Pete interview in Goldmine

[Brian Cady]

http://tinyurl.com/ykuq6y

Goldmine Magazine has printed the first part of what is obviously a long new Townshend interview:

Garnering unanimous raves from Rolling Stone, Q and Mojo, Endless Wire is a splendid and frankly surprising return to form.

Based on Townshend’s Web novella in progress, “The Boy Who Heard Music,” Endless Wire revisits themes from Lifehouse and marks some of Townshend’s most focused writing in years. Like all of The Who’s most accomplished work, the album covers all the stylistic bases, deftly balancing the raging thunder and lightning rock of “Mike Post Theme” and “Mirror Door” alongside more laid-back fare like the folksy, Dylan-esque “The Man In A Purple Dress” and “Black Widow’s Eyes.” There’s even a nifty mini-opera, “Wire & Glass,” a juggernaut of muscular melodies, “Biff Bang Pow!” ‘60s guitar wizardry and razor-sharp songwriting resplendent with slashing proto-power pop (“Sound Round”), the driving assault of “Pick Up The Peace,” the ethereal fragility of “They Made My Dream Come True,” the infectious “We Got A Hit,” which sounds like an outtake from either The Who Sell Out or Tommy, and the future Who classic, “Mirror Door,” whose lyrics manage to name check Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Howlin’ Wolf, and Johann Sebastian Bach in the same song. 

Goldmine: How did your weblog novella, "The Boy Who Heard Music” inspire the creation of much of the material found on the new Who record, Endless Wire?

Pete Townshend: I came up with the title “The Boy Who Heard Music” way back in 1997 while on tour with Roger and John doing our presentations of Quadrophenia. It had a buzz to it. Everyone I shared it with liked the sound of it. In 2000 or thereabouts I started to write a loose radio play about an old rock guy, like Ray High from my solo piece Psychoderelict, meditating and starting to hear Ham Radio transmissions of some kind. This soon developed into the novella as it stands today that you can read at www.petetownshend.com. Last year, 2005, Roger and I had almost lost hope of doing any more Who work outside of charity shows. We pledged always to be friends, and to love each other and try to support each other, and possibly to try some musical things together if the opportunity ever came up. I was on vacation in August with my family, and Rachel Fuller, my partner, started a blog. Within a few weeks she had about 400 people in her life, encouraging her in her career. I, of course, had my Web site, but the chat room part of it had been shut down after a period of horrible flaming in the first year in 1999. I decided to publish “The Boy Who Heard Music” on a blog instead, and get the benefit of reader feedback.
 
The story is not chronological, so it can be a confusing and even irritating read, but a lot of people stuck with my serialized postings over a period of 25 weeks from September 2005 to February 2006. It is a story told from the point of view of Ray High, who is resting in some kind of home. He meditates and hears the voice of Gabriel, a musician he remembered mentoring. He builds up a picture of Gabriel’s past years, growing up, forming a band, and then trying to revive some of Ray’s own lost ideas. If you listen to Psychoderelict you will quickly see that Ray’s ideas are loosely based on some of my own in real life. So “The Boy Who Heard Music” becomes a second-generation shift away from the Who’s Lifehouse story of 1971, abandoned before it really got started.

A few weeks before the final posting on my blog, I remembered advice from a good friend who was now suffering from cancer. He told me to think about doing “The Boy Who Heard Music” as a mini-opera. I was a little taken aback, if not pompous about it. But his advice was good, and when I thought about it, I gave it a try. I came up with a bunch of lyrics very quickly and knew it would work really well in a Who album. It was on the basis of this that I committed to complete the CD, and tour behind it with the Who’s first world tour — I was that certain I had enough songs then to make a good record.

GM: Since 1982’s It’s Hard album, your songs have been earmarked for your solo records. With Endless Wire, you had to write once again for The Who. Discuss the challenges you faced writing for the band again.

PT: I never write for anyone but a kind of abstract audience in the sky. I can’t write to a performer’s brief, but I have a brief from the audience. I just write songs. If I have a solo album to make, I select what works and set the rest aside. I have always kept an eye open for material that might work for the Who — partly because even if I didn’t want to make a Who CD, Roger could use any song that would work for the Who in a solo project — as I suppose I could if I was prepared to assume a role.

GM: Back in the late ‘60s, you pioneered the concept of the mini-opera with “A Quick One.” On the band’s new CD, once again you embrace the form with “Wire & Glass.” What are the advantages of writing with this form, creating one- to two-minute song snippets?

PT: It’s fun to do, you get to cover ground quickly, you can keep the narrative thin so that the listener can be the star, not the singer. I love the form. When you read “The Boy Who Heard Music” and see how dense the ideas are, and how flimsy some of them are to the minds of those who want characters and plot, it is striking how well the simple lyrics of “Wire & Glass” gather up and elucidate the ideas in the longer novella.

GM: In the lyrics that frame “Wire & Glass”, it seems there’s a direct line from Lifehouse (reference of the “grid” like network discovery in “Endless Wire”) to Psychoderelict with the return of Ray High as the narrator. What is the link of that previous work which helps shape “Wire & Glass”.

PT: I have always focused on the idea that the connection between artist and audience is a distorted contract. Very few artists, and very few critics, understand how easy it is to get it wrong. 
An artist has a function, a simple one. Success often drives artists to believe they had a bigger role than perhaps they really did. The audience is always the star in my book. Lifehouse made the audience the star, and gave them the power to create music and entertainment uniquely through something very much like the Internet that I called the “Grid.” The problem for me was that I could anticipate the way the audience might become the tools of media barons —not entertainers or artists, but people like publishers, promoters, politicians etc. This is such a big idea for me that I come back to it again and again.

GM: Having written songs for more than 40 years, is it easier or more difficult today to pull the “rabbit out of the hat” and come up with a song that pleases you?

PT: I’ve always been able to do this, but only sometimes. For quite long periods I have felt blocked. It’s only later — sometimes I’ve used The Artists’ Way to help — I’ve unblocked myself and found that when I thought I was blocked I was actually still very creative and had lots of half-finished but wonderful songs. In 1995 when I last counted I had 1,400 works in progress that I still feel worth holding on to. Several of them have become songs on the new CD.

GM: For many writers, songs take on new meanings over time. Are there any songs of yours that you hear today which take on a deeper meaning for you; songs where you say, “Oh, that’s what I was writing about”?

PT: “Behind Blue Eyes” is a good example. This was not a song about me, or anyone in the Who. Rather, it was about one of the characters in Lifehouse called Brick, who betrayed the audience gathered for a concert and allowed the police to crash the doors. So I wrote a song about his shame. Later I discovered that the shame I was writing about was the shame of the Aryan nations who drove World War II. Not just the Germans who followed Hitler, but the anti-Semitic British, Irish, Polish, French and Russians (and even Americans) who let Hitler go too far before intervening. It was almost too late, of course.

GM: With Bob Dylan’s new CD, Modern Times, and recent releases by Neil Young, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones, rock’s 50- and 60-something crowd are creating records on par with their best work, disproving the notion that as musicians grow older, the quality of their work deteriorates. What are your feelings about this? How does one maintain a high standard of quality in their work as they grow older?

PT: So it seems. I’m not sure how this works. Elton and Bob Dylan have always been prolific. But it is only lately that they have written songs that seem to express an honest acceptance of their age. Same for me.

GM: Back in the mid- to late-60’s, The Who were competing against a new breed of musical outfits where instrumental virtuosity was at the forefront  — Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Jeff Beck Group. Rather than jumping into the fray and trying to compete with these dazzling guitar slingers, you pushed yourself further as a songwriter, coming up with Tommy and Lifehouse.

PT: I may have appeared to do that, but today I compete as a guitar player. It just took me a long time to catch up. I know I’m not there yet, but my playing is a lot better today. I was never intimidated by these guys; I admired them, but I knew they admired me too, and not just for my songwriting. I am a good player because I listen, I play the right notes. When I play solos I can get lost; that’s because I don’t trust the ‘zone’ enough. But I’m getting better.

GM: Since the early ‘60s you’ve constructed your own impeccably crafted demos. In 2006 how has the advent of multi-tracked demo recorders affected the scope of music and songwriters?

PT: I have no idea. I’ve always multi-tracked, in the beginning in mono from machine to machine. I have some little digital boxes that can record a load of tracks; one of them is no bigger than a pack of cigarettes. But if I had tried to use one in the days when I used to drink a lot I would have hurled a lot of them out of the window. I like to keep it simple when I am crafting a song. Even a computer can get in the way. How can you write a song on a computer that might beep to tell you there is an email coming in? Or that the software you are using could be updated right now? Jeez.

GM: Select a few songs that you wished you had written.

PT: “God Only Knows” by Brian Wilson. It is simple and elegant and was stunning when it first appeared; it still sounds perfect. “Eleanor Rigby” by Paul McCartney. I love that song, the melody, the words and the string quartet that, of course, Paul could have scored himself with modern software. “Lay Lady Lay” by Bob Dylan. When he opens his heart he is the most wonderfully romantic man — for many years it was the only place we saw Dylan’s vulnerability, when he wrote songs for or about the women in his life.

GM: You’ve championed Ray Davies as one of Britain’s most accomplished songwriters. What impresses you about Ray’s work? What makes him unique?

PT: He is unique because he linked Britain’s Music Hall tradition with pop. But he also broke other ground — using Indian drones on “See My Friends” for example. “Waterloo Sunset” is a triumph, a bleak song about a bleak subject and yet heartwarming. His work on Village Green Preservation Society shows how he can create characters from normal life, give them breath, and allow us to feel affection for them, and yet not stint on showing their faults. He is a generous spirit; I wish he could be as generous to himself as he is to the characters who inhabit and inspire his songs.

GM: Classic rock radio in America is limited by a tight playlist that will play a select number of Who songs and not delve much deeper. Did that affect the band adversely?

PT: It didn’t hurt us in the long run. I thought it might. What has happened is that those songs have become icons in their own right, and when we play them the audience brings their own massive energy to them. Classic rock radio seems to be music to drive to. Big selling recent albums like Dido and Norah Jones are albums to knit to, or do anything you like to. I don’t think there is much Who music that a young mother looking ahead to a busy and stressful day might put on her deck, or buy after hearing it on the radio while picking the kids up from school. Who music has a different function. Our music is for driving through the trouble. 

GM: I’d like to have you share your memories behind penning a few Who underrated tracks, songs that are equally worthy of reader’s attention. Let’s start with “Pure & Easy”.

PT: The pivotal song in Lifehouse. It is a song as much about what a song can do as it is a song. It’s about aspiration and vision, but also about the function of music and song. If this song had been on Who’s Next many more people would have understood the Lifehouse concept I think.

GM: “Tattoo”

PT: I wrote “Tattoo” in Las Vegas in 1967 while on tour with Herman’s Hermits. I had two small mono portable recorders — one was an old Nagra, one was a Wollensack I bought in Vegas. I suppose it was about what I saw going on around me — men who felt they had to rent a hooker to feel like a man. Maybe?

GM: “The Seeker”

PT: Written in a Florida swamp at the home of my friend Tom Wright. It just came out of the mist and the alligators.

GM: “How Many Friends”

PT: Going on stage once at the Fillmore in San Francisco I felt the hand of the boy behind me touching my butt. I looked back and saw someone I had come to like a lot, and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I said nothing to encourage or discourage him, but I steered clear of him from then on. But it stayed in my mind for a long time. When that happens as a man you sense a little of what it might be like to be a woman who has to tell a man she really likes that he can’t sleep with her. As a performer we feel the rules are set out by our fans. One by one we discover that they each have conditions we can never live up to. So we end up with a few, we can count on one hand, that takes us as we are. This song is about fans, not friends.

GM: Roger Daltrey sang the majority of lead vocals in The Who. What are the qualities he brings to your work when delivering your songs? Are there examples in the past and on the new record where with his phrasing, etc. he takes your songs in a new direction?

PT: He always takes songs in a new direction. And every time I first hear his interpretation I bridle. Then on second listen I understand. He knows what to do. I feel very lucky to have him sing my songs; he brings such power and focus that I myself feel a little guarded about.

GM: With his work in The Who and as a solo artist, John Entwistle proved to be quite an interesting and unique songwriter. From your perspective, what made him a great writer, and which songs of his hold up best for you?

PT: My absolute favorite is “Had Enough” from Who Are You. It was not only his humor that made him great, he also had a terrific understanding of regular composition. If you listen to “Cousin Kevin” from Tommy you can hear a perfect canonic fugue. It is also beautifully figured modally.

GM: In “God Speaks of Marty Robbins,” even God is in awe of the talents of this extraordinary artist. What’s your take on Marty Robbins, why is he important to the fabric of music?

PT: No, God is not in awe of Marty; he imagines him. Marty is no more or less important than any other singer God has imagined. I just like him, and always have, and love the sound of his name.

GM: In 2006, do songwriters still have the power to enact change in societal, political and cultural realms?

PT: Only if the audience wishes us to.

GM: While he wasn’t a songwriter, albeit in may cases he did reinvent other’s songs, in recent times you’ve written about Elvis Presley — “Real Good Looking Boy,” which even contains lines from “Can’t Help Falling In Love,” — and he’s name checked in “Mirror Door.” Stripping away the myth, what’s your take on the legacy of Presley as a musical force and how did he change music?

PT: He is not as important to me as some other late ‘50s artists, but Elvis was the first truly beautiful man, rather than rugged handsome man, that young men like me, and Roger, felt safe to adore. Not sure how that happened. Maybe it was because his early music was so blues based. His legacy is muddled. We have to focus on early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer. He flew on our adoration for the last 10 years of his life and he is probably still flying on it now. 

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

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