Pete Townshend quotes - page 2

Some of our early work was two minutes twenty when it actually came out on vinyl, very, very, very short. Sometimes if you made a three-minute record they would make you do an edited version for radio, particularly in America. (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

Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color.

Pete Townshend

Keith Moon is not interested in jazz and won't ever be a jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.

Pete Townshend

I want to age with some dignity.

Pete Townshend

I have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion.

Pete Townshend

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

Pete Townshend

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

Pete Townshend

What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.

Pete Townshend

I bought a Dutch barge and turned it into a recording studio. My plan was to go to Paris and record rolling down the Seine.

Pete Townshend

It's sad when people break up. (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

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

In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief.

Pete Townshend

If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple.

Pete Townshend

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'

Pete Townshend

What the English like to do is to face reality with a glass of port and a tear and fade off like Basil Rathbone into the sunset.

Pete Townshend

We are musicians, entertainers. We can do it. We have the right tools. No worries.

Pete Townshend

I think we are incumbent, I am incumbent, the Who is incumbent, anybody that produces anything by me is incumbent by my Englishness.

Pete Townshend

Is your perception of 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' so shallow that it's violated by dancing raisins.

Pete Townshend

Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood. (Pete Townshend)

The fact of the matter is, I'm fking brilliant. Not 'was' brilliant. 'Am' brilliant.

Pete Townshend

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Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend - Image

Photo: Kubackeck, CC BY 2.0

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

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