Pete Townshend's Quotes

For a while I was perfectly happy not performing with 'The Who.' From 1982 to 1989 I felt 'The Who' did not exist. I let the band go, in my heart. However, Roger Daltrey had other ideas. He would not let go.

I don't really know any other musicians like me. I grew up backstage with my dad who played in a post-war dance band, so I always feel at home at a venue.

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

I only really started to go to plays and to be interested in drama 20 years ago when as an artist I was already well-rounded. I think I'm more disciplined today.

If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple.

It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

Some of our early work was two minutes twenty when it actually came out on vinyl, very, very, very short. Sometimes if you made a three-minute record they would make you do an edited version for radio, particularly in America.

The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

What the Who is all about is exactly that and it always has been. If it exists today for this concert, it's in response again to a function which is happening out there on the street.

What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.

What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.

Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.

When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment.

I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.