Pete Townshend quotes

Pete Townshend is a British musician, composer, and guitarist, best known as the lead songwriter for The Who. His innovative songwriting and energetic performances greatly influenced the development of rock music. He is celebrated for his creative vision, distinctive guitar playing, and contributions to classic rock opera. Here are 47 of his quotes:

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive. (Pete Townshend)

But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.

Pete Townshend

I don't really know any other musicians like me. I grew up backstage with my dad who played in a post-war dance band, so I always feel at home at a venue.

Pete Townshend

When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment.

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

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 upbringing was militaristic.

Pete Townshend

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.

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

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.

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

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

It's like the mod thing is happening again.

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 think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.

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

A lot of my audience are in their 50s. But they want me to pretend to continue to be pretending.

Pete Townshend

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

Pete Townshend

I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.

Pete Townshend

The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

Pete Townshend

It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

Pete Townshend

I'm only interested in rites of passage stories. (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

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

Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.

Pete Townshend

We tried not to age, but time had its rage.

Pete Townshend

Previous
1 (Current)
2
Next

Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend - Image

Photo: Kubackeck, CC BY 2.0

Occupation: British Musician
Born: May 19, 1945
Quotes count: 47

Related authors

Roger Daltrey 53

English Musician

Keith Moon 6

English Musician

John Entwistle 13

English Musician

Eric Clapton 87

English Guitarist

Jimmy Page 14

British Musician

Keith Richards 76

British Musician

Jeff Beck 12

British Musician

Jimi Hendrix 87

American Musician

Paul McCartney 129

British Singer

Mick Jagger 46

English Singer