“I’M 75… SHOULDN’T I BE SLOWING DOWN ?”
LATELY, Pete Townshend has been plotting. It is, he says, one of the few positive side-effects of the national lockdown – the advent of which came as something of a relief after a splurge of activity that sapped his energy. “At the end of 2019, I put out my novel, The Age Of Anxiety, and did all the PR for Who,” he explains, referring to The Who’s first studio album in 13 years. “Roger had undergone vocal surgery and been told he couldn’t speak, so he wasn’t able to help me with promoting it. I was pretty shattered by the end of all that. Then the UK tour, which was supposed to start last March, was cancelled. And another tour in America afterwards. So I was glad that I didn’t have to go on the road. I was so tired, I thought I probably wouldn’t do that great a job.”
Instead, Townshend and his wife, musician Rachel Fuller, hunkered down at their home on the Wiltshire border. It gave him the opportunity to recharge – spending time writing, walking the dogs and, when the mood struck, playing around with ideas in a converted barn that now serves as a home studio.
“HOPEFULLY THERE’LL BE A DELUGE OF STUFF LATER THIS YEAR”
“I went in there and did various bits of work, some for my own projects and a couple that we’re returning to, maybe looking at doing some more Who recording,” he says. “Then, slowly but surely, I ran out of joy. Covid has been fucking shit out there for so many people who are struggling to get by. I’m grateful that I don’t have those kinds of problems, but it’s been depressing. It has got to me a few times. But I’m OK at the moment. Roger’s not having a good time though. He’s climbing the walls!”
With The Who dates since rescheduled, Townshend has been slowly gearing up for a productive 2021. Aside from continuing work on new Who songs and The Age Of Anxiety – the novel is the first part of a multimedia project involving an opera and art installation – he reveals that his most ambitious endeavour, 1971’s aborted Lifehouse, is back on the agenda in new and intriguing ways. “Hopefully there’ll be a deluge of wonderful stuff later in the year,” he reveals. “We aren’t going to disappear.”
But right now the most pressing matter is a Super Deluxe Edition of 1967’s The Who Sell Out, the pop-art masterpiece that established The Who at the forefront of conceptual rock – forged from satire, psychedelia and pirate radio, complete with faux commercials. Crucially, it’s the moment when Townshend’s songwriting truly began to soar, transitioning from character studies to something more cosmically inclined.
The five-disc set comes stuffed with alternate takes and curios, though most fascinating of all is the inclusion of a batch of previously unheard Townshend demos, recorded at his home studio in London back in the day. It’s a glorious snapshot in time. “There was so much going on,” he reflects. “The world was changing incredibly quickly.”
“I’M AMAZED WHAT I ACHIEVED IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE WHO”
I cash in on my past! I live off it. If I
