Pete's childhood memories - from 1996 interview

[Ken in MD <seahawkman2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

SG: Would you describe Des McAnuff as an effective
dramatherapist in the way he meted out the
autobiographical elements in "Tommy"? [McAnuff
produced the stage version of Tommy at the La Jolla
Playhouse in summer 1992]

PT: I forced a lot of that on him. I had had this
bicycling accident [breaking his right wrist, in Sept.
1991]. I decided that I was going to use the
opportunity of this convalescence to go and talk to my
mother. And it was an astounding conversation.
Absolutely astounding. She told me a few things about
my childhood. It was not only astounding because they
were traumatic events but because they were things I'd
grown up not knowing had happened. And yet what was
astounding about them was realizing that everything
that I had done creatively related to two or three
incidents that happened to me when I was a child that
I'd forgotten. Everything, absolutely everything.
Certainly all of "Tommy". And it was a real bone of
contention when we came to argue the creative split
based on the sweat factor with the other members of
the Who. When I said it's autobiographical, you know,
they said: "No it's not, we all played a part in
writing the story". I was absolutely adamant: "No you
fucking didn't, this came out of my subconscious,
that's one place you can't have contributed to." 

source: Interview with Pete Townshend at Manchester
Arena, England, 12 December 1996. 
http://www.thewho.net/articles/townshen/pt_96.htm
By Stephen Gallagher (British Youth & Popular Culture
Editor, Ubu).  Dates from the Psychoderelict press
kit, online at: http://www.wdkeller.com/psychopk.htm
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com