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Townshend and poets



No question that there are links between the Romantic era and culture in the
60's, although the Beat poets of the 50's are the more immediate influence:
it moves from Blake to Rimbaud to Dostoyevsky to Ginsberg/Kerouac to Dylan
to Lennon to Townshend and then to Morrison, Jimi and the rest. But please
note that T.S. Eliot was NOT a romantic or neo-romantic. Let me put it this
way: he's the type of poet who couldn't WAIT to get old. In effect, he was a
classisist, although he wrote in a modern way. Oddly enough, the Townshend
of the 90's appears closer in temper to the resigned sophistication of an
Eliot than, say, to anyone in  the Romantic tradition. ("Just a little is
enough..."). In the recent Q interview, PT reminded the interviewer of
nothing so much as an English country vicar... But the 60's PT was a
different story.  BTW, a writer of the 60's who wrote almost exactly like PT
played was (Englishman) Alan Sillitoe: read Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning, or the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, whose language just
seethes and coils and rages, just like PT's guitar of that era. This anger,
or desperation, which PT sensed in the youth culture around him (and
Sillitoe in working-class culture) was brought out effectively in the filmed
Quad. Unfortunately for us fans of the Who's heavy metal era, by the time of
that film PT had lost interest in guitar driven rock, nor has he regained it
since...Gary M.