\n<\/p>\n
As he entered a suite at the Carlyle hotel in Manhattan, Pete Townshend mentioned that an afternoon meeting had been canceled. \u201cSo,\u201d he added, \u201cwe have lots of time to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Townshend is one of rock\u2019s great singers, songwriters and guitarists, and he\u2019s also among music\u2019s pre-eminent talkers. Since the Who first took the stage 60 years ago, he has considered interviews to be an adjunct to his music, a parallel way for him to clarify or interrogate the ideas he pours into songs.<\/p>\n
In 1969, the Who released \u201cTommy,\u201d a rock opera written mostly by Townshend, although the bassist John Entwistle contributed the songs \u201cCousin Kevin\u201d and \u201cFiddle About,\u201d and the drummer Keith Moon suggested the premise of \u201cTommy\u2019s Holiday Camp.\u201d Townshend expected the double album to fade quickly, in the way of most records. Instead, it took root in pop culture, and in short succession was adapted by a ballet group in Montreal, the Seattle Opera and the London Symphony Orchestra. Then, most memorably, it was a delirious 1975 film directed by Ken Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The \u201cTommy\u201d hoopla had faded before it was adapted for Broadway in 1993, with a book by Townshend and the show\u2019s director, Des McAnuff. In a review in The New York Times, Frank Rich called it \u201cstunning\u201d<\/a> and \u201cthe authentic rock musical that has eluded Broadway for two generations.\u201d It ran for two years, and garnered Tony Awards for McAnuff\u2019s direction and Townshend\u2019s score.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Last year, the pair revived \u201cTommy\u201d in a reimagined version at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where it drew candescent reviews, and on March 28, it opens at the Nederlander Theater, with Ali Louis Bourzgui making his Broadway debut in the title role.<\/p>\n Townshend\u2019s plot revolves around Tommy Walker, who witnesses a murder when he is 4 and, in response to the trauma, turns into the \u201cdeaf, dumb and blind kid\u201d described in the show\u2019s most famous song, \u201cPinball Wizard.\u201d<\/a> Sexual abuse, narcissism, cults and celebrity are contemplated \u2014 all topics that connect the show to today. If anything, it\u2019s more pertinent now than it was in 1969.<\/p>\n \u201cPete created the blueprint for an extraordinary, universal story,\u201d McAnuff said in a phone interview. \u201cTommy is an antihero who rejects existence as we know it, and you can\u2019t go much further than that, in terms of being an antihero.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s enormous sophistication in the music, even though Pete was only 23,\u201d he added. \u201cHe even used repeating musical themes, which Lerner and Loewe and Stephen Sondheim also did.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At our interview earlier this month, Townshend, now 78, was dressed smartly in layers of muted colors, with a pocket square tucked into his blazer. He settled into an armchair with a cup of Yorkshire Gold tea, and for more than 90 minutes was, by turns, hilarious and troubled, tender and profane, candid and coy.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a great believer in conversation as part of the artistic process,\u201d he said. \u201cI talked my way through 20 years of the Who\u2019s career.\u201d These are edited excerpts from the conversation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When the Who released \u201cTommy\u201d in 1969, the record \u2014 and you \u2014 were described as \u201csick.\u201d Was that because the topics were taboo?<\/strong><\/p>\n They reacted almost as though I\u2019d picked that subject because it was controversial. I picked it because I wanted to explain the human condition with respect to its spiritual potential, which is that we\u2019re deaf, dumb and blind to our spiritual side. It was a metaphor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bullying, sexual abuse \u2014 these were topics that prevailed in my peer group after the war. In London, there were still buildings that were smashed by German bombs. Adults were very damaged by the war, and the damage led to damaged children.<\/p>\n In your <\/strong>2012 memoir, \u201cWho I Am,\u201d<\/a><\/strong> you wrote about being abused as a child. When you were writing \u201cTommy,\u201d did you have personal experience in mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was always fresh in my mind, but I was unaware it was a component of \u201cTommy.\u201d In 1993, on Broadway, I was doing 20 interviews a week. In one, I suddenly said, \u201cThis is my life story.\u201d That idea that \u201cTommy\u201d is a memoir in which I work out my childhood stuff \u2014 it probably is <\/em>and I should admit that. The abuse I suffered as a kid was at the hands of my grandmother, not my parents, though my parents were neglectful and careless.<\/p>\n My father was a professional musician, and my mother was a young, beautiful singer. She farmed me out to be breastfed by the wife of a trombone player in my dad\u2019s band.<\/p>\n I was a sickly child, and she sent me to the countryside to live with her mother, Denny, who had been dumped by a rich lover, and was sexually bereft. There were creepy men around all the time, and when I started school, I was bullied. I was bullied by [the Who singer] Roger Daltrey, and what\u2019s sick is that when he asked me to join his band, I did!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s a personal and generational story, but audiences continue to relate to it. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n I was shocked in 1993, and I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d say pleasantly shocked. The idea that \u201cTommy\u201d was locked in the postwar period was of no consequence to audiences. They were looking at the meat and potatoes of family life, and the way even the best parents can [expletive] things up, without overquoting [the poet Philip] Larkin<\/a>.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want it to feel as though I think \u201cTommy\u201d needs to be treated only seriously. It has lightheartedness and joy. It has the idea that whether you\u2019re an abused child or a healthy child, we prevail ultimately, by turning toward the light. That\u2019s simplistic but it\u2019s also powerful, particularly when set to music.<\/p>\n Has its relevance to audiences changed in 2024?<\/strong><\/p>\n Young people seem to be convinced they can look into their phones and get an answer. But I don\u2019t want to make presumptions about how audiences will perceive it. We\u2019re at the Nederlander, where \u201cRent\u201d ran for so long. I saw it and thought, This is going to be on for a week. <\/em>Sometimes I don\u2019t get the showbiz system.<\/p>\n Rock singing and Broadway singing are very different. How theatrical can the \u201cTommy\u201d cast get without altering the tone of the music?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I leave it to the experts. The only reason \u201cTommy\u201d was turned into a Broadway show is that I had a bike accident and smashed my wrist. The surgeon said, \u201cYou will never play the guitar again. And you will never masturbate again with your right hand.\u201d (Laughs) I was learning to write and play piano with my left hand when I got a call asking me to meet Des McAnuff.<\/p>\n The tradition of Broadway singing is its ebullience, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Which is the opposite of rock singing.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, but the function of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll is similar: You come, we\u2019ll make a lot of noise, and we\u2019ll all dance together over your troubles.<\/p>\n Is it true that you asked John Entwistle to write songs for Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin, two of Tommy\u2019s abusers, because you didn\u2019t think you could write so darkly?<\/strong><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know if I could be flip enough. John was one of my earliest friends. He recognized in me a musician, which nobody else did. My father wouldn\u2019t buy me a guitar. \u201cStick to drawing. You\u2019ll never make a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n John\u2019s father had abandoned him, and his stepfather was a brute of a man. I sensed he had the capacity to write these two songs. I said to him, \u201cI want sexual abuse in there, but try to keep it light.\u201d<\/p>\n John knew about my grandmother, because my parents brought this awful woman to live with us when I was a teenager. One day, John and I were playing music and she said, \u201cTurn off that awful sound.\u201d I picked up the amplifier and threw it at her.<\/p>\n There have been only two new Who albums since 1983, and your last solo album was in 1993. Do you want to be doing more new music?<\/strong><\/p>\n I do and I think I will. It feels to me like there\u2019s one thing the Who can do, and that\u2019s a final tour where we play every territory in the world and then crawl off to die. I don\u2019t get much of a buzz from performing with the Who. If I\u2019m really honest, I\u2019ve been touring for the money. My idea of an ordinary lifestyle is pretty elevated.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been immensely creative and productive throughout that period, but I haven\u2019t felt the need to put it out. And if I can make it personal, I don\u2019t care whether you like it or not. When \u201cWhite City\u201d came out [in 1985] and the sales were so slow, I thought, Screw this. <\/em>Nobody wanted me as I was \u2014 they wanted the old Pete.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n AC\/DC made 50 albums, but all their albums were the same. It wasn\u2019t the way the Who worked. We were an ideas band.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Did the reaction to \u201cWhite City,\u201d a solo album, make you feel like not releasing new songs?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve got about 500 titles I might release online, mostly unfinished stuff. We\u2019re not making Coca-Cola, where every can has to taste the same. And it\u2019s turned out, surprise, surprise, that rock \u2019n\u2019 roll is really good at dealing with the difficulties of aging. Watching Keith Richards onstage, trying to do what he used to do \u2014 it\u2019s disturbing, heart-rending, but also delightful.<\/p>\n When I was a kid, my dad\u2019s band supported Sarah Vaughan for two weeks. To me, she was really old and not sexy. Time shifts; I\u2019m now older than she was. In every rock documentary, there are bald men who look 100 years old, talking about doing loads of cocaine with David Bowie. What do young people think?<\/p>\n The Who isn\u2019t Daltrey and Townshend onstage at 80, pretending to be young. It\u2019s the four of us in 1964, when we were 18 or 19. If you want to see the Who myth, wait for the avatar show. It would be good!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Do you find comfort in being onstage with Roger?<\/strong><\/p>\n A few years ago, Des and I spoke about doing a one-man show like Bruce Springsteen did. We went to dinner, and I had a panic attack just thinking about it: A lot of Who fans come every night and eventually they\u2019d be repeating what you say to them, which happened to Bruce.<\/p>\n It\u2019s different when you\u2019re in a band. I used to watch Roger knock people out if he didn\u2019t like what they said. It feels like a gang. We did a show for fans at Christmas one year, and I said, \u201cYou\u2019re a bunch of [expletive].\u201d And they all went, \u201cYay, Pete!<\/em>\u201d They like me to hate them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To me, Tommy\u2019s response to trauma is both masochistic and sadistic. He\u2019s denying himself the pleasure of being in the world, and he\u2019s also torturing his mother.<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s worth doing. When I wrote \u201cTommy,\u201d I didn\u2019t know about my mother\u2019s errancy. Years later, I asked her to tell me why I went to live with my grandmother, and she did. Rather than hit her, which would have been appropriate, I felt gratitude, because I had answers at last.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019ve said that \u201cTommy\u201d celebrates \u201cthe value of suffering and the transformation of suffering into joy.\u201d Do you envy Tommy?<\/strong><\/p>\n Envy a creature I\u2019ve created? I don\u2019t think of Tommy as anything more than a coat hanger on which to hang a whole series of ideas. It\u2019s a smart quote, though. Thanks for giving it back to me.<\/p>\n What is the legacy of \u201cTommy\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s the idea that pop music can have a function beyond just getting through the day. I\u2019ve lumbered myself, in a sense, with the responsibility to honor \u201cTommy,\u201d which happened within the Who framework and grew out of the chaos of a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll life.<\/p>\n Stephen Sondheim came to see \u201cTommy\u201d on Broadway and said: \u201cIt\u2019s good. I\u2019m glad you\u2019re having fun. Prepare yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n I said, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d And he said, \u201cIt\u2019s hell.\u201d (Laughs)<\/p>\n Was he right?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, in a way. I had a musical called \u201cPsychoderelict,\u201d which I toured with in \u201993,<\/a> and it nearly killed me. I mean, literally. That year I also did a serious musical in London called \u201cThe Iron Man.\u201d It was an utter disaster. So yeah, I understood what he meant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n