Roger and I have very little in common but we really care about each other
Pete Townshend tells how he and Roger Daltrey have made their peace and why he doesn’t see an end to life on the road just yet
E may be 74, but the those are four extreme stereotypes, for 30 years.” creative juices of rock but there’s an even wider range of He continues: “Just after Keith legend Pete Townshend, issues that come up.” Moon had died, I drifted into trying the songwriting It seems that Pete has been the to stop drinking – and in doing so I powerhouse and lead more cerebral, arty member of The dabbled a bit with cocaine and guitarist in The Who, are everWho. There’s little wonder he had so ultimately heroin.” flowing. many fall-outs with his down-toHis heroin phase lasted about a
The band’s founder and rock earth, largely sober band cohort year, he recalls, as he found the opera impresario has just wrapped Roger Daltrey, the good-looking drug prevented him from a 29-date symphonic tour in the US, one, the voice, the front, against functioning creatively. is releasing a new Who album in Pete’s creative force. “The part of my drugs story that’s December – the first in 12 years The historic spats between them interesting is that I went into battle – and is now working on an opera. have been well documented over with it. When I won my battle I
And in between times he has the years, yet they’re still touring wanted to take part in other shoehorned his first novel, The Age and another string of UK dates is set people’s battles and I spent a long Of Anxiety, into his packed for the New Year. time pulling people into rehab and schedule. “I don’t think there’s ever been a paying for them to get treatment.”
The My Generation hitmaker, final tour,” he shrugs. While he clearly still enjoys once famed for smashing his And the years seem to scratching that creative itch and guitars on stage as well as have softened their spends much of the drink and drug excesses, relationship. his time on the looks remarkably well, “I still perform partly road or in his relatively unwrinkled and because of my ongoing, studio elegant in a stylish grey wool developing and writing, jacket, with a pink increasingly affectionate his home handkerchief peeking out of relationship with Roger,” life his breast pocket. he reflects. seems to
Even a brush with cancer “When you look back at be in 2003 hasn’t held him where we started, I relatively back. He recently revealed wouldn’t say we despised calm. He that a cancerous polyp was found in each other but we had very little in married his bowel during a colonoscopy, common. Now, we have very little orchestral and that his doctor had told him he in common but we really care about arranger would have been dead within six each other deeply. Rachel months had it not been discovered. “It’s been a surprise and a delight Fuller, who is
He talks animatedly about his to us both that we found this 28 years his debut novel, adapted from the because we didn’t expect it. We are junior, in 2016. opera he has written (he wrote the really comfortable with each other. He hopes to music first) and hopes to stage at He says, ‘You’ve got your guitar and pass on his vast the end of next year. your pen, I’ve got my voice’. We knowledge to
Enveloped in mythical fantasy meet in the middle and it just younger and hallucinations, the story delves happens to be performing.” musicians. inside the mind of a musician and They never see each other “I occasionally go artist and the madness of celebrity, socially, but nor did he socialise into the studio with across two generations of a London with the band’s Keith Moon and much younger family, featuring a young rock star John Entwistle who, he says, lived musicians. I and a band, lovers, collaborators the archetypal rock star life (and don’t tell and friends. He says it’s not ultimately paid the price). them autobiographical, although it draws Pete, however, didn’t share their what on his life experiences. stereotypical rock star existence. to
“Some of the sentiments are “I went through the drugs and extreme views,” Pete explains. “In alcohol thing relatively late in life. I running a band, for instance, you’d ended up drinking a lot when I got have four different personalities – into trouble with work in the late somebody who wanted to throw Seventies. I had a solo album deal TVs out of windows and drive Rolls for three albums over five years, Royces, another who’d want a big then The Who got an album deal for house in the country and go five albums over three years and I shooting, another who’d want to f*** was supposed to write all the songs. as many women as he could and I just came apart at the seams. I just then you’d have me, who would couldn’t do it. want to be a serious artist. “At that time I drank – and
“What I wanted to do when I booze was such a great medicine created this story was show that for me. But I haven’t had a drink
Hplay but I might suggest they try something.
“It’s not so much about creative edge in breaking new ground, it’s about edge in that I’ve been around for such a long time, I have such a big vocabulary and so much experience in what I can do musically, with other artists and for myself.
“There’s nothing to stop me stripping off my shirt and pretending to be Stormzy. I wouldn’t do a very good job, but I could have a go. I’ve never been able to rap, but
I’m a good poet.”
THE STARLESS SEA
FANS of Morgenstern’s debut, The Night Circus, will have been counting down the days to her follow-up.
It sees our protaganist, Zachary, now a postgraduate student in Vermont, set off on an adventure to the Starless Sea after discovering a lost memory in a book.
He is pitched into a topsy-turvy world, but it all feels oddly flat, as if Morgenstern went too big with this new world, and seemingly forgot to ground it in characters you can love.