Eliot and Townshend

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

Is there a direct relationship between these two artists? Well, Faber &
Faber is a common element, to be sure ( they were Eliot's publisher and he
was an executive of the house for many years and, of course, PT works there
part time). But apart from that link I can't see much of a relationship
between the two. Eliot was deeply conservative, a devotee of Catholicism to
which he had converted after moving to England. He was a traditionalist,
suspicious of alien influences which to him upset the balance of society.
Whereas PT was a groundbreaking musician/artist who forsook traditional
forms and was open to the waves of change crashing upon 60's England, even
hurrying them along via the blast of MG and Tommy. If PT followed any
tradition, it was the one established by Son House, John Lee Hooker and
Eddie Cochran, not old Eliot with his fusty rules about the Objective
Correlative, etc. It's true Eliot recognised the spiritual desolations of
this century in The Waste Land and Prufrock, but so did Kafka, Brecht,
Hemingway, Auden and a passel of other mid-20th century writers (speaking of
which, maybe Ray Davies is the true rock inheritor of their tradition!). PT
found solace not in the Church but in Meher Baba, thus following in the
footsteps of the 50's Beat Generation writers, whose interests in Buddhism
and other Eastern religions presaged the 60's' fascination with Eastern
gurus of all kinds. PT's use of drugs and other intoxicants - another Beat
interest - is hardly Eliotian; old Thomas Stearns was true to his austere
Middle American origins (Missouri) and certainly did not find inspiration in
intoxicants.  Finally, Eliot did not show in his work the sexual frankness
seen in PT's later recordings. If there's a writer who influenced PT to any
degree, I'd say it was Jack Kerouac. Isn't Going Mobile a musical take on
Jack's classic On The Road? Although, if there's a 60's rocker whose groove
emulated the jazzy, trippy freeness of Kerouac, I'd say Hendrix wears the
crown....Gary M.