Pete Townshend, guitarist, songwriter, leader of The Who, has been threatening to write his autobiography since the late 1960's. Out of all of the classic rock giants, one would expect that Townshend would write one of the better rock memoirs. He is one of the brightest and most interesting of that generation. He was even a book publisher during the 90's in London, so the guy knows writing.
Considering his complex ideas about music and art and most everything else, and his well deserved reputation for pretention, his book is actually quite down to earth and brutally honest, if not always completely self aware. For instance, I love how he spends much of the book detailing the decades long deterioration and final dissolution of his marriage. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Townshend knows he is one of the most self-absorbed, insular, obsessive compulsive workaholics in the history of the music. That is one reason The Who's music was so great. Even when at home, he talks of how he would disappear for weeks at a time in his home studio, never coming out or speaking to his family. He talks of his battle with alcohol and drugs. His many affairs that he had. Yet he seems genuinely perplexed as to why his marriage didn't last. I had to chuckle at times. Gee Pete, I don't know...His attitude was kind of, "well, she knew what she was signing up for." He does seem to be on good terms with his three children, though.
Again, his assessments of others and of himself can be brutally honest. He despises his grandmother who raised him for a time, accusing her of allowing perverted boyfriends to molest him and worse as a child. (All of this makes the Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin parts of Tommy resonate much deeper, I think). Of Mick Jagger he is unabashedly smitten ("the only man I ever really wanted to f***"), describing in quite erotic language hanging out with Jagger one evening while Jagger was wearing loose pajama pants. He of course turns his sharp critical eye on himself, being quite open about his shortcomings and issues. This should not be surprising to Who fans or fans of his solo work. "However Much I Booze" or "How Many Friends" from The Who's The Who By Numbers or all of his All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes revealed a painfully honest and open songwriter.
The heart of the book of course deals with the rise, flight and descent of The Who. He's generous with the stories and details, although as a Who fanatic who has read much about the band, there were not too many revelations for me there. It was great to hear it all from Pete's perspective, though.
No new stories of (Keith) Moon the Loon's antics that haven't been told before, except one really funny evening that showed how nuts he really was. Moon called the band and management together for a luxury dinner in a hotel ballroom. He enters wearing a fur coat and top hat and gives formal toasts, has the guests served steaks, lobster, caviar, expensive wines. He then announces his departure from The Who because he has accepted a role in the new Scorsese film. Townshend describes how he and the others are devastated and then very angry words are exchanged. It was all BS. Keith just had a hot Hollywood starlet wannabe with him that evening that he wanted to impress, and Scorsese was more impressive to her than rock stardom, so he concocted the whole evening to get laid.
It is clear he has affection for Moon (and his other bandmates as well, calling Roger Daltrey "the most important man in my life" and reproducing an intimate "letter" that he wrote to John Entwistle after Entwistle's death). But he also makes clear what I have always suspected. As legendary as Moon's antics are in rock lore and as brilliant as he was as a drummer, he had to have been incredibly frustrating to have to work with:
"While I made progress with my search for meaning, Keith was causing havoc with a birthday cake, a car, a swimming pool, a lamp and a young fan's bloody head. How amusing it has been to spend my life pretending it was amusing. In truth, this day was unpleasant for me, though it has been turned into something of an apocryphal joke by everyone involved.
Keith was determined to have a great birthday party, egged on by the Holiday Inn banner outside the hotel: 'Happy Twenty-First Keith Moon'. He was actually only twenty. By the time I reached the party room the cake was all over the floor, the walls and Keith's face. In the swimming pool a Lincoln Continental balanced precariously, half in and half out. Later I heard Keith had released its brake and it had rolled in. I was trying to get Keith back to his room (he was raging by that time) when a young man approached, asking for his autograph; Keith threw a lamp at him, hitting him on the head. Keith then managed to knock out his own teeth, and it was only because he was hidden away at the dentist that he wasn't arrested.
The Who were banned from Holiday Inns for life."
Although he talks a lot about his devotion to the teachings of Meher Baba, I still have no idea what Baba actually taught. Perhaps it is too complicated to capture in a rock memoir.
One other area that he addresses with candor is the child pornography charges from the early 2000s. His excuse at the time was that he was doing research to help stop its proliferation on the internet and to face his own past of being molested as a child. Coming from most anyone else that sounds like a load of horsesh*t. But from Pete, I buy it. He goes into a lot of detail on the case, presents a convincing sequence of events, and the charges were eventually dropped. I believe him.
Not surprisingly, once The Who peters out and after the first great years of his solo career are covered, it does drag a bit near the end. Lots of time is spent discussing Iron Man and Psychoderelict, his two least inspiring works. Perhaps he wants us to reassess them, but they are still terrible. I do like how he looks on his sobriety, "The secret to being a successful hellraiser, it seems, is to stop raising hell before hell razes you."
Bottom line is that this is a great read if you are a Who fan or fan of Townshend himself, but may not offer much to people who are not.
***1/2 out of *****
2 comments:
Very interesting.
Does he say anything about Bowie?
Yes. He talks of hanging out with him several times in the book. I seem to remember a story where Bowie essentially babysat one of his kids, taking the child to some event.
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