Quotes by Pete Townshend - Page 3

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around
Pete Townshend / Musician
Drinking
Way
Would Be
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I don't view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It's a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Common Denominator
Mass
Performers
Denominator
Low
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What the Who is all about is exactly that and it always has been. If it exists today for this concert, it's in response again to a function which is happening out there on the street.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Concerts
Function
Response
Today
Concert
Exactly
Exists
Happening
The Who
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Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Jesus
Play
Salvation
Savior
Song
Name
Idea
Cheap
Mention
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Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Black And White
Cinema
Color
Entertainment
Gray
Somehow
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Respect yourself. Try to remember that not everything in life can be perfect. You will make mistakes. That's inevitable. But you are not ugly. You will only be ugly when you behave in an ugly way.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Mistake
Perfect
Trying
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People try to put us down (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation) Hope I die before I get old.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Generations
People
Trying
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For a while I was perfectly happy not performing with 'The Who.' From 1982 to 1989 I felt 'The Who' did not exist. I let the band go, in my heart. However, Roger Daltrey had other ideas. He would not let go.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Heart
Ideas
Letting Go
Performing
Roger
Let Go
Perfectly
The Who
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It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Flashing Lights
Light
Machines
Pinball
Rocks
Song
Blowing
Bringing
Encore
Flashing
Performance
Lights
Techniques
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I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Enjoyed
Pain
Song
Thinking
Ours
Shown
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Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Clicks
Curls
Detached
Events
Nervous
Sleepy
Wind
Walk Me Feel
Backstage
Curl
Doll
Event
Gear
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In a sense, the god we trust politically is a slightly different god than the one we bring into the fray when we enter a rock concert. One of the things I can say with absolute conviction is that I worship that god.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Conviction
Worship
Absolute
Concert
Enter
One Of The Things
Politically
Slightly
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If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Doors
Guts
Laughing
Messiah
Simple
Before
Door
High
Leave
Times
Got
Laugh
Point
Reach
Takes
Temple
Though
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If it screams truth rather than help, if it commits itself with a courage that it can't be sure it really has, if it stands up and admits that something is wrong, but doesn't insist on blood, then it's rock n' roll.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Blood
Rock N Roll
Rocks
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When people keep repeating That you'll never fall in love When everybody keeps retreating But you can't seem to get enough Let my love open the door Let my love open the door Let my love open the door To your heart.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Life
Falling In Love
Heart
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I didn't start to collect records and listen to guitar players properly until I went to art school, when I'd already been playing for five years. So my style was already formed, and that's why I think it's so unique.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Art School
Collect
Formed
Guitar Players
Properly
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I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Believe
Pretentious
Regard
Writing
Years
Believe Looking People
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Good old Pete. That's me. But I find it hard to think of myself in the first person when I'm writing about The Who. So many times he has willingly sat down to write about the good old Who. Isn't he too old to masturbate?
Pete Townshend / Musician
Firsts
Thinking
Writing
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Some of our early work was two minutes twenty when it actually came out on vinyl, very, very, very short. Sometimes if you made a three-minute record they would make you do an edited version for radio, particularly in America.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Early Work
Edited
Minutes
Radio
Vinyl
Version
Particularly
Twenty
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What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Desire
Exposure
Songwriting
Theatrical
Upbringing
Jewish
Music Character Always
Laugh
Took
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The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Accompany
Dramatic
Rite
Rock And Roll
Rocks
Structure
Writing
Music Today Me
Passage
Purely
Skilled
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I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'
Pete Townshend / Musician
Elegance
Mirrors
Pop Music
Reflecting
Rock And Roll
Rocks
Holding
Mirror
Philosophically
Pop
Reflective
Spiritually
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Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Sad
Brilliant
Class
Fertile
Hypocrisy
People
English
Difficulties
Endemic
English People
Incredibly
Ridden
Superior
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What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Alive
Drama
Obsession
Theatre
Thinking
Angles
Existing
Properties
Remain
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What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.
Pete Townshend / Musician
British
Distinct
Everybody Else
Exactly
Exactly What
Reflect
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My father had played the guitar when he was young, and my uncle Jack had worked for Kalamazoo, before the war, developing guitar pickups. So there was a kind of family thing about the guitar, although it was considered something of an anomaly then.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Developing
Although
Anomaly
Considered
Played
Jack
Uncle
Worked
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Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Men
Angry
Bob
British
Controversial
Dylan
Political
Subjects
Theatre
Writing
Bob Dylan
Followed
Happening
Helped
Proved
Tremendously
Young Men
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The circling horse was an oblique warning that i would repeat the same mistake eternally. Would the law of averages allow it? Can anything continue without change? Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Average
Horse
Mistake
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My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Dance
Blow
Guitar
Saxophone
Wonder
Stevie
Harmonica
Instrument
Note
Stevie Wonder
Suggested
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Rock music is important to people , because it allows them to escape this crazy world. It allows them not to run away from the problems that are there, but to face up to them , but at the same time sort of DANCE ALL OVER THEM. That's what rock and roll is about.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Running
Crazy
Rocks
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Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Father
Guitar
Style
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As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Jobs
Men
Gun
Invited
Machines
No Reason
Upbringing
Young Man
Bone
Germans
Machine Gun
Pick
Trained
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I used to try and make up visually for what I couldn't play as a musician. I used to get into very incredible visual things where, in order just to make one chord more lethal, I'd make it a really lethal looking thing, whereas really it's just going to be picked normally.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Musician
Visual
Chord
Lethal
Make Up
Normally
Picked
Whereas
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I saw the Internet as being something which would allow power mongers to control us, and that we would willingly go to that if it promised us salvation - if it promised to show us who we were and let us find ourselves as we had, uniquely in our generation, through rock music.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Our Generation
Rock Music
Salvation
Let Us
Promised
Uniquely
Willingly
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But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Example
Genre
Interesting
People
Soup
Thinking
Warhol
Best Work People
Andy
Campbell
Represent
Happening
Image
Marilyn
Monroe
New Way
The Who
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When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Notes
Blues
Dug
The Who
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A lot of writing I do on tour. I do a lot on airplanes. At home, I write a lot, obviously. When I write a song, what I usually do is work the lyric out first from some basic idea that I had, and then I get an acoustic guitar and I sit by the tape recorder and I try to bang it out as it comes.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Acoustic Guitar
Airplane
Tape
Acoustic
Bang
Lyric
Recorder
Tape Recorder
Tour
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We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Memories
Song
Stars
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What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh...Songwriting is best. It's the hardest-finest-tightest. It also requires the most discipline.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Character
Discipline
Father
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Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Class
Law
Long
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Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one's sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Men
Gay
Rivers
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For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines.
Pete Townshend / Musician
Country
Expectations
Guitar
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Link is a quiet man to meet- easy and courteous. His music, though, betrays that deep inside he gets very very mean very often. I remember being made very uneasy the first time I heard Rumble , and yet very excited by the guitar sound. And his voice! He sounds like a cross between Jagger and Van Morrison, even sometimes like Robbie Robertson. We met him in New York in 1970 while recording Who's Next.... this later inspired the b-side Wasp Man, a tune we dedicated to Link Wray.
Pete Townshend / Musician
New York
Men
Mean
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Pete Townshend Quotes - Page 3

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