Pete Townshend Quotes

Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.

All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.

Do you realize why is it I'm so driven to operate within the Establishment? It's vengeance. 'Hope I die before I get old' is something I still have to live with, but not for the reason many people think. I have to be very, very vigilant not to become one of those people I despised.

The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.

Since so much of this music bubbled up urgently from my subconsious mind, I'm left to interpret it much like anyone else.

We didn't need light & shade, irony or humor. An iconic Daltrey bellow could convey an extrodinary range of human emotion; withering sadness, self pity, loneliness, abandonment, spiritual desperation, the loss of childhood, as well as the more obvious rage & frustration, joy & triumph.

I heard in my own voice the tulmult of a young man playig a role, uneasily, repackaging black R&B music from America, relying on gimmicky outfits, and pretending to be wild & free when in reality he needed to be looked after by his mother.

Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties.

The music we play has to be tomorrow's, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.

Punk rock was the tsunami that threatened to drown us all in 1977.

In 1945 music had a serious purpose; to defy post war depression & revitalize the romantic & hopeful aspirations of an exhausted ppl.

Barriers were being torn down. Where Freddie Mercury was trying to keep his homosexuality from the front pages, Boy George was openly & outrageously gay.

Wiggy & I were drug buddies. There is no tighter compact for friendship. There is no greater potential for deceit.