Pete`s drinking/hearing

["Gary M. Gillman" <garyg@inforamp.net>]

I read an interview with PT about a year ago in which he said he had resumed
drinking during his solo shows in NYC a few years ago, but stopped for good
after the shows because he was not as young as he used to be and wanted to
take care of himself. Whether he indulges at present, I don`t know. On the
tinnitus question and the`89 tour, I think the lister (Jackson) who spoke of
PT not wanting high frequencies feeding into his ears at close range
probably came closest to the real reason why PT did the tour the way he did,
but the matter is still puzzling: could PT not have played a mostly electric
show through an enhanced PA system (is that what those speakers at the front
of the stage were?) or with some other remote kind of set-up? After all, he
had to hear Bolton`s guitar in such fashion as Bolton played on the other
side of the stage.  And why could he not have used plugs, or was his hearing
too far gone even for these strategies? But maybe it`s just as well - the
electric PT did play on the tour (eg. on WGFA) may have blown the socks off
those present, but you can barely hear it on the Join Together recording -
it has this loose, gauzy texture to it. So, for me, the mystery remains and
is made even more perplexing by the news (welcome though it is) that his
hearing is "fixed".