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1999 Lifehouse interviews part 2
Subject: PT Radio 4 i/v
Transcribed in Dec. 1999 by FionaP
Interviewer: The central theme of Lifehouse is of the
need for human
interaction and community - whatever the technological
advances in
communication. When he came to the Front Row studio,
I asked Pete Townshend
whether the play was conceived in response to the
escalating size of the
audiences The Who were playing to in the late 60s.
P: Rock and roll had been a pub and club thing that
got big. I felt the
growth that was happening to The Who in - in the late
60s and early 70s
indicated that rock n roll was going to grow and
become out of control and
that the people that would suffer would be the artists
not the audience. So
then the art would .. become disconnected with the
audience and then the
very essence of rock which was that rock which was
that rock should reflect
its audience - er would become broken.
..
P: The function of the music that happened before, the
pop music of my
parents generation, was to soothe ...
I: To balm.
P:.. Yeh - after a terrible time.
I: mmm
P: .. to bring romance back into life. Our music had
a function, and it was
not to shake people up or to scare people or to - or
to frighten people. It
was simply to help us to move from adolescence to
adulthood, that was all it
was about. It was to provide a self-contained therapy
which had never been
necessary for our parents, theyd never had to do what
we had to do - we had
to take care of ourselves from adolescence to
adulthood which prior to our
generation had been facilitated by the mechanics of
society - by the
military, by the academic, by the working class, the
industrial - post
industrial revolution machinery - we were free of all
that. We had to look
after ourselves and our popular culture reflected
that. So when I wrote
songs - and I - I mainly, as you know, dealt with the
blokes (Laughs) um..
http://www.igtc.com/archives/thewho/1999/Dec/msg00208.html
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