Quotes from Pete Townshend

I'm only interested in rites of passage stories.

I don't view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It's a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator.

I have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion.

It's sad when people break up.

My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.

He is the king. If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble', I would have never picked up a guitar.

But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

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.

Man makes machines to man the machines that make the machines.

Beach is a place where a man can feel he's the only soul in the world that's real.

I'll spend my mornings at the sunshine café.

I see a boy with his mother's ambition, performing for love, trained in submission.

The day you open your mind to music, you're halfway to opening your mind to life.

Rock 'n' Roll might not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them

I smash guitars because I like them.

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

We've got to fool the fools, and plan the plans. We must rule the rules, got to stand the stands.

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.

Respect yourself. Try to remember that not everything in life can be perfect. You will make mistakes. That's inevitable. But you are not ugly. You will only be ugly when you behave in an ugly way.

Enjoy life. And be careful what you pray for - remember, you will get it all.

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 used to try and make up visually for what I couldn't play as a musician. I used to get into very incredible visual things where, in order just to make one chord more lethal, I'd make it a really lethal looking thing, whereas really it's just going to be picked normally.

I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.