[no subject]

Townshend's music reflects his 'tastes'-- or his
torment 
January 19, 2003 

BY JIM DeROGATIS POP MUSIC CRITIC

There are two ways to look at the startling revelation
last week that '60s rock icon Pete Townshend was
arrested and questioned by Scotland Yard on charges of
making and possessing child pornography.

The first is that the body of work that the
57-year-old Townshend has produced as the leader of
the Who and as a solo artist is rife with references
to child abuse--that indeed, he has written some of
the most moving music ever recorded on the subject of
victimizing children--and that the artist is now being
demonized by the press for his abiding interest in
this most difficult and taboo of subjects.

Townshend has said that he was sexually abused as a
child while living with his maternal grandmother
(though he cannot recall specifics), and that he was
researching the subject of pedophilia for a
forthcoming autobiography when he used his credit card
to access a child pornography Web site.

In all honesty, this sounds a lot like the "Winona
Ryder" defense. And it didn't work for her in her
celebrated shoplifting case.

The other way to view this sad news is to jump to the
conclusion that Townshend--like Gary Glitter (who was
convicted on similar charges, and who opened for the
Who during its "Quadrophenia" tour), Chicago R&B
superstar R. Kelly (who has been indicted on 21 counts
of videotaping himself having sex with a 15-year-old
girl), and Michael Jackson (who settled out of court
with the family of a teenage boy he was accused of
molesting)--has a serious and disturbing problem.

Rock stars are the modern day equivalent of the
decadent rulers who prevailed over the fall of the
Roman Empire. Able to fulfill any whim or desire at
the snap of their fingers, they are free to indulge
hedonistic pursuits others would never even imagine,
possibly at a terrible price to fellow human beings.

It is all too easy, given this lifestyle without
boundaries, to envision how "Kicks just keep getting
harder to find," to quote Paul Revere and the Raiders,
leading to a sort of sadistic madness unrivaled since
Caligula.

Townshend has not been charged with a crime. Under
British law, suspects are not charged immediately upon
arrest and some arrested people are released without
charge.

The rock legend was arrested as part of Operation Ore,
a crackdown on people who view child pornography on
the Internet that found British police rounding up
1,300 suspects, including a judge, magistrates,
dentists, doctors, a deputy school headmaster, and 50
police officers. 

The sweep was the British arm of an FBI-led operation
that traced 250,000 suspected pedophiles around the
world through credit cards used to pay for downloading
child porn.

The facts that have surfaced about Townshend's alleged
offenses are sketchy, and it would be unjust to jump
to conclusions. But one thing is certain: From the
minute the news broke, it became impossible to hear
the rocker's music in the same way without wondering
and second-guessing.

"There's an idea that important rock artists are not
just making art, but also tapping into an element of
themselves," says Chuck Klosterman, a staff writer at
Spin magazine. "So when someone who has made a lot of
personal records makes a mistake, it's almost
impossible not to re-examine the work."

When fans do go back to Townshend's catalog, what will
they find about his sexual predilections?

There's "Pictures of Lily," a 1967 song about a father
who gives his son pornographic pictures so he might
masturbate and sleep better. ("He said, 'Son now
here's some little something'/And stuck them on my
wall/And now my nights ain't quite so lonely/In fact
I, I don't feel bad at all.")

There's "I'm a Boy," a song about transvestism ("My
name is Bill, and I'm a head case/They practice making
up on my face/Yeah, I feel lucky if I get trousers to
wear/Spend evenings taking hairpins from my hair"),
and "Rough Boys," which Townshend has said is about
his homosexual experiences ("She's so easy to
blind/Not a word is spoken/Rough boys/Don't walk
away").

And of course there's "Tommy," the Who's epic rock
opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who, after
being victimized as a child, prevails to become a
messianic, rock-starlike figure.

The "Tommy" song that most directly addresses child
abuse, "Fiddle About" (in which the title character's
wicked Uncle Ernie has his way with the defenseless
boy), was actually written by John Entwistle, though
Who biographies state that Townshend commissioned the
late bassist to write the song, and he provided the
subject matter.

The disturbingly lighthearted song was creepy even
before last week's revelations, and it is all the more
so now for the way it highlights the imbalance of
power between the man and the boy: "Down with the
bedclothes/Up with the nightshirt! . . . You won't
shout as I fiddle about."

Ivy Helstein, a psychotherapist and author, says that
creating the character of Tommy was likely cathartic
for Townshend. "It's interesting that Tommy is deaf,
dumb and blind," she said, suggesting that the
handicaps may signify Townshend's own alleged abuse.

The notion of the artist seeking catharsis from his
own troubles is a defense that many of Townshend's
supporters are proffering.

"I believe Pete is innocent," Who singer Roger Daltrey
told the British tabloid the Sun.

The singer says he and the guitarist had spoken about
child porn as far back as two years ago, and that
"Pete was very angry about how easy it was to get hold
of child pornography on the Internet. I believe his
innocence will be proven. My gut instinct is that he
is not a pedophile, and I know him better than most.

"If he was a Gary Glitter, I'd tell you, and I'd say
he deserves everything he gets. Pete has perhaps been
a little naive the way he has gone about it, but I
believe his intentions are good."

As Daltrey indicates, child porn has been on
Townshend's mind for some time, and he has written
about the subject extensively on his Web site,
petetownshend.com . But if Townshend is, as he says,
an anti-porn crusader rather than an aficionado, what
are his credentials and why does he need to search out
these images to speak against them?

In the lengthy online essay (the full text is at
thesmokinggun.com), Townshend says his interest in the
easy availability of child pornography was piqued in
1997 when an actor he employed to appear in one of his
musicals was arrested in the U.K. for downloading
pedophilic images. "I was cautious of openly
condemning him," the star writes, especially after he
began to surf the Net and discovered how readily
available such images are.

He writes of encountering one especially horrifying
photo of a man raping a 2-year-old boy but says he
ignored his instinct to turn over the image to police.
And his conclusions about the availability of these
images are ambiguous.

"On the issue of child abuse, the climate in the
press, the police and in government in the U.K. at the
moment is one of a witch hunt," Townshend writes. "I
believe it is rather more a reaction to the 'freedoms'
that are now available to us all to enter into the
reality of a world that most of us would have to admit
has hitherto been kept secret. The world of which I
speak is that of the abusive pedophile. The window of
'freedom' of entry to that world is of course the
Internet. 

"There is hardly a man I know who uses computers who
will not admit to surfing casually sometimes to find
pornography. I have done it."

Townshend is expected to be questioned by police again
later this month. 

Until more details become public, skeptics will wonder
and continue to scrutinize his work for clues, while
defenders maintain that an enemy of child porn has
wrongly been tarred and feathered.

Rock critic and Who biographer Dave Marsh, a longtime
friend of Townshend, emphasized that the artist's
songs and articles about child porn "reflect not great
delight but great torment."

"Pete's been a great friend for more than 30 years,"
Marsh says. "But how we really became friends was I
was writing from the point of view of someone who had
been abused in a different way, who was a battered
child. His records helped save my life. And if people
are going to start interpreting his work in light of
various things, we ought to make sure that light
shines in all the places it ought to, not just in the
most scandalous places. This is not a guy who's about
hurting people."


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