Quotes from Pete Townshend

Keith Moon, God rest his soul, once drove his car through the glass doors of a hotel, driving all the way up to the reception desk, got out and asked for the key to his room.

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

Don't cry Don't raise your eye Its only teenage wasteland.

Can't pretend that growin' older never hurts.

Stars are attributed w/ intelligence they don't have, beauty they haven't worked for, loyaly & love they are incapable of reciprocating, and strength they do not possess. They are treated like a beautiful vase of cut flowers. When wilted, simply replaced w/ new blooms.

Like so many addicts, I'd thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around

Announcer - "And where are you from Pete?" Pete Townshend - "London, I'm from London." Announcer - "London where, exactly?" Pete - "London, England

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed meeting fans face to face. They're less scary when they aren't going nuts at a Who show. But then, so am I.

I am growing old of course, but I am still in the early stages of disintegration, and regarded as just about cool enough by some fashionable young ppl to be permitted to think aloud.

I wrote to my son. 'Be a pessimist,' I advised Joseph on his first birthday on 21 November. 'It is the safest, most pragmatic way to be. Being an optimist may enrich the lives of others (with good cheer and smiling), but it leads you unaware to danger.

His broken heart was unfeeling, like shattered glass in an acid bath.

In Tacoma, Washington, I speared myself on my guitar's whammy bar – it went right through my hand. I went into shock,

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

Rumors went round that I might be gay. In some ways, I was happy w/ this. Larry Rivers proved to me that a gay man could be wild, attractive, and courageous; in any case one's sexuality was becoming less of an issue every day. One of the great things about the British Mod movement was that being macho was no longer the only measure of manhood.

Roger Daltrey had been expelled for smoking, but was still impudently showing up on campus to visit his various cronies. I'd first met him after he won a playground fight with a Chinese boy. I thought his tactics were dirty and when I shouted as much, he came over & forced me to retract.

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.

When you're part of a gang, you soon find the parts of you that don't fit. These apparent defects can become assets; they're the things about you that make you interesting & useful.

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.