Pete interview at VH1

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Posted Thursday at:
http://www.vh1.com/artists/news/1454604/10012001/townshend_pete.jhtml

Pre-tour chat finds Who boss explaining post-War
passion, and celebrating the notion of working alone.
 
by Courtney Reimer

Pete Townshend - guitarist, songwriter, rock deity -
is at something of a crossroads. He spends this summer
touring with his old band, and has recently opened his
archive of demo and rarities for release under the
rubric Scoop. But the future is always on his mind,
and as VH1 recently found out, getting definitive
answers regarding the fractious band's creative plans
isn't exactly easy.

VH1: The Who have been around for nearly 40 years. Do
you think rock bands nowadays have the same passion as
you did back then?

Pete Townshend: Theres a lot of great stuff out there
like Alanis Morissette and Slipknot, and a lot of it
comes from a very passionate place. The ideology
behind rock n roll was simple. It was about the
bands reflecting whats going on in the street. Rap is
the only place where thats happening at the moment.
Unfortunately, what its reflecting is an extremely
unpleasant situation: poverty, crime, and difficult
times for parents bringing up their kids. On the other
hand, bands like Blink-182 reflect the lives of the
white middle class and the life of kids like my son,
who has a trampoline in the garden, good food, good
education, and a skateboard. He has everything that he
needs.

VH1: What was the passion, then, that the Who
reflected?

Townshend: The passion we expressed came from the
postwar years. We were brought up in this place where
everybody had been fighting wars for years, but we had
peace, food, and a roof over our head. So we didnt
know what we were supposed to do with ourselves.
Whats difficult today is carrying that same passion
into a different age. It feels very strange. I go out
there with my guitar and realize that Im still
playing a machine gun. Im still behaving like Im
putting up the flag in the trenches. But the war is
over, really!

VH1: Scooped is a collection of the best demos that
appeared on all three volumes of your Scoop series.
Was there any one song that had to be on there?

Townshend: Its my music, so Im crazy about all of
it. The song Im proudest of is called Never Ask Me.
But I didnt have much to do with the final list. What
Ive done for every Scoop collection is hand over the
production and editing to my friend Helen Wilkins. I
have in my archive about 2000 recordings and 1500 of
them are completely unheard by the general public. She
decides both what to pick and in what order its going
to be. I leave it to her.

VH1: So with 1500 recordings still waiting to be
released, will there be any more Scoop releases?

Townshend: Ive got a lot of music that I would like
to see released - and Im constantly producing it as
well, so its hard to keep up! At one point I decided
to give away a track a week on my Web site and it was
too slow, really! I need to give away a track a day.
Im not sure what Im going to do next. With the
Internet revolution, I was hoping that a Web site
would become the outlet for this specialist material.
But that hasnt worked out properly. People are
willing to download music from the Internet if its
free, but theyre not crazy about downloading music
from the Internet if they have to pay for it.

VH1: You play guitar on David Bowies new album
Heathen. How did that happen?

Townshend: I actually did it by email. He sent me some
stems and I sent him some stems back. You get a little
email with an attachment to it. Its a big file, like
maybe 30 megabytes. You load it into your computer and
out comes music. Then you add some music to it, but
send back only the part that you have recorded. I
visited him in the studio after we did the September
11 concert. I love his new stuff. Hes gone back to
his dangerous form. You expect Bowie to be surprising,
and suddenly hes surprising again.

VH1: Will you continue collaborating in that manner?
Maybe send him some stems to work on?

Townshend: No, I dont let people f*ck around with my
music. Particularly not people like him! [Laughs.] I
work on my own a hell of a lot. Im very solitary. Im
a bit like a novelist. Im very happy working on my
own. Some of the tracks on Scooped involved a huge
number of people. For instance, Football Fugue
involved a 90-piece orchestra. But most of the time
its me alone in a room and thats the way I like it.
I suppose if I was to work with anybody creatively, it
would be lovely to work with somebody like David,
because were friends and we always stimulate each
other. But it hasnt happened yet.

VH1: I know youre touring with Robert Plant. Im sure
everybody would love to hear a Robert Plant-Pete
Townshend collaboration.

Townshend: I wouldnt! [Laughs.] A Roger Daltrey-Pete
Townshend collaboration may not happen either. We
shall see. The next challenge for me is whether I can
get creative with these guys in the Who that I love so
much. To get creative with people like Robert Plant,
who I obviously respect and like very much, would be
the icing on the cake. But first things first.

VH1: Are you recording right now?

Townshend: Ive just finished writing a book. Ive
written a couple of songs while Ive been writing the
book but it has nothing to do with the Who. Were
hoping to go in to do demos and do some writing
together in the fall of this year.

VH1: When will you write songs for the new Who album,
then? While youre on the road?

Townshend: No. I dont plan to write any songs at all
if I can avoid it! I just want to keep an open mind. I
dont want to set myself up. I dont want to set Roger
up either!

VH1: When I asked Roger about whether you would record
together again as the Who, he said, Well, if I can
talk Pete into it. But dont hold your breath.

Townshend: This is just bullsh*t. Its not a question
of me being talked into anything. Im completely open.
Im up for anything. Im ready to go in the studio and
run the marathon, but I cant promise to finish. There
was a time when I had to be bullied into going back to
the Who, but thats not the case today. I have the
willingness to have a go at it, but Im not
optimistic. My fear in the past has always been that
it would be a further humiliation and Ive been
humiliated enough. I wrote two final albums for the
Who that critics, Who fans and even Roger slaughtered.
I put my best into them at the time, but looking back,
theyre not very good records.

VH1: So if you could have it your way, how would you
spend the rest of your musical career?

Townshend: I love the purity of working on my own, the
acuteness of the view. I dont necessarily write songs
about me. Its songs about what I see, what I feel,
and what I know. Thats very personal and its
something that Im happy to do on my own. One day I
hope to work on movies and sit down with other
creative people like Bowie or Roger or Robert Plant or
whomever, and share the creative process. But Im not
very good at it, because Ive never had to do it. I
have to learn how to do it. My girlfriend is a writer
and shes always trying to get me to co-write songs
with her. As soon as we start, I just get embarrassed.
What I'm hoping is that, with the next Who recording,
we just enjoy writing together and creating together
and having fun together. Out of that hopefully a
record will come. We shall see.


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com