1999 Lifehouse interviews part 3

[Ken in MD <seahawkman2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Subject: PT BBC 'Hard Talk' i/v (part 1) 
Transcribed in Dec. 1999 by FionaP
 
I: But you said in an interview recently that you were
still dissatisfied as 
an artist - you said the predicament I find myself in
is that Im 
uncomfortable as an artist living in the world today.

P: I think - I think if youre not uncomfortable as an
artist, youre 
probably not an artist.

I: You become too complacent?

P: I think you do, yeh.

I: The story of Lifehouse is the story of a mans
search for his missing 
daughter but its - its much more than that - what is
it to you?

P: Well its really about the importance of
congregation.

I: People meeting?

P: Yeh people meeting, people showing up.  Its the
importance of - of - 
its a challenge, if you like, to people involved in
media today, in 
television, in the Internet, in satellite media, in
theatre...

I: Because you foresaw the Internet didnt you?

P: Yeh I did

I: The Grid as you put it.

P: I did - I thought it was inevitable.

I: But you thought it was harmful when you looked at
it...

P: Not exactly ...

I: .. that it was controlled by Government.

P: No not exactly I thought it would be harmful if it
became controlled by 
Government and the Internet, I think, unfortunately
needs to be controlled 
by Government.  I mean I think the Russian Mafia are
now - the - the 
Internet has now extended into Russia and the Russian
Mafia are, you know, 
mavericks and cowboys and renegades and dangerous and
I think, you know, 
theyre using the Internet for all kinds of of strange
purposes particularly 
in the area of hard pornography.  And I think - I
dont want my ten year old 
son to switch on a, you know, and put some naughty
word into a search engine 
and find that hes exposed to the evils of the Russian
Mafia.

I: And ...

P: .. and for me the true dumbing down that has
happened in the last ten 
years has been to do with an inability for us, as
artists and as people 
involved in media to deal with the specific audiences
that are out there.  
Very interesting for me because I think, you see,
being a pop artist in the 
60s I learned to deal with a very specific audience,
Im unafraid of that, 
you know, Ive been writing songs for an audience
which, you know, we made 
the papers, and we seemed to be quite big shots but
lets face it, you know, 
if Thriller by Michael Jackson sold 30 million
albums which sounds like a 
hell of a lot in the year of the World Cup before
last, the Worlds 
population was only 3 or 4 billion, you know, - 30
million is a drop in the 
ocean, the pop industry is tiny - absolutely tiny -
and insignificant 
globally.  So Ive written for that market and its
kind of  ...

I: You didnt think that 30 years ago.

P: .. its kind of what we call narrowcast - Oh yeh I
was very aware of it.  
I thought that I was an artist writing under
commission for a very specific 
group of people, not only that for a very specific age
group.

I: Music for you, Pete Townshend was in a way, a way
out of a traumatic 
childhood wasnt it?

P: (Pause) You know I ...

I: You didnt enjoy being young I think you said.

P: I dont know that I enjoyed being young, no, I - I
..

I: Your parents had a stormy relationship.

P: They had an exciting relationship and I think I had
an exciting life I 
mean what happened to me is ...

I: You were caught up in the middle of it.

P: What I had as a child was a glamorous beginning,
you know, up until the 
age of five I had a very glamorous life, my parents
were working in a dance 
band and it was fantastic, you know, Id be up there
with the saxophones and 
the crinoline and the perfume and indeed the knife
fights out in the 
ballrooms, it was very glamorous and the music was
fantastic post war music. 
  But then ..

I: Pretty raw wasnt it?

P: But then - yeh - but then I ended up having to go
to school, my parents 
had a - a problem with their marriage and I lived with
a grandmother for a 
couple of years, when I was still very small, before I
was seven, before I 
was fully formed um and mentally and probably
emotionally - and it was a 
horrible couple of years.  And as a result of that
when my parents got back 
together and I went back home I was happy for a while.
 But when I became an 
adolescent all of that ... stuff came to the surface. 
And because I became 
- I went to art school and started to look at ways to
- to use my inner 
psyche er and was helped to do that by the people that
taught me, when I 
then got into rock n roll which had this edge, this
potential for violence, 
this potential for brutal self exposition, I just
grabbed at it.  I grabbed 
at it.  And - and what happened was is that a whole
group of people around 
me had obviously been through very similar
experiences.  I now realise that 
my experience as a post-war child was by no means
unique, you know, by no 
means special - everybody had ...

I: It was unique in one way wasnt it - it was unique
in that it became 
central to what you were going to do in music to some
of the themes that you 
were going to bring out after The Who had formed - and
you didnt realise 
that at the time ...

P: No

I: .. did you - it was only years later that those
came to you.

P: Well I suppose when theres a continuum  you can
look back and see this 
boy in the middle of everything.

I: And Tommy is you isnt it in a certain sense?

P: Yeh.  Yeh. Yeh - you know, I - I realise that, you
know, where I was 
writing for a commission I was allowing myself to use
- I was being given 
permission to use myself as the central character.

I: You really couldnt get away from your childhood
and from some of the 
traumatic experiences.

P: No.

http://www.igtc.com/archives/thewho/1999/Dec/msg00209.html
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com