| 17th October 2006 12:09 PM |
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| justinkurian |
URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/12047369/pete_townshend_the_who_frontman_on_why_it_took_24_years_for_a_new_album
This is an excerpt from the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone:
Dr. Who
Pete Townshend on why it took twenty-four years for a new Who album, and why he doesn't want to see Dylan or the Stones play again
JENNY ELISCU
There's been talk of a new Who album for six years. Why such a long delay?
We did a press conference in 2000 where Roger and John both announced they'd written songs for a new Who album. I was shocked. I went to Roger and said, "So you've written some songs, have you? Would it be possible for me to hear them?" Of course he hadn't written any songs. He still hasn't. And I went to John and said, "Have you written any songs?" He said, "Yeah, I've got 'undreds. But I'm not playing them to him." I said, "Who's him?" And he said, "Roger. I'm not having my songs sniffed out by him." And that was that.
I had to try to rescue them because Roger had committed publicly to the idea that we were going to make a record, and he felt he'd look like a complete idiot if we didn't make any new music. So we did "Real Good Looking Boy" and "Old Red Wine" for [the greatest-hits collection] Then and Now. But I couldn't be driven by Roger's needs. He'd never been a part of the Who's creative engine. He longed to be a part of it, he longed to be able to wish it into existence, but it required me to come up with a piece of work I felt convinced I could carry for the rest of my life.
You were talking about how being in a band is like a marriage. But you and Roger have gone through a lot of separations in your forty-two-year marriage.
The idea of a commitment in a relationship is that it's somehow of a higher value if it's unconditional. In a business relationship, it's of a higher value if it's conditional. In other words, Roger and I feel we've achieved the most if he's getting what he wants and I'm getting what I want. I realized that if I went to Roger and tried to honor our relationship, the chemistry we have together on a creative basis, that I had to take responsibility for the bit I always do and he would come in afterward, as he has always done.
When Roger and I were on our last tour with John, I sat with our manager, Bill Curbishley, on the last day and asked, "Are we gonna do this again?" He said, "If you want to, we can always do it again." And I said, "Is there any possibility that we're enabling John Entwistle? Rather than helping him, what we're actually doing is sending him home with, after tax, probably a million dollars, half of it's probably gonna go up his girlfriend's nose." God rest her soul, she's dead now. I thought, "I don't need to play old Who songs. I could sell them to fucking CSI." When John died, I decided that if I were to ever go back on tour with Roger, it has to be artistically driven. I thought, "If we're going to do this, we have to have new music, and it has to come from me."
What at this point is the most fulfilling aspect of creating new material for the Who?
The attention it receives, and the powerful filtering and editorial process that is imposed when I work with Roger, my interpreter and partner. There is a sense that I am closing a circle here too -- I did feel that when I completed songs for the last Who studio album, in 1982, that I had completely lost my connection with our audience. Somehow, today's audience has granted me a second chance to reconnect as the Who's chief songwriter, and it really does seem as though almost everyone has thrown away the rule book. Some of our live shows have taken this function of mine to a place that it seems no mere CD could ever reach. At Madrid, for example, as I played my guitar toward the end of the show, I felt like a triumphant liberating giant come to release a million captive children. Could make me a little vain.
You've been very involved with the Internet, and originally you planned to sell live Webcasts of all the shows on this tour to raise money for charity.
It's unfortunate we couldn't do more of that, because the Web site and the Internet have given the Who the most extraordinary ten years. Whenever we wanted to go out, we've gone out and sold out our tours. Now if Roger truly believes it's because people want to look at his chest or truly believes it's because Pete Townshend is a magical genius and people want to hear this music one more time, he's wrong. I think it's because we have this incredible tied-in fan base. The Web sites I've been running are like fan clubs. And fan clubs back in the old days really were the way that artists made sure that they got hits. If you had 400,000 fans and they all went out and bought your album on the same day, you got a fucking Number One!
This fan thing is very powerful. I don't think that the big boomer bands are going to be able to do this much longer. I really don't. We're fucking lucky to be able to do it, but I don't think we'll be able to do it much longer. I don't want to go out and see Bob Dylan. I don't want to go out and see the Stones. I wouldn't pay money to go see the Who, not even with new songs. I wouldn't pay money to go see Crosby, Stills and Nash. They fucking make me sick. When I say that, what I mean is I'm ageist about it. I don't want to look at these old guys in their self-congratulatory mode. Somebody gave me tickets for Marlene Dietrich's last concert in London, and apparently she came out and she looked fantastic under the lights, but you know that she's an eighty-year-old woman held together by glue and string. Why would you want to do that? I'd prefer to come and see Elaine Stritch down in the bar here. My point is, I don't think it will go on much longer.
Our audience, our boomer audience, are sustaining it. It's not young kids. People say, "Oh, I went to a Rolling Stones concert and there were lots of young people there!" Once. They come once. I went to see Jimmy Reed once. I went to see John Lee Hooker once. I went to see Jimmy Smith once. I went to see Ray Charles once. I just wanted to be able to say I saw him. If Charlie Parker had been alive, I would have seen him once. I saw Roland Kirk once. I saw them all once. I wouldn't follow them around the fucking world. There's a lot of people that come and see bands like the Who once.
It works out fine, right? Because those same artists aren't going to be touring forever. It's not like fifteen years from now you're going to be like, "Oh, I guess nobody wants to come to our shows anymore."
No, my point is when you look at the commerce behind the music business, what's running the whole thing is live shows. The problem for the Who is because we can go out and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket grosses, we're a commodity and treated as such. It would be nice if it was the same with the record, but it won't be. Universal are probably stamping around today thinking, "Oh, my God, not another fucking Who record. Oh, my God, what do we do? Thank God for the Scissor Sisters!"
Posted Oct 16, 2006 3:21 PM |
| 17th October 2006 07:15 PM |
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| Soldatti |
Two weeks for the new Who album... |
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