In the early days ofthe Who,Pete Townshendgave little thought to a solo career.
And five years later, he teamed up with Faces bassist Ronnie Lane for the collaborative LPRough Mix.
Although here is a collection of solo songs, they could all have been Who songs in my opinion …
Pete Townshend looks back at his solo albums, which are being compiled for a new box set.Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Lets not fall into the trap that I kept songs back from The Who.
I never did that.
I just wrote songs.
But as always happens, the conversation veered into all sorts of other realms.
Why were you the last?Because I was writing the songs for thefuckin Who, thats why!
Thats a pretty reasonable explanation.
I dont suppose hell remember it quite that way, but thats what happened.
I dont know what he said about it in the past.
I havent tracked it, but I think he seemed quite willing to dig into those things.
Ive read that Ronnie Lane wanted to write songs with you.
We were close friends.
He used to come to my studio and we did a few things together.
I suppose I might be a bit precious about my studio time.
I really love being in the studio and I like being able to experiment.
I just dont think Im a very good collaborator.
I think my writing process has crept up on me since the beginning.
Im not 100 percent sure of what Im doing when I set out to write a song.
Sometimes it starts with a catchphrase, sometimes with a complete lyric or poem.
Sometimes it might be an essay idea.
Other times it might be some goofy sound that I produce on a synthesizer.
In the studio, we were very much guided by Kit Lambert as our producer.
And we didnt jam, for example, in the studio, as we did on the stage.
And they figured that it was really important for me to express myself as a solo artist.
I dont know that they were right, to be honest.
I think the reverse happened.
It was just overwork, and too much pressure.
You made four albums in three years.
TheEmpty Glassperiod was a really exciting period for me.
I look back at it with great affection.
I got a great offer from CBS, which I turned down.
I went with Doug [Morris] at Atco.
I was incredibly well-supported by them.
I found a great producer in Chris Thomas.
I had a good time making the record, but I think what suffered was my family.
That was a mistake.
I should just have said, Listen, I need more time.
I need to take things more slowly.
There was this sense that I was indulging myself.
Touring with the Who was no fun.
It wasnt a joy.
It wasnt a rock & roll, Led Zeppelin, shagging virgins exercise.
It came from the heart.
I knew that it would have its ups and downs.
And this was not something to be undertaken lightly.
I knew it was going to be tough because I wanted to do it properly.
And it wasnt a very good landscape in which to venture to do such a thing.
That was the weird anomaly lifestyle that I was living in.
I think Empty Glass, though, is a fantastic song….
The idea is that you set yourself challenges right at the moment that you need the most guidance.
I got guidance when I was really young.
I was 19 or 20 when I met Kit Lambert.
He was exactly the right kind of guy to help me.
He didnt treat me as a commodity.
He appreciated my talent.
He helped me as an editor, but he also helped me as an educator.
He helped me learn about life and about society and the way that the industry works.
He treated me with the most incredible respect.
That wasnt how the rock industry treated me.
And when you get that feeling, its a real buzz.
Nothing can stop you then.
I knew it was a hit song from the moment that I started it.
As I was performing it, I liked the way that it felt.
You said that it wasnt rock & roll enough.
I think it was Noel Gallagher who said it so well recently.
The audience doesnt know what it wants until it gets it.
They didnt know that they wanted the Beatles, they didnt know they wanted the Stones.
They didnt know that they wanted Bob Dylan.
And in a sense, thats what happens with music.
You dont know that you are going to love it until you get it.
Hes such a musicologist fan.
He just seems to love everything that there is out there.
To the extent that his very existence is an embrace of whats good about the music industry.
We are all fans.
We listen to music.
I think whats misconstrued is the fact that I was ever in the closet.
I had had a few gay experiences and just decided really that it wasnt for me.
I look back and I realized I really wanted to be gay, but for all the wrong reasons.
Not because of a love, a physical love for men, but because it was cool.
Because it was illegal.
Because it was dangerous.
And for all those reasons.
is not about being gay.
But Rough Boys is a piss-taker at Y.M.C.A.
The edge of it.
I had a photo in my mind of Clint Eastwood in a movie.
Just about a look.
Trying to describe a look in a poetic sense.
Slit Skirts is my favorite one from that record.
It starts with I was just thirty-four years old and I was still wandering in a haze.
Did you feel old at 34?I did.
I think everybody does.
I think its one of those transition periods.
You think 30 is going to be difficult, and I think it is.
But I think that the years leading up to 30 are terrible for people.
Because you expect a doorway to come down and it doesnt.
So you are on the way to being halfway through life.
The thing that I was going through at the time was punk.
That must be clear to anybody looking at the way that I operated.
I was pissed off about two things.
Its true.The Who was supposed to self-combust within six months.
Performing like fuckin monkeys, smashing guitars and swinging microphones and doing the Keith Moon routine.
And what happened with punk was that they took my original manifesto and put it in practice.
Im a fashion victim.
I grew up in a mod neighborhood and I had loads of friends.
But it was so brief.
Slit Skirts is about the New Romantic era.
So that sense of being embarrassed about what it is that one wants.
Chinese Eyeswas released just a few months beforeIts Hardand the Whos farewell tour.
There werent many singles, even Slit Skirts.
It kind of got buried.
A lot of people felt that what Id needed after Keith Moons death was a solo album career.
So I had a solo career, and it turned out to be not the fit.
It wasnt what I needed.
I was quite content writing for the Who.
What I needed was better time management.
Not two record deals on top of each other.
WhenChinese Eyeswas done, I didnt go into rehab.
I wanted to stop drinking and using drugs, and I did.
But I went into therapy for a few years.
And it was interpreted as me leaving the Who when we did the 82 tour.
It wasnt me that said, This is the last tour.
It was the Whos manager.
And he did it because it was a ka-ching moment.
We sold out an arena tour.
It wasnt a very smart thing to do.
I should have really protested, but I didnt.
If we want to get back together on a tour again, we fuckin will.
It just took a long time.
I had a peaceful few years.
That wasnt a bad thing.
But we should have been a part of that Post-Punk legacy act resurgences that those acts enjoyed?
Can you elaborate on that?The Who invented Stadium Rock.
We gave it away.
Our timing was terrible.
When we did Live Aid, we could barely fuckin play.
I never really appreciated what Queen was about, to be honest.
I liked ABBA, but I didnt really connect it with the lighthearted pop diversity of Queens catalog.
But with songs like Wont Get Fooled Again and Baba ORiley, I fuckin nailed it.
And I gave that instrument away.
But it would be wrong to say that I regret it, because I dont.
I have to look back and say, Well, what is, is.
We set it up, and then we walked away from it.
And of course, it wasnt just us.
What the shock was is that nobody had ever thought about doing it with anybody.
And we were able to do it.
But yeah, wed had a struggle making money.
And wed also been ripped off in a lot of ways, but thats another story.
You poured a lot of energy into your 1993 solo albumPsychoderelict.You even toured behind it.
Why do you think it didnt find a big audience?Well, because it was really weird.
I wanted to have my own little, crazy theater show.
At first it started as a radio play.
My old high school friend Barney got involved, and helped me turn it into a comedy.
As a comedy, it became deeply and almost likeKing Lear-pop in ironic.
It worked on stage really well.
But on the album, it just didnt work.
It was never ever meant to be a collection of songs.
It was meant to be a play.
Why did you stop making solo albums after that?I dont know that I did stop.
I continued to write music.
Nobody came and offered me a deal.
Do you think thats true?
Do you care?I think youre right.
I think they may not be, and no, I dont really care that much.
Its a vacuous world.
The Stones dont help themselves do they, really?
I think theyve made so many really interesting albums, which theyve in a sense, disowned.
I think the whole process of disowning albums when youre a mythological band is not a good move.
My favorite Stones album is stillAftermath.
Brian Jones was still alive and kicking and had ideas.
It felt to me that they were in an incredibly interesting art school creative space.
A bit hippy dumb, but it was interesting.
The Beatles just didnt last long enough.
And the same thing happened with the Beach Boys.
Why didnt you make anotherPet Sounds?
What happened, man?
What actually happened is I wentfuckin insaneis what happened!
Not that its got anything to do with guitar playing, but its where the myths begin and end.
They are always working to keep the flame going.
You seem less interested in that.I wonder though whether its about exploiting the brands.
You see this certainly with the ABBA avatar musical, whether theres something more to wring out of it.
And a couple of times recently Ive been asked why that is.
Because as one gets older, its harder to come up with new bright ideas.
Have you come across this new TV series calledAdolescence?
I keep hearing about it, but I havent watched it yet.My wife and I just watched it yesterday.
It has been produced and directed in single-shot camera episodes, four episodes.
Its just about a young boy that gets into trouble.
And the first incident at the police station, hes asked to be strip searched in his fathers presence.
And his father refuses it.
That story hasnt changed.
Whats changed is what we hang it on, where the conversation begins and ends.
What happens now is that we draw lines.
I didnt even know it was coming out until about four weeks ago.
I sold my solo deal material to Universal, and theyre just cashing in.
Theyre trying to recoup on their investment.
I bought a boat, theyre buying a solo deal.
The Who are playing the Teenage Cancer Trust events at the Royal Albert Hall later this month.
What will those shows be like?
Who will be in the band?Its going to be a stripped down band.
And we dont really know what were doing.
Were starting the rehearsal on Saturday.
Im hoping to keep it simple.
Ive got no idea what its going to be like.
And I think Rogers nervous as well.
Were both in our eighties, beyond our eighties, in Rogers case.
Im 80 in May.
And Ive just had a knee transplant, which it was nothing to do with being young or virile.
It was to do with having an accident years ago.
That kind of stuff gets harder as you get older.
So weve got a list of songs.
Were looking at them, and Im going, Which are the easy ones?
But its sold out.
I could go out and just play a fuckin kazoo.
Ive made the money for the charity.
I do think about it sometimes.
I wouldnt want to play old stuff.
So Im doing all kinds of interesting things, theatrical projects, art projects, book projects, working.
Ive done four record productions in the past couple of years.
I didan album with the Bookshop band.They write songs about books.
I produced an album with a young indie band calledthe Wild Things.
Im really active on music and doing stuff and trying to keep myself fueled up.
