All the news from Pete

[Brian.Cady@turner.com]

        I don't know whether you've heard this because I haven't received 
     any of my mail since Friday evening, but this Pete article from Virety 
     should answer a lot of questions.  However, what is he doing in 
     Detroit?
     
      FEATURE: Townshend Becomes Creative Wizard
         By Gary Graff
         DETROIT (Reuters) - In Pete Townshend's life these days,
     just one thing is certain.
         "What I'm not gonna do is tour with The Who," says the
     guitarist-singer-composer-rock icon, referring to the band he
     formed in 1964 in London and broke up in 1982. "That leaves me
     with a bunch of other options I can get involved in."
         And Townshend's is a formidable bunch of musical, theatrical
     and cinematic projects that are in various phases of fruition.
         He just finished a series of solo concerts to promote a new
     best-of album,
     "Coolwalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking" -- titled
     from a lyric in his song "Misunderstood."
         He moves from that into a presentation of The Who's 1973
     rock opera "Quadrophenia," which will be staged June 29 in
     London's Hyde Park. It's not quite a Who reunion, Townshend
     cautions; the band's Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle will also
     be involved, but they'll be joined by a group of guests who
     Townshend is keeping secret for now.
         Meanwhile, Townshend says he may not even play guitar during
     the show, though he does expect to sing a couple of songs. And
     he dangles the possibility of also staging "Quadrophenia" in
     the United States this year. After that, he seems to have a full
     plate of ideas in development, including:
         -- A full-blown theatrical production of "Quadrophenia,"
     which is in its fourth re-write;
         -- A film version of his 1989 adaptation of Ted Hughes'
     fable "The Iron Man," which he's working on with Warner Bros.;
         -- A fleshed-out treatment of "Psychoderelict," his 1993
     album about an aging rock star, which may be staged at Britain's
     Edinburgh festival during the summer;
         -- An autobiography that links his life with his father's,
     who played in jazz and big bands in England;
         -- And a resurrection of "Lifehouse," a "millennium,
     apocalyptic, virtual reality story" that The Who was working on
     after "Tommy." Some of the songs turned up on the classic
     album "Who's Next."
         Townshend says the New York City Opera has expressed
     interest in helping him develop that project.
         "Lately, most things I'm doing seem rooted in the past,"
     Townshend, 51, says. "Even things that still feel new to me,
     like 'Psychoderelict'... This is something that's three years
     old."
         There's a higher purpose to this spate of activity, however.
     In 1965, Townshend hung himself with the lyrical albatross of
     "Hope I die before I get old" from The Who's hit "My
     Generation." Now he's earnestly investigating a way to craft
     credible, rock-oriented projects after he's, well, gotten old --
     at least by rock 'n' roll standards.
         "I just think it's because rock 'n' roll is, for me, an
     artistic process, though it's not seen to be that way by
     everybody who works in it or by part of he media that surrounds
     it," explains Townshend, who lives in London with his wife,
     Karen.
         "I think an artist has to constantly re-evaluate and
     redefine, not himself, but what is his commission. I want to
     know what my commission is. "I don't want to be part of this
     boomer thing ... the idea that I can't miss just because I'm
     surrounded by so many old (people) like me who are going to go
     out and buy whatever I put out.
         I'm looking for what happens next in the same creative
     continuum, rather than this theory of what happens when you grow
     out of listening to your favorite college band...
         "I feel a kind of duty to be able to accept that I am in an
     extraordinary place at the moment, and I have to respond to that
     -- not just what the business around me offers but also to find
     out whether or not the people I write for, the people we're
     trying to entertain, what they feel and how important it is for
     them to feel they can go to see a play or hear a bunch of songs
     or see a movie which has themes that relate deeply to their own
     experience and are not just about universal issues."
         This is something Townshend began pursuing when he started
     writing songs for The Who. There's a reason why Pearl Jam's
     Eddie Vedder was hanging around Townshend's recent appearances;
     The Who's songs were rock's original teen angst -- reflections
     of confusion, alienation, frustration and just plain awkwardness
     -- that indelibly touched everything that's known as modern rock
     today. The themes may be broad, but Townshend says they were
     designed to touch listeners in a very specific way.
         "In rock 'n' roll, you rely on people to put themselves in
     the picture," he says. "You have to put yourself on the stage,
     throw yourself into it. Then it works -- brilliantly. The
     ability of rock to be particular is so extraordinary and makes
     it so difficult to make it happen in other mediums...that rely
     on characters and stories. Occasionally it happens; I suppose
     I'm out there to see what happens when I do whatever it is that
     I do."
         Townshend has already done that successfully. In 1992, he
     and director Des McAnuff adapted "Tommy" into a Tony
     Award-winning play that's wowed audiences all over the world
     with its combination of Broadway and rock sensibilities.
     Townshend says he learned quite a bit from that endeavor -- and
     not just on the creative end.
         "I can get anything I want done if I go straight to the
     source," he says. "We're getting 'Quadrophenia' done because
     we went straight to Mastercard -- cut out all the people
     in-between -- got $400,000 and put the thing up.
         "It's a strange place to be to realize that...all I have to
     do is stroll into a room with a few old guys and say 'I fancy
     doing 'Quadrophenia' as a dramatic work' and they say 'Hey,
     we'll give you money.' That may sound cynical, but the fact is I
     can do it, and I trust myself to do it well."
         Reuters/Variety