Who I Am revels in the details of musical creativity, and provides fresh angles on a monumental career. In one of the greatest moments of accidental genius in the history of classic rock, the scattered scraps of Lifehouse would magically fall into place to form the Who’s most classic album of all, Who’s Next, which would yield the band’s two biggest anthems, “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. The planned epiphany he staged for Lifehouse would fall utterly to pieces, leaving the band managers and engineers scrambling to fulfill a contract for an album while Pete Townshend nursed his cracked-up spiritual wounds. The chapters describing these years are the most evocative in the book, but the intellectual journey into pop art, rock stardom and religious enlightenment that follows (Townshend is a lifelong follower of Meher Baba) keeps up a high pitch of excitement, especially during the near-insane period in which Townshend tried to follow the masterpiece Tommy with an even more ambitious rock opera called Lifehouse. A Quick One (While He’s Away), which he wrote just before Tommy. A highly intellectual, artistic and cheeky London kid, born at the very close of World War II to jazz musician parents who tended to drift into thorny situations and sexual affairs, young Pete Townshend felt keenly dislocated when his parents abandoned him to a creepy grandmother, leaving him with feelings of anxiety that inspired his first narrative song-cycle. Like many memoirs, Who I Am is especially strong in the childhood scenes. Pete Townshend in Who I Am, on the other hand, is happy to go there. We seem to be living in the age of rock star autobiographies, of course, and Pete Townshend’s book appeared on bookshelves at the same time as that of of a fellow introspective searcher, Neil Young, whose Waging Heavy Peace succeeds as an uplifting, rambunctious self-portrait but fails as a memoir, because a memoir must dig deep into the dark regions of self-analysis and painful honesty, and Neil Young didn’t seem to want to go there. ![]() ![]() This new book is a worthy summation of a prodigal career, and a satisfyingly revealing (if occasionally compulsive and over-protective) autobiography. The same storyline recurs at least four times during Pete Townshend’s fascinating new memoir Who I Am. Tommy is a witty, self-mocking tale about childish wonder and spiritual overreach, and Pete Townshend would go on to reenact a real life version of the same story - the ascent to fame, the inevitable cruel betrayal of the fans - over and over again throughout his life. The pinball wizard then becomes a famous religious leader until his shallow followers get bored and overthrow him. Townshend’s rock opera “Tommy” was the symbolic autobiography of a shy and sensitive teenager who becomes a rock star … transformed into a tall tale about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who uncovers an unnatural skill at pinball (Townshend’s electric guitar, of course, was Tommy’s pinball machine). ![]() ![]() His new book Who He Is amounts to his most comprehensive autobiography but hardly his first. Pete Townshend of the Who has been writing his autobiography for his entire career, starting with the band’s first single “I Can’t Explain”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |