, who at worst is sometimes misguided but appears to have been as true and steadfast a friend as Pete ever had, and he says as much. Roger Daltry emerges as the one with the truest work ethic. It would seem one of the primary motivations in writing the book was self-analysis and catharsis, and at times Pete appears to bend over backwards to not cast himself in a favorable light. Which beats the reverse, but when it comes to recounting his various infidelities, I sometimes wanted to interject, we get it Pete, you were a shitty husband, can we move on please? Really, if you want a list of the most sympathetic figures in the book, it would begin, 1. Karen Townshend. Roger Daltry… That said, it is amusing to read about one failed conquest. Pete sees the Nicolas Roeg film Bad Timing. He's vaguely acquainted with Roeg, who ended his marriage to be with the film's star, Theresa Russell. Pete tries to call Roeg on the phone there'd been some discussion of working on a project together , Ms. Russell answers, Nic as it happens is off in Paris, and Pete instantly decides he's besotted a recurring thing it would appear. He persuades Ms. Russell to go to a Pink Floyd concert with him, then for a few drinks after. Theresa Russell is all of 23 at the time, fully in control, and makes it utterly clear at the end of the night that Pete ain't getting to first base. Pete leaves, defeated, and whines to his driver that he could really do with a line of coke right about now. In fairness, if you've seen Bad Timing , you can't entirely blame him for this one. In this book at least, John Entwistle's death hits with a greater force, maybe because Keith Moon's story is so much more familiar, and that from this vantage point it doesn't seem like any other ending was possible. Also, I got the sense that Moon was to some extent unknowable even to the band, he always seemed 'on', always portraying the character of Keith Moon. When Keith dies, Roger calls Pete with the news, expressed in three words: "He's done it. They quickly hired another bassist and the tour went on. Undoubtedly true, but for someone as self-aware and selfconscious as Townshend, it's one of the few instances when he seems genuinely clueless how crass it came off. Inevitably in a biography such as this, once you get a fair distance past the glory days, interest wanes a bit. But that's me, not a flaw of the book, and Quadrophenia , Townshend's genuine masterpiece, is covered generously enough. So yeah, three stars, worth reading if you're me, it's certainly not been an unexamined life. He once absentmindedly threw a stick onto railroad tracks as a train was approaching, and Bruce instinctively went to retrieve it. One day Pete came home and his parents told him Bruce had been sent back to the kennel he originally came from; Pete knew instinctively they were lying and that the dog had been destroyed. Similarly, Roger came home one day and his parents told him the dog had been hit by a car and killed. Roger also knew instinctively that his parents were lying on a recent evening, he had overheard his parents discussing getting rid of the dog and that the dog had been put down. And in both cases, young Pete and young Roger pretended to believe the lies so as to spare their parents a confrontation, all the while being heartbroken at the loss of their dogs. Was it some hard-bitten post-war thing? View all 12 comments. Oct 20, David rated it liked it. The Who was my favorite band when I was a teenager. When I began to make the transition from records and tapes to CDs, the first longbox I bought was "Quadrophenia. From to , he released two solo albums and the Who released two albums. None are great "Empty Glass" and "Face Dances" come close , but all are interesting. The book adds meaning to the some of the songs from The Who was my favorite band when I was a teenager. The book adds meaning to the some of the songs from this period. The couple separated in and divorced in These concessions, Pete writes, were "still run by ex-pirates, who paid in cash. He calls singer Roger Daltrey the band's "unquestionable leader," but no one was more responsible the Who's artistic and financial survival than Pete. He and Springsteen, I'm sure, could have a long conversation about the burdens of having so many dependents — bandmates, family members, managers, crews, etc. Pete on Bruce: "He worked the stage the way I did: to complete exhaustion. He also honoured Roger's working-class approach to singing, from the heart and lungs at once. At one point, he complains to Karen that trying to explain his ideas to the other members of the Who was like "trying to explain atomic energy to a group of cavemen. Mar 05, David Grapka rated it really liked it Shelves: biography. I told my mom I was going to do that and I don't think she believed me. She came to get me and picked me up on the road in Dry Brook. Pulled over, put my bike in the trunk and didn't yell at me at all! Anyway, I got this book for Christmas and just finished all pages. I learned a lot about Mr. Townsend, his enormous vocabulary, and about the history of rock music from the eyes of one of its most prolific writers. Much of Pete's introspection focuses on his suspicions that he was sexually abused as a young boy by relatives and and emotionally abused by his mother who was incapable of raising him in his formative years. Sadly, much of the book reads like an expanded list of events that occurred from a totally narrative, newspaper-y point of view. Seldom does Mr. Townsend immerse himself in his own introspection and really let loose with his feelings about what happened, is happening, or is about to happen. I was hoping for more detail and background into how he wrote Tommy and other hits. Paul McCartney's autobiography read like one, and also like a treatise or textbook on how to write a hit song. I expected as much from Mr. Townsend, but felt his book was lacking in this area. I recommend the book to any of you who are interested in details about the life of a British Rock Star beginning in the 50s, through the turbulent 60s and Woodstock, all the way to now, but know that he lacks feeling at times when he should most display feeling and compassion toward others - his wife and children for example. Jun 29, John Cooper rated it liked it. Pete Townshend is a seeker a type of person I know very well. Seekers are sensitive, spiritually curious, emotional, and mostly gentle. They tend also to be self-involved, overly serious, and self-indulgent, and can be thoughtless to others to the point of cruelty. Townshend is at peace with his faults and details them quite openly in his admirably candid memoir. Often I read with a bit of disappointed horror really, Pete? Often I read with a bit of disappointed horror — really, Pete? This was a particularly interesting book to me because of the intensity of my teenage identification with Pete. In the '70s I instantly recognized him as someone who was looking for the same things I was looking for, and he even appeared in my dreams as a companion and creative mentor. Those days are far gone and I can see Pete Townshend for who he is: very far from a saint but also far from the worst sinner. Pete called his first solo album "Who Came First," and the answer, in retrospect, is crystalline — Pete always comes first. To those who understand that, I'm sure he can be a warm and valuable friend. Dec 20, JwW White rated it did not like it Shelves: biography. How is it possible for the lead guitarist and songwriter of one of the world's iconic rock bands to make a memoir so utterly boring? As someone who grew up listening to The Who, watching their "farewell" concert dozens of times on videotape to my parents chagrin , seeing them on the "reunion" tour of the late 80s, having read and reread a book about the band, and having listened to Townsends Chinese Eyes album repeatedly, I was blown away at how vacuous and boring this book is. Townsend spends How is it possible for the lead guitarist and songwriter of one of the world's iconic rock bands to make a memoir so utterly boring? Townsend spends copious amounts of time examining his "spiritual journey" which, in the end, looks not so much spiritual as it does like childish and selfish hedonism. Lots of talk about the women he bedded, the boats he bought, his quest to know Avatar Meher Baba without ever explaining the attraction to him in a way in which the reader can relate , the "process" he went through writing songs, the myriad ways his work influenced others he takes a good bit of credit for the sounds of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and others , but he gives no details on the things most readers want to know about. He names virtually everyone he has ever met, but these people are--in this book--nothing more than names. They are not personalities. He spends amazingly little time talking about his bandmates, which one would think would have been a bit part of his growth and his success. Keith Moon gets some attention, but then more as an eccentric and doomed annoyance than as anything else. He spends all of a page and a half on the Cincinnati concert where 11 fans died in a stampede. He does say he regrets having continued the tour and playing the very next night. Some reflection and introspection there Pete! It is also interesting that Townsend scrupulously avoids his run-in with the law over child pornography. I trudged through this book as a Who fan. I finished reading it far less of a Townsend the man fan. I'm not sure if this is his lack of insight, his terrible writing namely in terms of organization and bad editing , or if he's simply not much of a deep thinker. Nov 07, Bill Keithler rated it really liked it. I enjoyed reading this memoir, at least for a while. It moves quickly and , as a fan of the Who, captivated my interest quickly. Townsend knows how to write this was not ghosted. In fact, he has written numerous short stories, worked as an editor at Faber and authored columns for British music magazines. While numerous major figures in the rock and roll galaxy move in and out of the discussions in the book, this is not a tell- all. Townsend's focus is on himself and he is unsparing in his I enjoyed reading this memoir, at least for a while. Townsend's focus is on himself and he is unsparing in his descriptions of his infidelities, addictions to numerous substances, and participation in activities he now regrets. The books shortcomings are surprisingly in its structure. While chronological, Townsend rarely spends much time or discussion on any given subject--rather, events or appraisals of others are dealt with quickly and tersely so the reader comes away having learned only that certain things happened but in many cases, not much else. As Townsend's narrative proceeds into the post-Who timeframe, it seemed as though his life became a repetitive cycle of compositions of songs that Townsend almost always sought to develop into a movie, or a stage play and spent a tremendous amount of time, energy and money to make these grandiose plans happen, sometimes with a degree of success. His family life suffered greatly as he focused on his art at the expense of his wife and children. The book does not stint on this harsh self-appraisal and Townsend admits he was aware of what he was doing at the time but felt compelled to do so despite the costs. The repetition becomes somewhat tiresome. Overall, it is a worthwhile read and stands as a good complement to Keith Richard's autobiography. Jul 15, Dave Schwensen rated it really liked it. Pete Townshends memoir is exactly as titled: Who I Am. In other words, its all about Pete. Thats fine and what a memoir is normally about. But Townshend has never been a major solo icon sorry fan club members. Yes, hes had solo success as a writer and artist, but is known best as a member of The Who. His greatest triumphs Tommy, Woodstock, Quadrophenia and sold-out tours were as part of a group. His greatest triumphs — Tommy, Woodstock, Quadrophenia and sold-out tours were as part of a group. But in this book, his band mates are barely more than extras in the background. Townshend spends more time describing his boats and the audio equipment in his many home-based recording studios, instead of for instance meeting John Entwistle a childhood friend , major disagreements with Roger Daltry except once describing how Roger knocked him out , and more insights into the joys and frustrations that had to be daily events while working with the self- destructive Keith Moon. His mental state and musical muse always seem to be in question. He also talks about his battles with alcohol, drugs, relationships and sex. Dec 23, Julie rated it liked it Shelves: music , finished There is always a risk when reading a memoir of a famous person you like that after you read the memoir you won't like them as much. Pete Townshend – Who I Am: the autobiography - The Who

Oh, I still love his songwriting and his guitar playing but as a There is always a risk when reading a memoir of a famous person you like that after you read the memoir you won't like them as much. I should have been suspicious after reading Eric Clapton's memoir - another asshole - because Eric is friends with Pete - hmmm. There are extenuating circumstances around Pete's douchiness. His parents were alcoholics in an unhappy marriage, he was molested when he was 6, his crazy grandmother abused him physically and emotionally, his dog was given away, he was lonely and had few friends - it's really no wonder that he is a bit of a prickly mess. Of course, out of this emotional trauma springs forth brilliant songs. Great for his audience, not so great for the people that actually know him. Unfortunately they both died before writing memoirs. The best part of the memoir was when Pete discussed how he wrote songs and the thoughts and process behind the music. He recognizes how pretentious and affected it can sound - discussing his creativity - but really, I think it would be hard to discuss the creative process within you without sounding ridiculously self-absorbed. Reading the memoir I was struck at just how many wonderful songs he has written. I also discovered all the other parts of his career that I didn't know about. He worked at a publishing firm as an editor? He worked on that cartoon The Iron Giant? He won a Tony for writing the book for a Broadway musical? Still, for all his success in his career, Pete strikes me as an unhappy man. I'm glad he has recognized his issues and gotten therapy and worked on his spiritual and emotional lives but he seems to be a work in progress. I'm only giving this book 3 stars instead of 4 or 5 because I did not enjoy spending time with him - it was sometimes hard to pick up the book to read. Compared to other memoirs I have read where I am constantly entertained by the voice telling me the story and wish to be friends with the person telling his life story, I do not wish to be friends with Pete. He's not a mate-y sort of guy you want to go to the pub with. His tension comes off the page and makes the reader tense. Just be prepared to find Pete depressing and irritating at times and you won't be disappointed reading this book. Jan 20, Deidre Dalton rated it it was amazing. It was a good book from start to finish and very well-written by the author. I've always admired Pete Townshend as a composer, musician and vivid story-teller. He also has a wry sense of humor, which is just as enjoyable as his other talents. There are three passages in his autobiography which made me laugh out loud in particular. The first was when Pete and Roger Daltrey lead singer of The Who and an accomplished actor as well were attending a party in the early s. Roger was known to be a bit rough around the edges, to put it mildly. Pete wrote of the party and Roger et al: We saw fighting aplenty, and I have Roger to thank for the fact that no one ever laid a hand on me. Even a nasty drunk knew better than to provoke him. In , Pete bought a Packard V12 hearse. He parked it outside his flat in Belgravia, London. One day the vehicle was missing, and he feared it had been stolen. Instead, he learned it had been towed and impounded. Out of nowhere I received a call from a man who wanted to buy the Packard. It emerged it had been impounded at the request of the Queen Mother. She had to pass it every day, and complained that it reminded her of her late husband's funeral. I agreed, and resentfully dedicated "My Generation" to the Queen Mother. The plane emergency-landed in Halifax because of technical difficulties intense shaking as he described it. Also on the airplane were Elton John and his partner David Furnish. Townshend remarked how calm he remained through the event, but then wrote: I wanted to commiserate with Elton abut a hysterical woman who'd started screaming during the bumpy flight. I highly recommend "Who I Am" to anyone who enjoys reading about the same era of culture and music. I'd rank Pete Townshend's book in the top five of all-time best autobiographies I've ever read and I've read plenty of them. Dec 31, Becky rated it really liked it Shelves: read I was so excited to read this book, especially after seeing a number of interviews with Pete about it. In the interviews, he spoke about trying to get his mother to talk to him about his childhood for years and how he finally succeeded while writing this book. He was so candid and his answers so heartfelt, and I expected more of the same from the book. I was a little disappointed. At a number of points in the book, the topic seemed to change in the middle of a section, leaving story threads I was so excited to read this book, especially after seeing a number of interviews with Pete about it. At a number of points in the book, the topic seemed to change in the middle of a section, leaving story threads hanging. I kept expecting him to tell the story about his mother in detail, and it wasn't there at all. I've read reviews that say he deals thoroughly with his arrest for child pornography, but I thought that was one of the stories that seemed to be missing something. When I read the acknowledgements, I understood why parts seemed choppy; he thanked his editor for helping him cut pages from the manuscript. Some of those cuts could have been handled more smoothly. There's still so much good stuff, though. There are great stories many told before, but still awesome and interesting insights into Pete's writing process and his playing. This is how I felt about this book right after reading it, but when I happened to read Rod Stewart's autobiography next, I realized that Pete's book lacks something else. Rod's book was so much fun in comparison. I know that's to be expected; Pete's the tortured artist and Rod's the eternal playboy, but it was more than that. Rod's book written with a "real" writer seemed more authentic, very true to his voice. I know Pete has more of a sense of humor than came through in the book; it would have been good to get more of that side of him. Sorry for the inconsistent tense; I want to get this posted in Jul 06, Anita George rated it it was ok. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This reads like a list of factual data without any real insight into Townshend, his friends and the times. He's obviously a very complex man and he claims to be searching for insight, but shares little beyond the superficial details. For example, he'll mention having a terrifying dream without telling the reader what it was about or why it was so frightening to him. With all his famous friendships, he never actually describes the people he's involved with beyond the obvious. I already know that This reads like a list of factual data without any real insight into Townshend, his friends and the times. I already know that Daltrey is a great singer, but what kind of person is he? What kind of relationship did they have? Keith Moon's death is merely mentioned he doesn't even say how he died and he says nothing about how he felt about it. Too much telling and not enough showing. I had looked forward to reading this very much and had no preconceptions about Townshend as a person so was expecting at least to like him. I found I actually disliked him and his admitting to being selfish, self absorbed and flawed didn't make me like him any more. At times, he comes across as cold and just plain mean. Even his handling of the child pornography charge is superficial and takes only a couple of pages. He doesn't talk about the emotional impact of the charge on him, or how it affected his friendships beyond mentioning those people who supported him. I should think that as someone who believes he was sexually abused as a child even though he does not actually recall being so abused he would be utterly horrified to be charged with this. His explanation comes across as self serving and facile. He claims to have accidentally gone to a child porn web page as part of his ongoing "campaign" against child sex abuse, but never mentions any such campaign before this; in fact, I found nothing online about him being involved in the issue at all prior to the charge. I don't know if he is a pedophile or not, and it is not for me to judge him, but if he really was innocent why on earth would he accept a caution and being placed on the sex offender registry? Why not fight the charge? Jul 14, Donna Thomas rated it liked it. After waiting for this book for decades, it could probably only be a disappointment. That said, there were some particular issues: A surprisingly flat prose authorial voice. It turns out that being able to create phrases that are deeply affecting, in fact world-changing, when sung and arranged to music does not mean that you will create equally stirring verbiage sans music. I can hardly hold this against Mr. He's brilliant at multiple things; it just turns out that autobiographical After waiting for this book for decades, it could probably only be a disappointment. He's brilliant at multiple things; it just turns out that autobiographical writing isn't one of them. Maybe he heard all his prose with musical arrangement; that seems likely, given what he discusses in the book. It's just that I didn't have the benefit of being in his head, so it all felt rather flat to me. An imbalanced mix of anecdotes. Look, it's his life, and I totally get that this was a hard book for him to write. I tracked his public comments on its development over years. And it's not like I've written an auto-bio. But, he's got a weird mix of anecdotes in this thing, and they lean toward the not-very-happy, which doesn't make for super compelling reading overall. Mind you, the anecdotal mix is nowhere near as bizarre as that in the Dylan auto-bio from a few years' back. This one is a marvel of balance and linearity compared to that one, in fact. Tl;dr: I'm glad this book finally got published. I just wish it had been a bit more artful. Mar 05, David Wallis rated it it was amazing. Townshend's writing is friendly and accessible; I felt like a new friend who he was walking through his life, warts and all. He never really crows about his 'victories', is tortured about balancing his work with his family, which includes the members of The Who. You will feel you really know the man. Pete has always been at Mr. Pete has always been at the top of my fantasy dinner party guest list-my plan would be to keep him after and keep him talking into the wee hours, and now I feel a bit like I have. Nearly pages, it took months to read and at the end was a bit of a chore to finish. I bought 'Who I Am', at Xmas and thought it would be cool to read them back to back, to compare notes, insider vs outsider, etc. Turned out to be very Apples and Oranges. I started this on a Wednesday flight down to Florida from Detroit to visit grandparents and I finished it the following Monday, two very busy days after I returned. Townshend started this tome in the mids. It was worth the wait. It's a keeper-I scribbled all in the margins of my hardcover copy. Jun 22, Paula rated it it was ok. I listened to Pete Townshend read his autobiography on my MP3. I think if I had been reading this I would not have finished it. It is more of a chronology of barely related facts. He does not go into depth about his personal life. However the book is just a clue into his self centered personality. He never gets into his friendships or love lives. The people in his life are merely mentioned. Most disturbing was his lack of emotion over the deaths of Keith Moon and John Entwistle. They are merely one line in a voluminous book. If these men were such a big part of his life, I think they deserve more than a mere mention. He did not seem to evoke any emotion to their deaths. He is a very talented artist, but I think his life lacked human compassion to others. I was also disturbed how little he mentions his daughters. It appears he had no time for them as they grew up. I don't know what I was expecting, but this is one of the worst autobiographies I have read. Feb 01, Fred Klein rated it it was ok. This autobiography is a lot like Pete Townshend's career. I couldn't finish this. I think this is best left to the most obsessed fans of Pete Townshend, but I think even those who are into The Who will find this pretty boring. Dec 31, Jackie "the Librarian" rated it it was ok Shelves: biography. Townsend is a fascinating man, but he was more interested in talking about the cars, boats, and studios he had built than in his music and personal life. I get that, I don't like talking about myself much either. But I really wanted an in-depth, comprehensive accounting of Mr. Townsend's life, and I didn't truly get that here. Nov 25, Ruthiella rated it it was ok Shelves: non-fiction , I found Townshends autobiography disappointingly boring. It doesnt help either that the author also often sounds like a broken record: a workaholic, trying to do right by his wife and childrenoops falls in love with another women and neglects wife and childrengets back on the wagon, falls off, gets back on the wagon and so on. And after years of therapy, I would expect him to have a little more insight into himself. He goes a long way to show the sexual abuse suffered as a child and how that led, in part, to the pedophilia scandal he got wrapped up in in the early aughts, but he never seems to realize that he deserted his family and was an alcoholic not unlike his mother. Maybe these realizations did come, but got edited out. In the afterword, he writes that the original manuscript was pages. Personally, I would have preferred an autobiography with a different structure and less extraneous detail. For me, the most interesting aspects of the autobiography were the insights in to the songs — his inspirations and influences. I would have liked much more of that and less his hobnobbing with the in crowd. May 06, Phil Ford rated it really liked it. As I am getting ready to go see "The Who" on their "Movin' On" tour in a week, there is particular relevance to reading this now. Also, Pete Townshend and The Who has meant a lot me, since picking up the Who's Missing cassette back in , when I was a teen, and delving full on into this band as my first and favorite classic rock band. Naturally I went on to enjoy my own era of music, but when you are young, you fall into some categories, and I was quite deliberate how I would approach As I am getting ready to go see "The Who" on their "Movin' On" tour in a week, there is particular relevance to reading this now. Naturally I went on to enjoy my own era of music, but when you are young, you fall into some categories, and I was quite deliberate how I would approach listening to music in my life. Starting with history, and classic rock. Townshend's style of guitar playing vastly influenced mine as I developed it as well. So yes, it was probably essential reading for me to pick this up. That being said, this is an honest memoir from a person who knew at a certain point in his young life, that rock and roll music would be his future, even if he had to destroy it. From a musical family, we get early glimpses of things in his life that find their way into a lot of Who music, most relevantly Tommy. The writing is blunt and simple in the delivery and you can see that he has always lived with the darkness of abuse and addiction that has haunted him throughout his life and career. Even in a recent Instagram post, he is emotionally torn to perform parts of Tommy on the new tour. There is some great Who beginnings history too, however, and it is just amazing to hear about his relationships with Keith, John and particularly Roger. Knowing each other since kids, they are like family, sometimes estranged, other times close, and even other times business partners. He talks about his family, marriage, kids, sexuality, his troubles, addictions, spirituality and music highlights. Some events in the book where I thought there would be some extrapolated emotional voyage, he seems surprisingly detached; the '79 Cincinnati show and Keith Moon's death for examples. Those moments are addressed, just differently than I imagined, perhaps more honest to his point of view at the time. The book is a journey for himself as much as anyone who follows The Who, Pete Townshend, or even that heightened and amazing era of rock and roll music. From rock punk to rock "god", pauper to strangely wealthy, Townshend puts it all out there. It's a fucked up history, but a necessary tale to tell. As a fan, I get a sincerely intimate portrait of him. I really believe that. I've seen this guy's face in my life for so long now, he feels like an Uncle. He is in his 70s now. This portrayal, this memoir, deepens my understanding of who he may be. Nov 14, Todd rated it liked it. I'm a big Who fan, and Pete Townshend has regularly proved himself to be one of the most erudite and thoughtful rock 'n' rollers out there. If this memoir were half as interesting as his interviews, I thought it might be as enlightening and as much fun as Keith Richards' "Life. It's not that Townshend can't write -- he obviously can. And he's properly introspective for a memoir. But there's little joy in his storytelling, little soul in I really wanted to love this book. But there's little joy in his storytelling, little soul in his onion-peeling. We get virtually no stories about the writing of various Who classics, and even the Big Projects -- "Tommy," "Lifehouse" and "Quadrophenia" -- come with broad outlines and little insight. He does spend time on his childhood abuse and marriage challenges, but even these emotional stories are told at some remove. Moreover, it's obvious that Townshend has occasionally lived a life of financial as well as physical excess. And yet for all the boats, houses and mixing boards he buys, there's rarely a sense that he's about to hit the poorhouse -- though he talks about his thin savings time and time again. So if you want a clinical diary of the leader of a rock 'n' roll band, "Who I Am" will grudgingly do. But if you want the story of the onetime greatest rock 'n' roll band all due respect to the Stones , stick with Dave Marsh or the interviews. Jun 26, Mike rated it really liked it. Who I Am is a comprehensive memoir starting with his earliest childhood memories of a troubled but still loving family life and how Pete's art school education heavily influenced early Who music and style and the direction of the band. He also talks about his battles with alcohol, drugs, relationships, fidelity, and his own sexuality, but the main focus is on his creative process. He is honest and open about his desires for ever-increasing financial payouts, recording studios, mansions and Who I Am is a comprehensive memoir starting with his earliest childhood memories of a troubled but still loving family life and how Pete's art school education heavily influenced early Who music and style and the direction of the band. He is honest and open about his desires for ever-increasing financial payouts, recording studios, mansions and yachts. Those feelings of rage, shame and inadequacy never left him, even after he fought his way to the top of the music world. He becomes a devotee of Meher Baba, yet loses years to cocaine and alcohol. I could also behave, frankly, like a complete arsehole. Instead, he wants to understand his failings and plumb his insecurities. I took to wearing baggy suits and brothel creepers, piling my thinning hair on top of my head like a rocker. At 34 I was still just about young enough to pull it off. He also has profound doubts about himself as an artist, a lover, a father. His tone is less lofty than anyone would have expected, just as this book is more honest than any fan would have hoped. Newswire Powered by. Its author's compulsive attempts at self-understanding over the years are compromised by nebulous private traumas and extraordinary wealth and fame, the latter complicated by his status as an envoy for his largely anonymous and often distant and ageing fan base. The factors that shape Townshend's musical career are extensive and provide a microcosmic look at national and cultural economies in the immediate postwar years. Each artistic school and musical style alters Townshend's initial approaches to self-formation and his ever-evolving relationship to listeners, and each provides new strategies for how his public self might successfully disassociate from the repressive options posed by the uncommunicative preceding generation. Throughout the s, competing postwar artistic movements coincide with a robust Anglo-American cultural interchange. From within this diversity, the young Townshend gradually situates music as the ideal vehicle for introspective and contradictory representations of shock and alienation. When these experiences are transformed into the imaginaries of song lyrics, band recordings, and live performances, they resonate outside of normal time, ecstatically, much as Woolf hopes for her own poetic form of autobiographical writing around "shocks. Townshend's father, Cliff, is a young saxophone and clarinet player in the Royal Air Force during the war. His wife Betty joins the band as singer and "The Squadronnaires" tour army bases in Britain. Within this itinerant context, Townshend is born in May of , at the very beginning of the war's prolonged aftermath, and this conflict between a sluggish recovery process that impedes a fresh beginning mirrors Townshend's lifelong neuroses. The memoir begins by contrasting the continuities of adult time, or history, with the non-linear intervals and discrete confusions of childhood, that form his worldview. As parents work through marital discord beneath a larger national program of recuperation, the young Townshend is often neglected and displaced, randomly dispatched to "holidays camps," to movie matinees or concerts, to households of various eccentric neighbors, and, most ominously, to live for a year with his unstable maternal grandmother, "Denny," who runs her home "with military precision" while she keeps a series of unpredictable lovers, "bus drivers and airmen" one of whom "had a Hitler mustache" and may have molested the young Townshend. That year of childhood exile is laid out as a series of disquieting Woolf-like "blows," leading to a foundational collapse in his trust: "At the age of seven," he writes, "love and leadership both felt bankrupt" Lacking a coherent narrative, or even a grip on selfhood, he drifts toward art and music, in part to speak on behalf of others while trying in vain to do so for himself. This personal, presumptive quest for a suitably optimistic medium coincides with a time when visual artists and musicians in the U. Townshend carefully documents how he negotiates this transitional period. As art student by day, he is exposed to radical pedagogies and postmodern trends that are themselves responding to institutional insidiousness evidenced by two previous world wars and the coming catastrophes promised by military and industrial technology and epitomized by nuclear weapons and profligate consumerism. Townshend presciently underscores what creators and cultural critics of that era theorized about the postwar psychic situation and its ramifications for the arts. Reflecting on the advent of Abstract Expressionism in New York City, Frank O'Hara writes, "that faced with universal destruction, as we are told, our art should at last speak with unimpeded force and unveiled honesty to a future which well may be nonexistent, in a last effort of recognition which is the justification of being" O'Hara In responding to a Jackson Pollock painting for its "lyrical desperation" and "ecstatic, irritable, demanding force" O'Hara's choice of language prefigures the effusive reports of music critics writing on The Who's live performances several years later. The link between the changing New York School of painting and the environment at Townshend's Ealing Art College is convincingly detailed. The British abstract painter Anthony Benjamin challenges the drily technical orientation of Ealing's curriculum. Benjamin knifes open his own finger during a studio session and drags the blood across the canvas to illustrate the students' requisite break with the orderliness of realist techniques that predominate among the college's painting faculty Action painting is an aesthetic revolt preferred over tradition. Townshend, who initially wants to practice kinetic sculpture, switches to graphic design, and participates in computer artist Roy Ascott's "Groundcourse," involving sensory deprivation exercises. Ascott introduces the young Townshend to "installations combining vibrant colour, lighting, TV screens, and complex coded music" The American painters Larry Rivers and Ron Kitaj, both of who rejected Abstract Expressionism to create flat, parodist distortions of figuration and realism, teach at Ealing Art College, too. As an expatriate artist in England in the s and '50s, Metzger found that, like the innovative Pop Art and Conceptual painters in New York City, expressionistic "all over" painting like Pollock's seemed to have exhausted itself. Metzger graduated to recalcitrant forms of painting such as "acid on nylon" and "dematerializing the work of art" through a Dada-like confrontation with viewers. Writing in , Metzger argues that only so-called "auto-destructive art" can hold a mirror up to runaway capitalism, a system that remains in a necessary denial about its ongoing collective suicide:. Look at the destruction taking place around you. If we go into the streets we are attacked by exhaust - lethal in concentration. The air in cities is polluted by hundreds of chemicals from differing sources. Add to this disease engendering atmosphere, pollution by smoking, carbon dioxide through human activity, the incessant physical and psychic pressure of millions of people in confined, ill ventilated spaces. It is boom or bust! Metzger In response, Metzger rejects the finished art-object as such and tries transitory art productions that depend on the viewer's creativity as much as the maker for their realization. That art's performative nature and its ephemeral content mirror worldwide destructiveness and implicitly indict that impulse:. The artist does not want to give his work to a society as foul as this one. So auto-destructive art becomes a kind of boycott. The artist refuses to embody his finest values in permanent works - to be bought, enjoyed and appropriated by the class of people whom he detests - and who is largely responsible for the catastrophe in which we exist Though he is discussed only periodically, Metzger's influence looms large in Who I Am. The trope of the self-destroying artwork casts long shadows in the dispiriting chronicle of The Who's discord, its physical destructiveness, the members' drug and alcohol abuse, and assorted legal battles with managers and publicists and Metzger's ideas on auto-destruction both complicate and enrich Townshend's quest for a shared vocabulary between musician and audience. Early on, Townshend coopts Metzger's auto- destructiveness and works it into a refashioned British rhythm-and-blues that in its stage presentation borrows heavily from performance art and Mod clothing fashion, and the band's act is bankrolled by the newly founded recording label, Track Records. The integration of art, fashion, and hybrid musical styles explains much of The Who's early appeal in London, especially as the band competes for press and chart prominence with the more popular groups like The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Rolling Stones. Drummer Keith Moon introduces elements of manic comedy, extreme unpredictability, and dark wit into the band, styling himself after his jazz idol, Buddy Rich, and coming into his own after a long affinity with surf music. Moon adds propulsion, nimbleness and splash to his reinvention of rock drumming. By amplifying their instruments to unprecedented acoustic ranges, incorporating feedback and distortion into their sound, and presenting circus-like histrionics and emotive vehemence in live performances, the band rejects mid s pop expectations, daring their growing audiences to adapt to them rather than the other way round. Their pop engagement with "an aesthetics of revulsion" has no well-defined connection to a political program like Metzger's. However their live act, as orchestrated by managers Pete Meaden and Kit Lambert son of composer Constant Lambert , much like the contemporaneous "happenings" of Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground in New York City, marks their audience off as part of an artistic club. The Who's style is subversive insofar as its hyper-kinetic fury repudiate both Merseybeat sentimentality and, later, hippie pacifism. Townshend's songwriting poses sincere, lyrical questions of identity while the band's incendiary platform literally explodes those problems. Autobiographical blues and auto-destruction unite. Once Townshend drops out of art college and the band has been remade by as flamboyant "mods," with UK chart hits in "My Generation," "The Kids Are Alight," and "Anyway Anywhere Anyhow," Gustav Metzger visits the band backstage and urges a change in course. I agreed. The gimmicks had overtaken me" However those guitar-and-drum smashing gimmicks do not immediately cease. The band heavily exploits them in their first American tours. Rather than alienating audiences, that incendiary stage violence distinguishes them. Opening for Herman's Hermits in the U. There is an unexplored paradox to the band's breakthrough success in late s America. Around mid, when the band first enters the American radio market, the civil rights movement has escalated into urban revolts and ferocious riots while the Vietnam war is peaking, as half a million Americans are fighting overseas and the US Air Force is dropping bombs at a rate unequalled in human history. An auto-destructive band is a curiously contradictory choice for imported musical entertainment in this context. Though he detects fissures and lapses in American society, Townshend seems oblivious to any connection or disconnection between real American violence documented in daily headlines of the day, and the band's staged acts of destruction as it tours the States. During The Who's breakthrough performance at the ostensibly "folk music" festival in Monterey, the band, with the exception of bassist Jon Enwistle, utterly destroy their instruments to a stunned audience of mostly idealistic counter-culturists. The visual impact of the gesture so incenses Jimi Hendrix that he follows the band's act by smashing his own guitar and then lighting its fragmented remains on fire. A few weeks after the Monterey show, during The Who's American TV debut on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour , drummer Keith Moon triggers a dynamite explosion in his drum kit at the end of "My Generation," sending singer Roger Daltrey reeling off the stage and singeing Townshend's hair, permanently damaging his eardrum, all in front of a "panic stricken Bette Davis and a sweetly concerned Mickey Rooney" The auto-destruction turns inward as well. Exasperated by the effects on live performances by his band mates' amphetamine abuse, Daltrey punches Moon backstage and is temporarily kicked out of the band The band members are frequently involved in brawls with one another and drawn-out legal and financial wrangling between the band and producer Shel Talmy, and, later between once trusted managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. The Who seems to implode just as it starts to succeed. The fans are also at risk. An officer from the "Tactical Police Force" commandeers the stage, takes the microphone in order to safely clear the hall and is summarily kicked in the crotch by Townshend, who is arrested and charged with assault Months later, he famously boots activist Abbie Hoffman off the stage at the Woodstock music festival while Hoffman is advocating for imprisoned activist John Sinclair. And on it goes through the s. The band's double LP Quadrophenia re-dramatizes the gang warfare and summertime riots in Brighton that had roiled Britain only a few years earlier. A Who concert in enters the band in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest concert ever, registering a dangerous decibels. By , after drummer Keith Moon's death by drug overdose, Time magazine describes the band as existing at "rock's outer limits" when eleven fans are crushed to death entering a Who concert at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio. If the band's auto-destructive aesthetic fails to effect social and political changes in the larger culture as Metzger hopes for through his own art, those elements of The Who's act totally reshape rock music's status as an unassuming commodity. Though Townshend's memoir comes up far short in its accounting for this aspect of the band's legacy, The Who's ferociousness clears the way for explicitly political punk bands from The Sex Pistols to Black Flag to Rage Against the Machine. Townshend's impatience with The Who's waning cultural relevance in the late s expresses itself in a clubroom brawl with members of The Sex Pistols The incident becomes the inspiration for his semi-autobiographical Who song, "Who Are You" [Who I Am, ]. Though The Who's initial success in the s is partly a result of their masterful capacity to integrate diverse musical and artistic fashions in publicity and performance, Townshend's songwriting in that period evolves beyond the superficialities and easy ironies of Pop Art, performance art, and even auto-destruction, into "dramatic and epic mode [that] extended musical forms that served as vehicles for social psychological and spiritual self examination for the rock-n-roll generation" Under financial pressure to move the band beyond hit singles, Townshend composes a mini-opera "A Quick One," and immerses himself in the teachings of the Indian avatar and mystic Meher Baba while planning songs for the band's next album. Tommy is deliberately highbrow in its intent, a quasi-Modernist project complete with a "narrator," "a leitmotif of 'See Me, Feel Me,' " intimations of childhood privation, songs about "bullying," "sexual abuse" and drugs, structured like a classical European opera and thematically inspired by the example of "Hesse's hero Siddhartha's tough lessons at the feet of the ferryman" , Pete Townshend books and biography | Waterstones

Recruited from enlisted men who had been members of well-known bands and directed by Sergeant Leslie Douglas, it has been described as the greatest dance orchestra Britain ever produced. It was, in its own way, revolutionary. Its secret weapon was Swing, still not generally acceptable to society at large, but the common people loved it. And in fact when the motorcycle messenger shouted out the news of my birth from the footlights, Dad was away in Germany, playing saxophone for the troops. Mum falsified her age to enlist in According to Mum, the early years of her marriage were lonely. He was never there. And when he was, he was over the road in the bloody White Lion or up at the Granville. She knew a Jewish couple, Sammy and Leah Sharp, musicians from Australia, who lived with their son in one big room, and Mum and I moved in with them. Leah took me over. In my parents reconciled, and the three of us moved to a house in Whitehall Gardens, Acton. Our next-door neighbours included the great blind jazz pianist George Shearing and the cartoonist Alex Graham, whose studio, with its adjustable draughting board, huge sheets of paper, inks and complicated pens, fascinated me, and planted the seeds that later inspired me to go to art college. I remember noisy, joyous Passovers with a lot of Gefilte fish, chopped liver and the aroma of slow-roasting brisket. Each family had three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, but no inside toilet. Ours was in the back yard, and our toilet paper was a few squares of newspaper hung on a nail. Between the cold and the spiders, my trips there never lasted long. I slept in the dining room. My parents seemed to have little sense of the need to provide me with a place of my own, where I could leave my toys or drawings out without feeling I was encroaching on adult territory. I had no sense of privacy, or even any awareness that I deserved it. Mum gave up singing and later regretted it, but she always worked. She helped run the Squadronaires from their office in Piccadilly Circus, and often took me on the tour bus, where I basked in the easygoing attitude of the band and looked after the empty beer bottles. Our road trips always ended at a small seaside hotel, a holiday camp or an ornate theatre full of secret stairways and underground corridors. Charlie, who managed the road crew, was the butt of numerous practical jokes, but the Squadronaires clearly loved him. Dad always worked for at least an hour on scales and arpeggios, and his morning practice seemed magical in its complexity. In rock today we use simpler language: he was fast. The holiday camp was a peculiarly British institution — a working-class destination for a summer week of revelry that often included entertainment in the form of a band like the Squadronaires. But if, instead of a family in one of these huts, you imagine a small group of young men in one, and young women in another, you begin to understand the possibilities. There was an egalitarian feeling about holiday camps, but I always felt a little superior to the ordinary folk rotating through. After all, I was with the band, and I was there for the whole summer, sometimes as long as sixteen weeks. I grew up with a feel for what entertains people, and saw the price this sometimes demanded. Emerging from the water still playing his old clarinet, he pretended to be sad, defeated. As a child I felt this rather too deeply. My shining Dad is humiliated, I used to think, so you camping plebs can get a laugh. I learned to set myself apart from those ordinary folk, the customers who indirectly paid for our keep. And I always think of my dad. In September , aged four, I attended Silverdale Nursery in Birch Grove, Acton, which probably appealed to Mum because she thought I looked cute in the school uniform, a red blazer and hat. Mum herself was naturally glamorous, and when clothes rationing ended after the war Mum outfitted herself like a Hollywood film star. Her inlaws disapproved. I was happy, though. Whitehall Gardens was one of a series of streets overrun with little boys my own age. Our gang was led by my best friend who we all called Jimpy, after a character with a similar quiff in a popular Daily Mirror cartoon. Like all kids, we played football, cricket, hide-and-seek and cowboys and Indians — our favourite game. War games were limited to toy soldiers or model vehicles: the real thing was still too raw a memory. Laurel and Hardy were the funniest people on the planet. Chaplin seemed out of date to me, but then practically all the films we saw had been made before the war. Once we got out of the house we could do pretty much what we liked. Gunnersbury Park, a round trip of about ten miles. Jimpy and I both had tricycles, and one day, still only four, we both rode mine to the park to attempt a new downhill duo speed record on the steep path in front of the manor house. I stood on the back axle and Jimpy steered. The bike became uncontrollable at high velocity so we could only go straight ahead — crashing right into a raised brick planter at the foot of the hill. We ended up with our faces in the soil, shocked and bloody. My nosebleed lasted two days. Mum, still thinking I looked cute in uniform, sent me to the private Beacon House School, two-thirds of a mile from our home. I knew none of the children there, remember no one I met there and hated almost every minute of it. After an inedible lunch we were expected to nap at our desks for fifteen minutes. If we moved a muscle we were scolded; further fidgeting could lead to ruler slaps, or worse. On one occasion I was so hurt and humiliated that I complained to my parents. They spoke to the headmistress at the school, who responded by singling me out for especially cruel treatment. Around this time Mum started taking me to ballet lessons. I walked into a room and saw twenty toe- twinkling girls in tutus, giggling at me. I was one of only a few boys in the group. One day, after I misbehaved, the teacher pulled down my tights, bent me over a bathtub and spanked me while the girls gathered excitedly around the bathroom door. Perhaps perversely, I enjoyed ballet classes. I am almost a dancer today because of them. But Dad voiced his uneasiness at Mum taking me, so she stopped. Rosie thought Mum should go down and see to her. Come and have a look at this! Still, Mum worried. Do you think perhaps Pete could go down there? He could go to that little school, St Saviours. That might sort it all out. She ordered her own day, and mine, with military precision. She granted me affection only when I was silent, perfectly behaved, utterly compliant and freshly washed — which is to say, never. She was a perfect wicked witch, even occasionally threatening me with gypsy curses. When I began at St Saviours at age six I came bottom of the class for reading and writing. By the time I finished I was on the top desk. That, I suppose, was the good part of going to live with Denny. I was hurt by this, but Aunt Rose also told Denny that I was too old to be unable to read and write properly, and suggested Denny read me half of a suspenseful book, then stop and give it to me to finish. Denny read me Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, and the ploy worked. Caught up not just in the story but also in the unfamiliar comfort of being read to, I immediately picked up the book and finished it off. One of my few amusements was playing with the knobs on a chest of drawers, pretending they were. Opposite our flat was the bus station. Denny would call out the window and invite the drivers to come up for a cup of tea. I remember large flashy cars with half-opened windows. He had a little Hitler moustache. The whole affair left me angry and resentful. In my therapist urged me to try to push through to some clearer level of recall by writing about these morning exchanges. I started to write, and as I began describing a meeting — the Air Force officer winding down his window, Denny leaning in — I suddenly remembered for the first time the back door of the car opening. My memory just shut down. Our flat opened onto the first-floor landing, and my room was never locked; the key was kept on the outside. To this day I still wake up terrified, sweating with fear, shaking with rage at the fact that my door to the landing was always kept unlocked at night. I was a tiny child, just six years old, and every night I went to sleep feeling incredibly exposed, alone and unprotected. In addition to the buses, we also had a view of the train station. I loved to look at the magnificent steam engines, fantasising about sharing the moment with a friend, brother, sister — someone. My last thoughts before sleep often focused on longing for physical affection. One night, when Denny lost her temper, she held my head under for a long time. At St Saviours there were a few children from the nearby American air base. One tall, lanky boy came to school wearing a jaunty seersucker suit — still de rigueur in certain parts of the USA. His parents were oblivious to any ridicule this might provoke. The fact that I took part in this bullying shames me to this day. I bent over the desk, facing the window full of eager, greedy faces ready to feed on my pain, but to their great disappointment Mr Matthews let me off. When Mum paid the occasional visit to Denny and me at Westgate, she gave off an aura of London glamour and of being in a hurry, but also of being unreliable. Meanwhile Denny was running after bus drivers and airmen, and I was miserable. I had lost my beautiful young parents to a life of Spartan discipline with a pathetic woman desperately watching her youth slip away. The deaths or disappearances of the beloved men in my life — my absent father and the recently departed George VI — seemed vengeful too. At the age of seven, love and leadership both felt bankrupt. During this time Mum became romantically involved with another man. I remember sitting in the back seat of a Volkswagen Beetle, waiting at an intersection on Gunnersbury Avenue. The memory of Mr Bowman came back to me when Mum told me about him years later. My fidgeting irritated her, and so did my runny nose. Eddie smiled, looked behind him at you and you were pleased with my disruption and smiled back at us both in return. SqueezeBox was then performed in its entirety. You looked so happy during the song. I know you were happy. So, I bossed you all around that night. Please give it to Russell Schlagbaum. Pete, very cool of you to provide film footage of your book tour appearances. I love you Pete. And the Who. Really looking forward to that…. It proved to be an intelligent and introspective look inside the head of a genius! Thanks for telling it like it is, Pete! Pete, thankyou for the interesting read, the great song writing and energy filled performances over the many years. I really enjoyed reading your book and your honesty in telling your life story. I now have a better perspective on the inspiration for the songs and your creative process. Hope the only future edition changes allow the text from the original uncut version. To the entire WHO both alive and passed. Just finished your book. Loved you all my life. Goddammit i havre to see you one last time before one of us croaks! I am dismayed at how one of your reporters, Jenny Yuen, completely twisted the facts of the recent Who concert in Hamilton on February the 10th. Nothing is further from the truth. As well, Pete Townshend showed his concern for the little girl using his own inimitable sense of humour which his fans have known and loved about him for years. Also, Pete Townshend was in a particularly good mood all evening in Hamilton. As a result, he was quite talkative towards the audience, more so than at the previous two concerts I had seen. To summarize, Pete Townshend was a gentleman all evening. He followed up by asking Mr. Costello if he really thought it was a good idea to smash a guitar in front of a young child. This essential fact I have noticed was completely ignored by your reporter. Pete Townshend was just being facetious. In fact, Pete Townshend carried the joke further at the end of the evening when he teasingly hoisted his guitar by the neck to behind his back a usual prelude to the demise of one of his guitars. He then gazed mischievously towards the audience, making us wonder if he was actually going to do it, but instead he just sauntered off stage. Obviously Ms. Yuen knows absolutely nothing about Pete Townshend and the Who. Why would the Sun send someone so ignorant of a subject area to cover a story? You must well know that shoddy reporting will surely result from someone who knows nothing of a subject area. Nevertheless, Pete Townshend is no stranger to controversy and the Who partly built their career on it. However, Ms. It is patently unfair to insinuate that Mr. Townshend was callous to a child when, in fact his behaviour was exactly the opposite. Therefore, Ms. Yuen should retract her story immediately and apologize to Pete Townshend. Furthermore, she should learn from this not to subvert individuals true intentions to sell newspapers. Really glad there was an apology and attempt to make amends — Most people are understanding about others screwing up if they have the grace and humility to apologise and make amends afterwards, nice one — honour restored I think and a lot of Who fans happier, myself included — nice one PT. Excellent book Pete! Glad you where honest! I still think your one of the best guitar players of all time!!! I write from Argentina. We saw The Who in Phoenix, Arizona. And we hope the Spanish translation of the book of Pete. For when? Greetings to All. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

Pete Townshend: Who I Am

He says he was doing research: "My plan was to run a story on my website illustrating that online banks, browser companies and big-time pornographers were all complicit in taking money for indecent imagery of children. Instead, I have relied on my friends and the general public to speak for me — until now. It's a horrible way to cap a legendary life, and yet if anyone was prepared for a depressing denouement, it's Townshend. After all, at the funeral of the destructive Moon, who died in at the age of 32, Daltrey was a mess; Stones drummer Charlie Watts was, too. As for Townshend: "My eyes were hard and dry. Townshend, it should be noted, never cries for himself either. Not through personal or professional pain, not through the muddying of his name. In the end, he reasons, he has been saved time and again by that windmilling arm, by that smashed guitar, by the songwriting demons in his head. In the end, Pete Townshend both takes, and offers, good advice: "If in doubt, just play. Subscribe Manage my subscription Activate my subscription Log in Log out. Regions Tampa St. I had to go to Wikipedia to learn what the religion was about. He falls in love not just once, but often. I come away with a number of feelings about all this. First is sadness for a lonely little boy. Then sympathy for a man with an addictive profile who buried himself in work; work was infused with the drama of the times. Then, sadness again that he lost out on warmth and love as a child, and seems unable to find connection as an adult. Townshend has created some great art and made some technological strides in music. He is definitely a foremost artist of "his" generation. Despite all that has been written about the generation gap, not many have related it to the preceding generation's trauma of war as Townshend has. While this book does not answer his question, it may provide a blueprint for a future biographer to interpret Townshend in a more accessible way. View all 6 comments. Oct 09, Tony Nielsen rated it it was amazing. As a long time Who fan I've been looking forward to Pete Townsend's frank appraisal of life with the Who and beyond. I first saw them live in Auckland, New Zealand in the late sixties, and for many years kept a small piece of Keith Moon's drum kit which I souvenired after he demolished it at the concert's finale. Keith Richard's "Life" has pretty much been accepted as the bnenchmark for rock musician's memoirs in recent times. In my view Townsend at least matches it, if not eclipses it. Certainly, while there is some commonality between Keef and Pete on their substance intake, Townsend's biggest issue is more emotionally based, with self doubt and depression, prominent bed fellows until fairly recently. What also shines through though is his creative drive and constant quest to grow his musicality, and with no recognition of boundaries. So, yes I guess the moniker "troubled genius" is the dominant one. He's not always easy to like but he's definitely honest and sincere. And by the end of his story it's cool to see that he seems to have found peace in his life at last. This is a must-read for any rock fan. Bear in mind that many of the Who's hits, and masterpieces like Tommy and Quadrophenia wouldn't be with us without him. Mar 03, Emma rated it liked it. Read in the interest of fairness after Rogers book. Its double the length of Rogers efforts, and is thorough and fair, as Id expect Pete to be. He comes across these days as more humble and aware of others than he ever was in his younger years, and clearly has deep respect for Roger. He writes more kindly about John Entwhistle than Roger does too. Again, there are some laugh aloud moments and he writes well. His frustration about the Lighthouse project is clear, and I did skim read bits of the book as although I am enjoy the music, I was more interested in the relationships he had with others, and wanted to hear about his demons. View 2 comments. Dec 31, Tania Donald rated it it was amazing. As a long-time admirer of Pete Townshend's songwriting and musicianship, both as part of The Who and as a solo artist, I was a bit nervous about reading this book. It can be very disillusioning to discover that people we look up to as inspirations are, in fact, real people, and may not correspond at all with the lofty ideals we build about them in our own minds and dreams. Let me say that on finishing Who I Am, my admiration for Pete Townshend both as an artist and as a person has only deepened. Who I Am is an honest, unvarnished account of an artist's life - of the art he makes and the struggles he faces behind the stage curtain. Townshend, it must be said, is a spectacularly successful musician in anyone's terms - he has had all the gold records, critical acclaim, and financial success that any of us could wish for. True too, he emerged at one of the most interesting and vital moments in British music history. What is most interesting and unexpected though, is Townshend's revelation of the personal cost of being this luminary, wind-milling rock god of legend. How can a marriage or family life be sustained when one is away touring for months on end on a regular basis? How can one reconcile the public's image of a rock star with one's own unresolved personal traumas and profound insecurities? What shocks here is the sense of loneliness, of a man always on the periphery: adored by millions, yet alone in endless hotel rooms; the supposed wild man of rock who watches his bandmates' antics from the sidelines and worries about his marriage. It is in the tension between these two worlds that Townshend reveals his humanity and vulnerability, and also the impossible position in which we place those whom we idolise and set apart from the common throng. Townshend does not flinch from his infidelities, his addictions, his psychological struggles, and his intimate and unguarded writing style serves him well here - drawing the reader in to a sympathetic understanding of circumstances and a status that most of us would struggle to imagine. Townshend writes beautifully - and this should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever really listened to the lyrical brilliance and innovative story-telling style of his songs. The other gem in this book is the fascinating thread of spiritual yearning and an almost mystic sense of wonder that runs through it: from Townshend's boyhood experiences of ecstasy in hearing some kind of transcendent music in nature, to his adult pursuit of spiritual fulfilment through the teachings of Meher Baba. What I am left with is my own sense of wonder, that despite often immense difficulties, both personal and professional, Townshend has produced and continues to produce some of the most dynamic, thoughtful and interesting music in the popular sphere and has emerged as one of rock's great survivors and successes. I finished the book feeling a great sense of our common humanity - that it is ok to be flawed, to struggle, to sometimes fail. What matters - what can raise us above it all - is the creative spirit and the quest to make whatever art you make. In the end, Who I Am is an uplifting and triumphant memoir. I would highly recommend it. View 1 comment. I must admit, I'm really waffling on whether Pete gets two or three stars. I confess that I'm a sucker for a rock book. I tend to leap into them without coming up for air until the last page is turned. This book was no different, but I can't say that it was the scintillating prose that kept me enthralled. Maybe my expectations were too great. In his work with The Who and his earlier solo efforts, Pete was often a songwriter nonpareil. His various interviews not only showed him to be an I must admit, I'm really waffling on whether Pete gets two or three stars. His various interviews not only showed him to be an entertaining storyteller but one of the first true rock music philosophers all apologies to Mr. Springsteen, but Pete beat you by a good five or six years. Too much of this memoir seems to be more a perfunctory listing of facts with little exploration of what's being written. One passage that stands out is when Pete refers to having to battle heroin addiction in the s, without ever previously stating that he had taken the drug. Another fault is the short shrift given to some of the music he wrote, at least in balance to the space given his various romantic entanglements which, to give the author props for bald-faced honesty, he comes off as a bit of a self-absorbed asshole. I guess I should take my own prejudices into account since this is the time frame in which I first became enthralled with The Who and, by extension, Mr. Maybe I'm being selfish. After all, it's not like Pete asked all his fans to send him notes about how he should write his life story. Still, I can't help but think how much more this book could have been, especially given the undeniable talent Pete's shown in so many interviews and essays rhapsodizing on rock and roll as well as his role in making it a unique art form. Maybe if Pete had written it as a page concept album Jun 18, Brett C rated it liked it Shelves: memoirs. This is an interesting autobiography by one of the most talented musicians of our time. I was captivated by his early years and his taking to 'auto- destruction art' he learned while in art school. This involved destroying their instruments and equipment at the end of a concert which The Who perfected. Overall a good book about the man, where he came from, his shitty times, his good times, and how he This is an interesting autobiography by one of the most talented musicians of our time. Overall a good book about the man, where he came from, his shitty times, his good times, and how he managed to become who he is today. I always heard Pete Townshend was a strange and odd dude; this book confirms those accusations. I would recommended for anyone who likes musicians and their stories. Nov 06, Tosh rated it liked it. Without a doubt The Who was a major band in their time and place. How I would love to hear stories about these guys from Townsend, but what we get instead is very basic tales of insecurity, doubt, "woo me being a star," etc from the mouth and brains of Pete Townsend. There is nothing wrong with that, for he is Without a doubt The Who was a major band in their time and place. There is nothing wrong with that, for he is very much the engine of The Who, but what made the band great are the characters surrounding The Who. Through Townshend's writing I don't get a clear picture of the individuals around him. He touches on it, but its totally reflects on his own ego or thoughts about his role in the mess of being in The Who. On paper this sounds like an ideal book, but reading it, I find it very normal, plain, and basically not exciting. Without a doubt Townshend is a superbly talented songwriter, who in the end thinks too much about his work. It is interesting that he admires Ray Davies of The Kinks, who I think is not only a better writer, but also a much more intense individual than Pete. Reading this book right after the Neil Young memoir is interesting. Both are legendary without a doubt, and both are egotistical to the max. I think Townshend is much more of a charmer, but still he comes from a stock where he sees the world from only his pain, pleasure, and of course the doubt that is always there. Both Neil and Pete think a lot about their role in their lives, which is perfectly normal for any man in their mid's. But unlike someone like Bob Dylan or Patti Smith both books by these artists are more superior than Pete or Neil's are basically unique figures who rock because it is in their instinct to rock. Pete praises John Entwistle, but I feel he doesn't give him credit for the great songs he wrote for The Who. After that, "Tommy" and so forth -not that interesting to me. Classic rock albums yes, but essential Who No not to me. The book is an enjoyable read, but I wished it went further into the world with the guys he worked with as well as the Mod world. There is material in this book, but not enough of it. View all 7 comments. Nov 19, Michael rated it liked it. Much of what I read was much the same as the tales of my other pop heroes. I did learn about his great love for and understanding of the technical chores and challanges of recording. Also to be discovered is Pete's need to use 'big words' that chased me to seek the assistance of Webster sometimes three times on one page. Yes, I do feel mixed. I am both annoyed and challenged to better my own vocabulary It seems somehow appropriate to draw Much of what I read was much the same as the tales of my other pop heroes. It seems somehow appropriate to draw parallels of Pete and me. I am a generation younger than the bands of the British Invasion, but yet, I wanted the life that I believed they enjoyed. I had many joyful experiences in the garage band days. At some point, before it got to be too late, I came to understand that I wanted a settled family life, not the gypsy life of a touring band. And, I also admitted that I was 'pretty good' It is my belief that Pete and his peers were captives of the success they achieved. They coped by whatever means necessary I've got a head full of hair I think Pete is going to be okay Jun 18, Deborah Stevenson rated it it was ok. Painful read. Thought I would never get thru it! Was very highly reviewed which led me to choosing it for my book club. Not a Who fan and found he went on endlessly about recording each and every album with details I am sure even fans would find too much. In one breath he talked of no money, in the next bought a new house or a new boat. Would not recommend! Mar 11, Kirk rated it liked it Recommends it for: my generation. Shelves: nonfiction , music , memoir. Every year is the same And I feel it again I'm a loser, no chance to win Leaves start falling Comedown is calling Loneliness starts sinking in But I'm one I remember reading a Rolling Stone interview in the student bookstore of my university some eons ago, trying not to laugh too conspicuously while Pete held forth on various peers. The internets kindly allowed me to track it down and read it again. Kurt Loder was the interviewer, he seemed to suss out that Pete was in an unguarded, expansive mood, and dangled enough bait until Pete took it and went to town. It may be the best thing he's done in a while — it sounds real nice. KL: Well. PT: No, he never did. He's got a couple of years on me, but it could be ten years, we're so different. Whereas I don't think Little Richard mattered, you know? But one of the reasons I'm excited about Paul's latest project is because it's him and George Martin working together again; because he's making a conscious effort to really get into serious record- making, rather than pissin' about in home studios — which I, for one, think he's terrible at. When "Ebony and Ivory" came out, everybody was saying, "Christ, have you heard it? It's terrible. I thought, "That's it, that's McCartney! It's wonderful! It's gauche! It's Paul McCartney! I've always said that I've never been a big fan of the Beatles: to me rock was the Stones, and before that Chuck Berry, and before that, maybe a few people who lived in fields in Louisiana. But I can't really include the Beatles in that. The Beatles were over with Herman's Hermits. Because they were such a big pop phenomenon. I've always enjoyed some of their stuff as light music, with occasional masterpieces thrown in. But with a lot of their things, you can't dig very deep. Either you come up against Lennon's deliberately evading what it is that he's trying to say, so it's inscrutable, or Paul McCartney's self-imposed shallowness, because he sees music as being. I mean, he's a great believer in pop music, I think. But I wonder whether McCartney, perhaps, rests a little bit on the laurels of the Beatles. PT: Absolutely. I remember hearing "S. But it was too late, because I was already transported by it. I just thought it was such a great sound, you know — great bass drum and the whole thing. They make great records. Also, what's quite interesting is that Abba was one of the first big, international bands to actually deal with sort of middle-aged problems in their songwriting. And it was quite obviously what was going on among them — that song, "Knowing Me, Knowing You. Anyway, reading the entire interview there in the student bookstore was hilarious and exhilarating. Partly because I got the joke. I intuited that this was not all to be taken at face value various other interviews thru the years would confirm that Pete isn't actually so contemptuous of the Beatles as he was letting on , but it was even funnier knowing it would be taken that way by many and inspire a plethora of angry letters from readers in the next Rolling Stone. Which it did. The Abba bit was just icing on the cake, as I have always unapologetically liked and defended Abba. So the short version of my 3- star rating for Who I Am is that the above isn't the Pete we get in this book. But he eases up a bit when he surveys the musical landscape, very much in elder statesman mode. Pete mentions this with a completely straight face, offers no comment whatsoever. I mean, can you imagine the Pete referenced above being served such a factoid and not grabbing it with both hands? The interview would have expanded three more pages on that alone. Or, if instead of Moon it had been Roger Daltry who had an untimely demise and had been replaced with, say, Billy Joel. One problem is there seems to be too much effort to be comprehensive, to cover everything. Answer: a whole lot less than this. There are various boats Pete bought that get more ink than his all-too-brief comments on The Who By Numbers , an underrated album I would have loved to read much more about. Which, yeah ok, but…really? However, there is a lot to like. The material on the inner workings of The Who, how these four personalities meshed, and often clashed, is generous and fascinating. Here, there is no sense of papering over past conflict. Each of them at different times comes off as petty or spiteful or selfish, except possibly John Entwistle, who at worst is sometimes misguided but appears to have been as true and steadfast a friend as Pete ever had, and he says as much. Roger Daltry emerges as the one with the truest work ethic. It would seem one of the primary motivations in writing the book was self-analysis and catharsis, and at times Pete appears to bend over backwards to not cast himself in a favorable light. Which beats the reverse, but when it comes to recounting his various infidelities, I sometimes wanted to interject, we get it Pete, you were a shitty husband, can we move on please? Really, if you want a list of the most sympathetic figures in the book, it would begin, 1. Karen Townshend. Roger Daltry… That said, it is amusing to read about one failed conquest. Pete sees the Nicolas Roeg film Bad Timing. He's vaguely acquainted with Roeg, who ended his marriage to be with the film's star, Theresa Russell. Pete tries to call Roeg on the phone there'd been some discussion of working on a project together , Ms. Russell answers, Nic as it happens is off in Paris, and Pete instantly decides he's besotted a recurring thing it would appear. He persuades Ms. Russell to go to a Pink Floyd concert with him, then for a few drinks after. Theresa Russell is all of 23 at the time, fully in control, and makes it utterly clear at the end of the night that Pete ain't getting to first base. Pete leaves, defeated, and whines to his driver that he could really do with a line of coke right about now. In fairness, if you've seen Bad Timing , you can't entirely blame him for this one. In this book at least, John Entwistle's death hits with a greater force, maybe because Keith Moon's story is so much more familiar, and that from this vantage point it doesn't seem like any other ending was possible. Also, I got the sense that Moon was to some extent unknowable even to the band, he always seemed 'on', always portraying the character of Keith Moon. When Keith dies, Roger calls Pete with the news, expressed in three words: "He's done it. I am two years old, riding on the top deck of an old tram that Mum and I have boarded at the top of Acton Hill in West London. I am a little older now, my second birthday three months past. My parents ride up like Arabs on horseback, spraying sand everywhere, wave happily, and then ride off again. They are young, glamorous, beautiful, and their disappearance is like the challenge of an elusive grail. A trained flautist, he could read. Horry met Grandma Dorothy in They worked together as entertainers and married two years later, when Dot was eight months pregnant with their first child, Jack. As an infant, Uncle Jack remembered his parents busking on Brighton Pier while little Jack watched nearby. A grand lady walked up, admired their efforts and threw a shilling into their hat. Dot was striking and elegant. She was cheerful and positive, though rather vain and a bit of a snob. Between performances Horry and Dot conceived my father, Clifford Blandford Townshend, who was born in , a companion for his older brother Jack. Though obsessive about cleanliness, Denny was not a careful guardian. Mum remembers hanging out the upstairs window with her baby brother, Maurice, Jr, waving at her father driving past on his milk float. The little boy nearly slipped out. Granddad Maurice was a sweet man who was cruelly jilted when Denny — after eleven years of marriage — abruptly ran off with a wealthy man, who kept her as his mistress. On that day Mum came home from school to an empty house. Denny had taken all the furniture except for a bed, leaving only a note with no address. It took Maurice several years to track the wayward woman down, but they were never reconciled. Maurice and the two children moved in with his mother, Ellen. Mum was ashamed of the mother who had abandoned her, but proud of her grandmother Ellen, who taught her to modulate her speaking voice to round out the Irish in it. Mum became adept at mimicking various accents, and showed an early aptitude for music. I remember Rose as an extraordinary woman, self- assured, intelligent, well read; she was a lesbian, living quietly but openly with her partner. Like me, Dad was a teenage rebel. He was ashamed of this later, of course, but forgave himself — they were young, and the uniforms were glamorous. English variant on the speakeasy. The musicianship required of him at these gigs demanded little of his skill. Throughout his life he was over-qualified, technically, for the music he played. In the interval between two world wars, sophistication, glamour and lightheartedness obscured an underlying fear of extinction. The big issues were hidden in clouds of cigarette smoke and innovative popular music. Sex was, as ever, the ingredient that would calm the anxious heart. War and music brought my parents together. Dad enlisted in the RAF in and played saxophone and clarinet in small bands to entertain his colleagues as part of his duties. Recruited from enlisted men who had been members of well-known bands and directed by Sergeant Leslie Douglas, it has been described as the greatest dance orchestra Britain ever produced. It was, in its own way, revolutionary. Its secret weapon was Swing, still not generally acceptable to society at large, but the common people loved it. And in fact when the motorcycle messenger shouted out the news of my birth from the footlights, Dad was away in Germany, playing saxophone for the troops. Mum falsified her age to enlist in According to Mum, the early years of her marriage were lonely. He was never there. And when he was, he was over the road in the bloody White Lion or up at the Granville. She knew a Jewish couple, Sammy and Leah Sharp, musicians from Australia, who lived with their son in one big room, and Mum and I moved in with them. Leah took me over. In my parents reconciled, and the three of us moved to a house in Whitehall Gardens, Acton. Our next-door neighbours included the great blind jazz pianist George Shearing and the cartoonist Alex Graham, whose studio, with its adjustable draughting board, huge sheets of paper, inks and complicated pens, fascinated me, and planted the seeds that later inspired me to go to art college. I remember noisy, joyous Passovers with a lot of Gefilte fish, chopped liver and the aroma of slow-roasting brisket. Each family had three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, but no inside toilet. Ours was in the back yard, and our toilet paper was a few squares of newspaper hung on a nail. Between the cold and the spiders, my trips there never lasted long. I slept in the dining room. My parents seemed to have little sense of the need to provide me with a place of my own, where I could leave my toys or drawings out without feeling I was encroaching on adult territory. I had no sense of privacy, or even any awareness that I deserved it. Mum gave up singing and later regretted it, but she always worked. She helped run the Squadronaires from their office in Piccadilly Circus, and often took me on the tour bus, where I basked in the easygoing attitude of the band and looked after the empty beer bottles. Our road trips always ended at a small seaside hotel, a holiday camp or an ornate theatre full of secret stairways and underground corridors. Charlie, who managed the road crew, was the butt of numerous practical jokes, but the Squadronaires clearly loved him. Dad always worked for at least an hour on scales and arpeggios, and his morning practice seemed magical in its complexity. In rock today we use simpler language: he was fast. The holiday camp was a peculiarly British institution — a working-class destination for a summer week of revelry that often included entertainment in the form of a band like the Squadronaires. But if, instead of a family in one of these huts, you imagine a small group of young men in one, and young women in another, you begin to understand the possibilities. There was an egalitarian feeling about holiday camps, but I always felt a little superior to the ordinary folk rotating through. After all, I was with the band, and I was there for the whole summer, sometimes as long as sixteen weeks. I grew up with a feel for what entertains people, and saw the price this sometimes demanded. Emerging from the water still playing his old clarinet, he pretended to be sad, defeated. As a child I felt this rather too deeply. My shining Dad is humiliated, I used to think, so you camping plebs can get a laugh. I learned to set myself apart from those ordinary folk, the customers who indirectly paid for our keep. And I always think of my dad. In September , aged four, I attended Silverdale Nursery in Birch Grove, Acton, which probably appealed to Mum because she thought I looked cute in the school uniform, a red blazer and hat. Mum herself was naturally glamorous, and when clothes rationing ended after the war Mum outfitted herself like a Hollywood film star. Her inlaws disapproved. I was happy, though. Whitehall Gardens was one of a series of streets overrun with little boys my own age. https://files8.webydo.com/9588036/UploadedFiles/C22F6343-E345-9DF5-712A-A4A2DAB49BC5.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9586618/UploadedFiles/85CC8947-EFF2-E16E-B661-6D8EC38AEBF0.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9586046/UploadedFiles/0EED1691-A76A-8699-CDA0-8E3DF0C97771.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9591461/UploadedFiles/44D8B620-005D-B061-2833-57E5E1E6C3EB.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9589755/UploadedFiles/1185D75D-0707-495C-5D2B-3285BF0B12F9.pdf