Quotes by Pete Townshend

About Pete Townshend:

Peter Dennis Blandford is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the lead guitarist and songwriter for the rock band The Who. His career with the Who spans more than 50 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the 20th century.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbring...

Pete Townshend

He is the king. If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble', I would have never picked up a guitar.

Pete Townshend

I've learned a huge amount because I've been tested and, more importantly, I've been trusted.

Pete Townshend

Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.

Pete Townshend

It's like the mod thing is happening again.

Pete Townshend

Bob Dylan did the first really long record - Like A Rolling Stone - I think it was four minutes.

Pete Townshend

I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man.

Pete Townshend

For a while I was perfectly happy not performing with 'The Who.' From 1982 to 1989 I felt 'The Who' did not exist. I let the band go, in my heart. However, Roger Daltrey had other ideas. He would not let go.

Pete Townshend

When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I...

Pete Townshend

It's an ordinary day for Brian. Like, he died every day, you know.

Pete Townshend

What the Who is all about is exactly that and it always has been. If it exists today for this concert, it's in response again to a function which is happening out there on the street.

Pete Townshend

Everything that I had done creatively related to two or three incidents that happened to me when I was a child that I'd forgotten. Everything, absolutely everything.

Pete Townshend

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.

Pete Townshend

I felt that The Who had ended because we'd lost touch with our original Shepherd's Bush audience.

Pete Townshend

Although I dig my guitar playing, I think it's kind of an obvious situation; I play what I want to play within my own restrictions.

Pete Townshend

English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.

Pete Townshend

What we learned quite early on is what was really important to early British pop that we produced-and this is where we were distinct from almost everybody else in this respect-is that it had to reflect exactly what the audience wanted us to say.

Pete Townshend

What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.

Pete Townshend

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

Pete Townshend

I only really started to go to plays and to be interested in drama 20 years ago when as an artist I was already well-rounded. I think I'm more disciplined today.

Pete Townshend

I used to try and make up visually for what I couldn't play as a musician. I used to get into very incredible visual things where, in order just to make one chord more lethal, I'd make it a really lethal looking thing, whereas really it's just going ...

Pete Townshend

Author Bio

  • NamePete Townshend
  • DescriptionEnglish rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author
  • BornMay 19, 1945
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionSinger-songwriter; Guitarist; Singer; Composer; Banjoist; Mandolinist
  • WorksWon't Get Fooled Again; My Generation