The Who's Pete Townshend Tells All: ‘I'm 80, Why Shouldn't I Revel In It?’

You have tinnitus. How do you look at your own health?

I think I’m on the f---ing mountain top! You know, I just feel supreme. My brain is as sharp as a razor. I’m very, very creative. I’m not good with money, but I’m good at doing business deals. I am healthy, and I think I probably have another five years in show business. I’m not quite sure doing what. I'm very [good at] producing shows, producing artists, working with artists.

Last year, you felt suicidal. Did you get therapy?

I have a friend who’s a therapist who works in recovery circles. I would wake up, say, at 9 needing to have a wee, and just put my head back on the pillow. And feel if I pulled the coverlet over my head and tried to sleep again, I would be okay. But as soon as I faced the idea of getting up, I would feel a tremendous sense of dread and sadness and frustration and, I suppose, emptiness. I used a metaphor of a gun under the pillow. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so flippant. It certainly felt very, very real to me. But anyway, I’m good. As soon as I forced myself to get out, have a cup of tea, a couple of sugary biscuits, get on with my day, I’m fine. It was just that sleep is not doing what it’s supposed to do.

You’re the most critically self-analytical rock star I’ve interviewed, but a rock star is simply who you are, right?

A rock star is something I didn’t really want to happen. I was 16 in art school when the first song became a hit [“I Can’t Explain,” 1965]. It was bigger and better than the art stuff that I was a student for. So, I ended up as a rock star — and I think I’m not really good at it. [Laughs].

Is 1973’s Quadrophenia, about fighting Mods and Rockers in mid-1960s England, your favorite Who album?

Yeah. I had the most clear-cut control of it. There were no solid songs by John Entwistle. I didn’t have to accommodate his wonderful, but eccentric, style of writing. I did all the demos. I didn’t have to deal with a record producer always looking at his watch. I was working with synthesizers then, and I’d become very skilled.

And Quadrophenia’s story has transformative power, the idea of young men looking ahead and at their situation. There are lots of questions about masculinity. It’s a heart-searching piece, especially to young kids having a bad day and looking for answers and actually not finding them.

The album was recently made into Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet in London. Will Americans get to see it too?

My wife [Rachel Fuller, 52] created an orchestral score for the ballet in London. She’s been so faithful to it. She spoke to the mood, the atmosphere and the harmonic structure. She’s made it absolutely wonderful. Hopefully, we’re gonna bring it to New York.

Why was (Ringo Starr's son) Zak Starkey fired from the band?

One of the difficulties Roger had was [Zak] jumped straight into Instagram and started to mouth off and defend his position in a cheeky, chatty manner, which belies the seriousness of what actually happened. Roger had asked us to rehearse “The Song Is Over” because that’s what we were calling the tour. We shortened it to three-and-a-half minutes. And about halfway through [playing it live at the Royal Albert Hall in March], it appeared that Roger got completely lost. He stopped, he complained, spoke to his own sound engineer, and started to rage. It looked like he was raging at Zak, but that’s not the case. It became a story among fans, and it looked like Roger made a mistake, but something technical went wrong. [Zak’s] handling of it, was, I suppose, light-hearted, but you know Roger.

In 1985, you were bitter about The Who, and told me even great songs like “Behind Blue Eyes” were “just old hat.” Would you change your take on that today?

Now I might, but in the ‘80s, I was struggling to write songs for The Who, to manage a solo career, and I got into trouble. I had been juggling my career, my personal family life, to provide enough energy to tour, playing stadiums. And it was very, very hard work, and it was hard to write songs of the quality of “Behind Blue Eyes.”

When we played songs from Tommy, we would end with “See me, feel me, touch me” and then “listening to you, I get the music ...” And every time we played it, the audience would get to their feet, would cheer. And if that didn’t close the show, we’d play “My Generation,” and I’d smash my guitar. We were performing phenomenally. So, try to live up to that state of work!

What’s ahead for you?

I want to continue to be creative. I’ve got songs in all kinds of development, 140 tracks ready to go. On The Age of Anxiety, [based on his 2019 first novel], I’ve got 26 songs. It’s not not autobiographical, but the scope of my own mental journey through addiction and recovery has led me to a place where I feel that I can write a character, a genuine, realistic character — youngish, who, rather than be depressed, has an acuity, a kind of instant, psychic feeling, and he decides that he wants to really dig in to make his audience as happy as they possibly can be. He’s a harmonica player in a small club with a band, and he’s very, very popular. He’s a good-looking guy, and he starts to sense the anxiety of the people in his audience, particularly the young women who are older, not teenagers, they’re young mums who are escaping something. They’re having their nights out together, having a few drinks and laughing. This guy, he starts to hear what they’re feeling. As artists, as musicians, as authors, as painters, we hope to provide some kind of bridge for people who are anxious, who feel alone, who perhaps don’t experience that congregational joy that people feel when they go to a big show, or get together with somebody and have dinner or whatever.

With The Age of Anxiety, I am hoping to start a conversation. I’m hoping that people will talk about depression, but also about the nature of the artist and what artists are going through, and how, for example, some have to be very selfish, very self-obsessed or go through periods of that.

The crux of the story is that he has to retire, and he sells a song to a car company and manages to live off the money for a while. So he starts to talk to an old super rock star from ages past who has gone mad and is a painter. He’s described as an outsider artist. And so, I have conversations in the novel about the function of art, and the function of the musician, whether it’s in a nightclub or a big arena. I found it a cathartic thing to write. Everybody I’ve shared it with has said that it starts a conversation.

How about future performances?

I plan to experiment with some one-man shows. Roger and I certainly [will] work together for charity and possibly for special projects. Together we represent all aspects of The Who legacy. You know, I’m the songwriter and creator, but Roger’s been the driving force, meaning keeping The Who band and his brand on track. Even with his solo work, we’ll continue to work together, even if we rarely socialize.