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All the news from Pete
I don't know whether you've heard this because I haven't received
any of my mail since Friday evening, but this Pete article from Virety
should answer a lot of questions. However, what is he doing in
Detroit?
FEATURE: Townshend Becomes Creative Wizard
By Gary Graff
DETROIT (Reuters) - In Pete Townshend's life these days,
just one thing is certain.
"What I'm not gonna do is tour with The Who," says the
guitarist-singer-composer-rock icon, referring to the band he
formed in 1964 in London and broke up in 1982. "That leaves me
with a bunch of other options I can get involved in."
And Townshend's is a formidable bunch of musical, theatrical
and cinematic projects that are in various phases of fruition.
He just finished a series of solo concerts to promote a new
best-of album,
"Coolwalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking" -- titled
from a lyric in his song "Misunderstood."
He moves from that into a presentation of The Who's 1973
rock opera "Quadrophenia," which will be staged June 29 in
London's Hyde Park. It's not quite a Who reunion, Townshend
cautions; the band's Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle will also
be involved, but they'll be joined by a group of guests who
Townshend is keeping secret for now.
Meanwhile, Townshend says he may not even play guitar during
the show, though he does expect to sing a couple of songs. And
he dangles the possibility of also staging "Quadrophenia" in
the United States this year. After that, he seems to have a full
plate of ideas in development, including:
-- A full-blown theatrical production of "Quadrophenia,"
which is in its fourth re-write;
-- A film version of his 1989 adaptation of Ted Hughes'
fable "The Iron Man," which he's working on with Warner Bros.;
-- A fleshed-out treatment of "Psychoderelict," his 1993
album about an aging rock star, which may be staged at Britain's
Edinburgh festival during the summer;
-- An autobiography that links his life with his father's,
who played in jazz and big bands in England;
-- And a resurrection of "Lifehouse," a "millennium,
apocalyptic, virtual reality story" that The Who was working on
after "Tommy." Some of the songs turned up on the classic
album "Who's Next."
Townshend says the New York City Opera has expressed
interest in helping him develop that project.
"Lately, most things I'm doing seem rooted in the past,"
Townshend, 51, says. "Even things that still feel new to me,
like 'Psychoderelict'... This is something that's three years
old."
There's a higher purpose to this spate of activity, however.
In 1965, Townshend hung himself with the lyrical albatross of
"Hope I die before I get old" from The Who's hit "My
Generation." Now he's earnestly investigating a way to craft
credible, rock-oriented projects after he's, well, gotten old --
at least by rock 'n' roll standards.
"I just think it's because rock 'n' roll is, for me, an
artistic process, though it's not seen to be that way by
everybody who works in it or by part of he media that surrounds
it," explains Townshend, who lives in London with his wife,
Karen.
"I think an artist has to constantly re-evaluate and
redefine, not himself, but what is his commission. I want to
know what my commission is. "I don't want to be part of this
boomer thing ... the idea that I can't miss just because I'm
surrounded by so many old (people) like me who are going to go
out and buy whatever I put out.
I'm looking for what happens next in the same creative
continuum, rather than this theory of what happens when you grow
out of listening to your favorite college band...
"I feel a kind of duty to be able to accept that I am in an
extraordinary place at the moment, and I have to respond to that
-- not just what the business around me offers but also to find
out whether or not the people I write for, the people we're
trying to entertain, what they feel and how important it is for
them to feel they can go to see a play or hear a bunch of songs
or see a movie which has themes that relate deeply to their own
experience and are not just about universal issues."
This is something Townshend began pursuing when he started
writing songs for The Who. There's a reason why Pearl Jam's
Eddie Vedder was hanging around Townshend's recent appearances;
The Who's songs were rock's original teen angst -- reflections
of confusion, alienation, frustration and just plain awkwardness
-- that indelibly touched everything that's known as modern rock
today. The themes may be broad, but Townshend says they were
designed to touch listeners in a very specific way.
"In rock 'n' roll, you rely on people to put themselves in
the picture," he says. "You have to put yourself on the stage,
throw yourself into it. Then it works -- brilliantly. The
ability of rock to be particular is so extraordinary and makes
it so difficult to make it happen in other mediums...that rely
on characters and stories. Occasionally it happens; I suppose
I'm out there to see what happens when I do whatever it is that
I do."
Townshend has already done that successfully. In 1992, he
and director Des McAnuff adapted "Tommy" into a Tony
Award-winning play that's wowed audiences all over the world
with its combination of Broadway and rock sensibilities.
Townshend says he learned quite a bit from that endeavor -- and
not just on the creative end.
"I can get anything I want done if I go straight to the
source," he says. "We're getting 'Quadrophenia' done because
we went straight to Mastercard -- cut out all the people
in-between -- got $400,000 and put the thing up.
"It's a strange place to be to realize that...all I have to
do is stroll into a room with a few old guys and say 'I fancy
doing 'Quadrophenia' as a dramatic work' and they say 'Hey,
we'll give you money.' That may sound cynical, but the fact is I
can do it, and I trust myself to do it well."
Reuters/Variety