STACK Jul #129

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the Small Faces/Faces. Pleasingly three
from it appear on Truancy -- My Baby
Gives It Away, A Heart To Hang Onto and
Keep Me Turning – and you can feel the
ease between them. Elsewhere are some
memorable solo songs: Face Dances No. 2
(from All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese
Eyes, ‘82), the furious Face the Face
(White City, 1986) and two new songs,
Guantanamo and How Can I Help You.
It’s a decent single disc compilation
but, as with his autobiography – and his
sometimes pugnacious demeanor in
interviews – there are not a lot of laughs
to be had with Pete Townshend, although
some might say he’s having fun with us
right now.
Because just released – and no one
asked for this – there is Pete Townshend’s
Classic Quadrophenia, the classic
Quadrophenia rock concept album from
1973 delivered by the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra with Townshend, Billy Idol, Phil
Daniels (the original Jimmy kid in the
’79 film version) and others.
Do loyal old Who fans want to hear an
orchestral version of a rock album? Does
the R.P.O audience have any interest
either?
In truth the orchestral passages are very
powerful. But tenor Alfie Boe’s Broadway-
cum-opera vocals are pretty grating and
lack the edge required to convey a story
about teenage confusion, anger and angst.
It does seem an odd and unnecessary
album, and for a man who wrote, “Hope I
die before I get old” – words which have
unfairly dogged him and will appear in
every obituary – Pete Townshend seems
more and more intent on trawling through
his past.
Maybe it’s too much to ask of a man
who recently turned 70, “Let’s see
action”?
A few years ago, before Christmas,
I bought two rock autobiographies
to read over the break. One was
Rod Stewart’s Rod which was howling
funny and charted the life of a man for
whom booze, blondes and a bloody good
time were written into the contract of being
a rock star.
So he obliged. The other could not
have been more different, it was Pete
Townshend’s earnest Who I Am which read
like open-heart surgery on his emotional
life and was mostly free of humour and
good times. It’s an excellent book, but I
concluded the reason Keith Moon in The
Who became so outrageous was he had to
fill the fun-gap left by Pete.
The jury will always be out on whether
Rod or Pete made the better music either
in bands or as solo artists, but outside
of The Who we might observe that
Townshend’s album were always more
highly regarded, if way way less popular,
than Rod’s. Pete Townshend makes the
case for himself with a new compilation
drawn from his solo albums (about half a
dozen that are relevant, the ones to his
guru he, and we, set aside). Only one of
his albums made any wide impact, that
was Empty Glass from 1980 and for the
compilation Truancy: The Very Best of Pete
Townshend he taps it for two of the most
obvious songs; Let My Love Open the Door
(a hit in the US and on movie soundtracks)
and Rough Boys, a sexually ambiguous lyric
and a song he dedicated to The Sex Pistols
and his own children, the implication being
that the Pistols were part of The Who’s
offspring.
Disappointingly the compilation doesn’t
include the finest song on Empty Glass,
his beautiful And I Moved in which he
poetically sang of his spiritual conversation.
He’s never included it on any previous
collection either. The collection opens
with three songs from his solo debut Who
Came First (‘72): Pure and Easy which he
described on the original album cover as
a pivot for his fraught Lifehouse project,
the raw acoustic folk of Sheraton Gibson
and the rollicking, expanded and over-long
demo of the Who’s Let’s See Action (also
from Lifehouse). It serves to remind that
Townshend was always happy to share his
working drawings of songs, especially on
the Scoop album series of home recordings
and demos. (He includes You Came Back
from that source.)
Many longtime Townshend fans would
argue his best solo outing was his most
relaxed, the terrific Rough Mix (1977) with
his longtime pal Ronnie Lane, bassist in
For more reviews, overviews and
interviews by Graham Reid see:
PETE TOWNSHEND
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Graham Reid gets into the head behind The Who.