Pete Townshend Pure and Easy

I contribute essays to a blog/mag on spirituality in pop culture. I wrote one on John Lennon a few years back and posted it here so I thought I might repeat the process…

When I was around 20, I came across the album ‘Scoop’ by Pete Townshend. ‘Scoop’ was an album of ‘demos’; written sometimes to show others; sometimes just to road test songs. But, often, writers have found that the demo expresses something immediate, something of more substance than the product that is polished and released to be consumed.

In those times, prior to the immediate access to the songs that digital platforms now provide, I needed to endure an impatient bus ride home and then upon arrival at home hope that both the record player and the room that housed the record player were available for my use. I would pass the time of the bus ride looking at the back of the album, reading the notes, looking at the lyrics, anticipating what was to come when finally, finally, the chance to play the music would present itself. The key remarks that stand out that he had made for the album are that he continued to make over forty pieces of music without lyrics. He said that “Making demos is where I find peace and sometimes even a feeling of prayer. Right now words are still something I am newly grappling with on a day to day basis, trying hard not to let too much of myself get in the way.” I had no idea what he was talking about and probably attributed his remarks about prayer to an attempt to spiritualise what was a commercial endeavour. I am now sure that it was one of my first exposures to the meeting place of creativity, spirituality and the call out of the false self.

At the time, Townshend was still a member of The Who (he might have just made the first of his attempts to leave the band) and The Who, of course, belonged to the destructive aspects of rock culture which like most movements started by the young, began with an opposition to the dominant culture but would soon find itself subsumed by that same consumerist culture. Townshend, as a young man instinctively knew this, and this oppositional outlook produced his first clutch of famous songs: I Can’t Explain; Substitute; Anyway Anyhow Anywhere; the hilariously daring Pictures of Lily (“make my life so wonderful”) ; and, most notably, My Generation with its unforgettable hook line which functions perhaps as the most significant contribution that Townshend made to 20th century writing . Fascinatingly, though I Can’t Explain completely resonates with the awkward relationship of speech and thought (“I’m feelin good now yeah but”), Townshend turned out to be a loquacious talker, his interviews a completely new thing in the emerging industry of popular music journalism as the old questions of celebrity stardom ( ‘what’s your favourite colour?’) gave way to an interest in pop music as an expression of consciousness. It wasn’t uncommon for Townshend and his interlocuter to grapple for hours about the significance of rock music as a form and its impact on the culture. It was a repeat of the 17th-19th century arguments about the role of poetry and, in particular, William Wordsworth and later Matthew Arnold’s claim that poetry could transform man and society .

Townshend was after something but he didn’t quite know what it was. Like all artists and everybody who takes their life work seriously, he continued to stretch and stretch, reaching always for a concept that was beyond a song, beyond chords and beyond words – “once there was a note pure and easy; playing so free like a breath flickering by” he sings over an arpeggiated guitar part that reinforces the idea. He communicated this idea through Tommy – the deaf dumb and blind boy who could “sure play a mean pin ball.” Tommy could, however, speak and speak he did over a double album that taps into the myth of original sin, atonement and redemption. Tommy brought Townshend fame, fortune, a career and a millstone. His masterpiece writ, what was there left for him to do? He grappled with his need to keep writing and recording and then touring with The Who but the lifestyle took a toll measured most tellingly by the early death of Keith Moon. In his autobiography, Townshend goes over (and over) how close he came on many occasions to losing his life to the excess of a life lived in front of screaming fans but not knowing what to do once he had to put the guitar down. To his surprise, he was able to follow Tommy with another anthem that has taken its place in the pantheon of ‘rock classics: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” a song that so resonated with the time that it has never been forgotten. Its endless use in films and commercials has seemed to fulfil the song’s purpose rather than deny it. “Meet the new boss; same as the old boss” is Townshend’s other contribution to late modernity’s bitter self-loathing.

The Who were a great rock band whose height endured for longer than the standard three year cycle of emergence, discovery and burn out. But by his mid-20s, Townshend was looking to ‘go solo’. With his characteristic punning irony in place, he released “Who Came First” as his first solo album and it was dedicated to the teachings of Maher Baba, a 20th century messiah whose passing had caught Townshend’s attention in 1967. Baba’s teaching around silence, love and work connected completely with Townshend as Baba was able to crystallise his own thinking and had that ecstatic experience of discovering ideas that he already had sensed and awkwardly framed his own. Baba had claimed not to have spoken for forty years since he had already spoken the words that he needed to say. Townshend’s own writing then broke through to explorations of being that were mostly confined to his solo albums. His judgement seemed to be that he wrote a certain type of song for The Who and certain songs for his own releases. In time honoured way, this put a strain on his relationship with the other members of the band who felt that he was withholding better material for his own albums. This, in some senses, now seems undoubtedly true, since with the release of Empty Glass Townshend synthesized his spiritual yearning with pull of eros and the visceral release of rock music. Obviously, at some level, Townshend did not want to share these personal songs with the band and did not want to argue with Roger Daltrey about how to sing them. In yet another irony, Townshend had a sizable hit single with “Let My Love Open the Door”.

Despite all this, as with everybody the gap between searching for truth (self-acceptance, compassion, faithfulness) and day to day living eluded Townshend as he found himself increasingly alcohol and drug dependent which played havoc with his judgement. Prone to fits of rage, he increasingly despaired of finding any peace. This was paradoxically in keeping with what he found to be true of Meher Baba’s teachings: they didn’t solve his problems. He found himself at the precipice of either ignoring the teachings which he found to be true and the only way forward or ignoring them; rejecting them which was to move into the abyss of addiction to fame and substance abuse. Townshend had discovered one of the most meaningful definitions of reality – finding out that you are wrong. In a long piece about Baba, Townsend wrote that problems were not solved but brought into sharper focus; in “some ways it made it worse” because there was no denying their power.
Power, of course, is the predominant issue for anybody as they move in the world. Townshend found his relationships with his band mates / work partners not improving as they also moved further down into the false but inevitable ego. By the early 1980’s, Keith Moon had died at 31 in 1978, Roger Daltry and John Entwistle were both in a struggle for recognition that saw Townshend as a kind of obstacle while the vicissitudes of pop culture now declared that at the age of 35 his work was largely done. A few years earlier, Townshend had written the song that best described his predicament – Who Are You? That the band’s name could be endlessly iterated must have both tormented and pleased Townshend. His locked in battle with false self (“who the fuck are you”) and the search for real self (“Don’t Let Go The Coat”) continued to underpin his music. However, he found that his burgeoning reputation as a sometimes violent drunk undermined his desire to represent Mehar Baba and opted out of being a spokesperson for this faith as he felt that it was hypocritical. He subscribes still to the teaching and to himself as a disciple of Baba.

As a songwriter, Townshend found that he had said what he had to say and that there was virtually no more. Needing to work and produce to justify existence, he agreed to a Broadway production of Tommy, endless reformations of The Who and the redevelopment of big concepts such as Life House and Psychoderilect. Appearing on the VH1 program Townshend ‘Story-tellers’ in 2000 he remarks that “people complain that my projects always need a lot of explaining.” Later, in the painful Q and A section of the program, a member of the audience flatters and thanks Townshend who stands with a grimaced smile planted on his face. “What’s your question?” he finally growls at the slightly embarrassed flatterer.

Periodically, there is a sense of bewilderment or even frustration when those in arts keep on working after their moment has passed. In biographies, there is an understandable but disappointing focus on the journey towards the crowing moment of success. A 500 page biography has about 200 pages on the first 15 years of life; 250 pages on the climb to success and 50 pages on the following 25-40 years. The question should not be so much how did they get to the top and how did they fall but how did they come to understand the struggle between ego and soul; between false self and true self and first half and second half of life. The music journalist David Hepworth usually ascribes on-going productivity to hapless ego but ( perhaps like many who comment on art rather than create it) he misses the fact that humans create because they must. Creating is not describing life, imitating life; it is the in fact the breath of life – pure and easy.

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