Pete Speaks Again of New Who Album

["Scott Schrade" <schrade@akrobiz.com>]

Repost from Jon Rhein over at O&S (thanks for sharing, Jon).

*****

Rock's cycle of success

Townshend and The Who are back on big-time upswing

By George Varga

POP MUSIC CRITIC

January 1, 2002

Who knows what the future holds for Pete Townshend and the legendary rock
band he leads?

The Who, the English group Townshend has headed since its 1964 inception as
the High Numbers, is enjoying its highest profile in years.
"I love what The Who is doing at the moment," said Townshend, the group's
guitarist, songwriter and conceptual mastermind. "It's definitely
a celebration, rather than a nostalgia exercise. It feels balanced to me."

Balance is a rare quality for his hard-rocking band, whose triumphant 2001
reunion tour included a rousing performance at the San Diego Sports Arena,
and whose fabled 1969 rock-opera, "Tommy," opens in a six-day road show
engagement here tonight at downtown's Civic Theatre.

Last year's Who tour drew young new followers and veteran fans alike,
including Pearl Jam singer (and erstwhile Townshend collaborator and former
San Diegan) Eddie Vedder. It went so well that Townshend agreed to record
again with singer Roger Daltrey and bassist John Entwistle. The three have
not made a Who studio album since 1982's aptly titled "It's Hard," because
of Townshend's repeated refusals to do so. (Original Who drummer Keith Moon
died, at 31, in 1978.)

More recently, the Townshend-led band -- which features longtime Who touring
keyboardist John "Rabbit" Bundrick and drummer Zak Starkey (the son of Ringo
Starr) -- stole the show at the Oct. 20 all-star "The Concert for New York"
at Madison Square Garden. The Who's electrifying performances of "Who Are
You," "Baba O'Riley," "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" was
seen by the millions who watched the live telecast, and can also be heard
(minus "Behind Blue Eyes") on the recently released "The Concert for New
York" album.

Townshend, meanwhile, has just released a terrific pair of double-CD albums,
"Pete Townshend Live La Jolla Playhouse," which were recorded at two solo
benefit gigs he did here in June on behalf of the Playhouse. While not
available in stores, the albums can be ordered through his Web site
(www.eelpie.com).

And for those craving still more, there's the "The Who's 'Tommy'," which
debuted in 1992 at the La Jolla Playhouse, under the direction of Des
McAnuff, the Playhouse's maverick artistic director. The epic rock-opera won
five Tony Awards the following year, then toured the world.

Presented by Broadway San Diego, the latest production of "The Who's 'Tommy'
" (not directed by McAnuff) runs tonight through Sunday at the Civic
Theatre. "Tommy's" continued success has also helped to keep The Who and its
music in the public eye.

"We've been very lucky," said Townshend, 56, speaking from London about his
band's heady resurgence.

"We feel extraordinarily lucky, not just that we're here and we're alive --
which obviously we're grateful for -- but that we have an audience that's
receptive to us. And it's not really through anything we've done; it's just
happened. It's really to do with the cyclical nature of pop music.

"At one time I definitely believed that rap, in its own magnificent way, was
going to completely subvert and undermine the record industry," he
continued. "And to some extent, it has. It really is the only truly
authentic form of 'neighborhood music' that we have left. Because what the
new-metal bands do is really music for children. It's music for people who
play with skateboards or snowboards. It's music for riding in cars."

Townshend has little interest in attracting an audience of adolescents, even
though The Who's influence can be heard in the music of Pearl Jam, Green
Day, San Diego's blink-182, England's Supergrass and other bands on either
side of the Atlantic.

But the bearded, balding rock icon continues to be fascinated by what he
calls "neighborhood music," a style that reflects the reality of everyday
life for performers who sing about their home turf. It is the same musical
impetus, he maintains, that drove The Who when its members were still in
their teens in working-class London and which drives many of today's young
bands as well.

"New-metal is very much like what Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran were to
their respective audiences," said Townshend, a master of articulating
youthful Angst and the challenges of adulthood in song. "But it's not music
that, as yet, has shown it can grow with its audience. And I think this is
the dilemma that faces every artist.

No-growth Beatles "I mean, The Beatles did not grow up. They stopped making
records at a point where what they were doing was incredibly interesting and
potentially very, very mature. They worked as solo artists, obviously, but
as a band they stopped. The Stones have done what they've done; they've made
records that are emulations of their live performance. The Who stopped
making records completely. . . "
Until now, that is.

Townshend, Daltrey and Entwistle were scheduled to begin work on a new Who
album this past fall. Recording was pushed back a year so that Townshend
could focus on completing a musical-theater piece and on archiving "maybe as
much as 2,500 pieces of music" that he's built up over the years.

"This archiving is something I didn't want to happen, really, I suppose,
when I was dead," he said. "But I've made a very real commitment now to go
into the studio with The Who at the end of October of 2002, with a producer
and a record deal, and to put out whatever we come up with, even if it's
rubbish.

"Because I think the thing that Roger (Daltrey) was determined to do was to
get everybody in the studio to 'see what happened,' as he put it. This was
his idea of a creative nice time. And I realized it didn't really appeal to
me, at all. I don't look at the creative process as something that comes
about through old geezers getting together and having 'a nice time.' It's
always been a focused moment and a flow of energy. And if the moment is
right, we'll come up with good work. If it's not, we won't."

Asked to contrast The Who of today with the group that disbanded in tatters
in the early 1980s and has regrouped intermittently, Townshend said: "What
we've really been doing is not so much finding new ways to do the material,
but finding a new focus of intensity and purpose. It's a very free and
uncluttered experience; we just walk on stage and do it.

"I think it's just (the passing of) time, really, a growing lack of
self-obsession, and a loosening of that sense of self-importance I had at
the height of the late '70s and early '80s, simply because the Who were in
such a commanding spot, apparently with so little effort. It was a big
surprise to me when we creatively backfired (following Moon's death). I
don't think I was arrogant, but I definitely was confused and a bit lost."

And now?

"What I find really interesting when I look at the way that I work and I
think, it's not that I'm searching for a new young way of working, I just
think that when I was young I was pretty smart," Townshend said.

Smart people helped

"And I don't think I was smart because I was born smart; I think I was
helped to become smart by having smart people around me who pointed me in
the right direction and gave me the right equipment. And those are the ideas
that are still very, very valid . . .
"The Who has been sort of the major receptacle for most of my writing. And
as such, I have to say that some of the time I've (aimed) a little bit high,
and found that the band wasn't really capable of carrying what it was I was
pitching. However, other times I pitched quite high and it's landed really
firmly and solidly."

The return of elemental, guitar-driven rock has helped make The Who's music
vital again to young audiences. Ditto Townshend's classic songs about
seeking one's identity in a world dominated by stifling conformity. Unlike
most baby boomers his age, he sees direct parallels between how The Who
interacts with its audience and the rapport between many of today's rap
artists and their fans.

"The whole rap thing is certainly an echo of what we found ourselves,
unwittingly found ourselves, doing for our peers back in the early '60s,"
Townshend said. "Which was that we were being whiny and childish -- well, I
was being whiny and childish -- and hitting on stuff that, somehow, when the
audience joined in, when the audience took possession of that music, it
became very, very powerful.

"You know, I don't know what I was saying when I said, I hope I die before I
get old (in the Who's 1965 classic, 'My Generation'). But I know it has
nothing to do with what people meant when they shouted it back at me."



Sidebar:

Townshend talks

Pete Townshend on "The Concert for New York"

"If there's anybody you can point a finger at, and say that they were
overcompetitive, greedy for stage time, greedy for space on the album,
greedy for special treatment, it was The Who," he said of the Oct. 20
all-star benefit concert for the victims of Sept. 11.
"We decided there was no point pretending we could go and do that concert in
the spirit that other artists would be able to do it. We felt that if we
were going to do it at all, we'd have to do it holding a firebrand. And that
would mean we'd have to remain slightly aloof from the proceedings.

"For example," he elaborated, "we didn't have a TV set in our dressing
rooms, so we couldn't see the audience before we went on. We chose the
center position in the show so that we would neither open it nor close it.
When I went to try and walk around backstage, what I found is I kept bumping
into firemen, who -- when I asked them how they were -- would burst into
tears.

"Somebody came up to me and said, 'Please, Pete, go back to the dressing
room. Stop asking people how they are. How the (expletive) do you think they
are?' I felt disconnected, and I think it helped, I'm afraid. I think it
helped us (to perform better)."

Elaborating on the marathon benefit gig, Townshend said: "Backstage, the
atmosphere was loving and generous and festival-like, and very lacking in
ego. I don't think The Who were strutting around with our egos on a stick.
But we were definitely allowed to express our usual rock 'n' roll ego.

"And it's for that reason we came across the most powerfully. I don't think
that we necessarily were the best . . . James Taylor was just fantastically
moving."

Townshend chuckled.

"We felt good about being there," he said. "For heaven's sake, I once kicked
a (Manhattan) fire marshal off the stage at the Fillmore East. So I thought:
'This is a chance to make amends. I must go.' And I'm so glad that we went."