[no subject]

The last rock hero

I wish he had not done it. I believe that his motives
were good, but I never thought I would see the day
when Pete Townshend would have to say: "I am not a
paedophile."

Let me tell you a story about The Who. It was in the
late seventies, a decade after their first flush of
fame, and Pete Townshend had been off the road for
almost three years fighting his drink and drug demons.
(No special breaks for rich and famous rock stars who
get offered endless supplies of really good drugs but,
as Joe Cocker put it in his anthem, "It's hard to
leave when you can't find the door.") 

So they were getting back out in public in a tentative
way, doing unadvertised gigs in small venues in the
less fashionable parts of London. I heard about the
one at the Sundowner up in Edmonton at the last minute
and, frankly, I'd never been that far north in London
before. Two more tube stops, and you'd be in Scotland.


But, like always, they gave value for money, playing
the whole canon from My Generation to Won't Get Fooled
Again. One hour, two hours, three and all four or five
hundred people packed into the venue are uneasy,
looking at their watches, because we're a long way
from home, and the last underground train is going
now, and lots of us don't even have taxi fare to get
back to our parts of London. But they're still
playing, and nobody leaves.

So finally The Who leave the stage, close to midnight,
and we all spill out into the winter dark wondering
how the hell we're going to get home. And there, lined
up outside the theatre, are a dozen chartered buses
with signs in their windows for all the different
boroughs of London. It took a while, but they got us
all home, right to our doors.

I am not a person who admits easily to having heroes,
but if I were, Pete Townshend would be one of them.
Certainly my only musician hero, and not just because
The Who were the best rock band in history: the first
who played it loud enough to make your ears bleed, the
first who broke out of the simple
guitars-and-love-song pattern of early rock 'n roll,
first synthesisers, first intelligent lyrics, first
(and still best) rock opera - and the one band that
always gave full measure no matter how rich, famous
and stoned they got. 

Townshend himself, for all the early dramatics about
smashing guitars on stage, always gave the impression
of being an intelligent (he was a consultant for Faber
and Faber), serious, even moral man, in a trade that
is not exactly drowning in those qualities.

Now he's under suspicion for downloading child
pornography from an American Internet portal that
gives access to thousands of kiddie-porn websites,
mostly in Russia or Indonesia. So are about 7 000
other people in Britain whose credit card details were
found when investigators in Texas broke into the site.
About 1 300 homes in Britain have been raided in
"Operation Ore", and among those arrested already are
a judge, magistrates, hospital consultants and a
deputy headmaster, along with around 50 policemen.

This was all happening very quietly, so that other
suspects would not reformat their hard drives before
the police got around to knocking on their doors - but
then somebody slipped the word to the Daily Mail in
London that Pete Townshend's name had turned up among
the 7 000.

Only hours after the Mail hit the streets, Townshend
called a press conference to explain that he only
visited the site once, as research for a campaign he
is working on against child abuse. Some of the
research would be incorporated in a book he is writing
about his own childhood, for he is convinced that he
was sexually abused between the ages of five and
six-and-half, when he was staying with a mentally ill
grandmother. "I cannot remember clearly what happened,
but my creative work tends to throw up nasty shadows,
particularly in Tommy," he said. 

And the mob who love to see the rich and famous
brought low went: "Yeah, right, he was doing research
for a book."

It was a very stupid thing to do, but if you look at
Pete Townshend's past the explanation is credible. His
rock opera Tommy, written over 30 years ago, was all
about child abuse at a time when the topic was not in
the least fashionable. The scene in which the "deaf,
dumb and blind kid" is left alone to be groped by his
drunken Uncle Ernie - "Fiddle about, fiddle about" -
is the first time that the sexual abuse of children
actually comes up in mainstream English-language
popular art. 

Townshend wouldn't say that he only entered the site
once if he actually had done so many times, because he
knows that the police already have the credit card
records.

The police might never even have contacted Townshend
if the Mail had not run its story, for they are
clearly exercising some judgment about which of the
visitors to the site were actually users of child
pornography: they haven't arrested all 7 000 people on
the list. 

But once Townshend's name was in the public domain,
they could not avoid arresting him - not with all
those other prominent people already under arrest. So
now he'll probably have to wade through the whole long
nausea of a trial, though he's still likely to be
found innocent in the end.

It's a miserable business, and I wish he hadn't done
it - although not as much as he does, I'm sure. But
this is a good man in a bad time and place, not a bad
man.


Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist
whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Publish Date: 16 January 2003

-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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