The guitarist also sounds off on the absurdity of NFTs, the future of classic rock, the Spotify controversy, why he loves Freaks and Geeks, and more. Rolling Stone phoned up Pete Townshend at his new home in the English countryside.
"The guitar is losing ground, but partly because, if you spend an hour on Instagram or YouTube, you quickly discover unknown people playing it like a great orchestral violinist," said the musician. "They are virtuosos of the highest caliber, that have literally exhausted the
potential of the tool. And we are seeing this kind of virtuosity already in beat box, rap and pop. Everything will change again, perhaps faster than we can imagine, ”
“It is the guitar-rock that is losing ground, not the rock itself. Hip-hop is rock to my ears: music for the neighborhood, the street, the dispossessed, the oppressed, the young, the ignored.
"If you only make 0.003 cents, when someone plays your song you need a lot of flow to buy an apartment in any big city in the world. I'm not complaining. I had my moment, when a TV show paid $ 350 for each play of a song: CSI - Crime Scene was my retirement fund."
In typical Townshend fashion, the guitarist gave long, thoughtful answers to every one of our questions, often taking fascinating detours along the way and divulging minute behind-the-scenes details of the live music industry that few other artists discuss in public. He also name-checked Wes Anderson, Dave Davies, Rod Stewart, Luke McCallin, Christopher Plummer, and many others. Every talk with Townshend is a wild ride: You can read the full interview HERE
Where Townshend played with beauty, Moon demonstrated danger, and it was the combination of the two raw talents that made for riveting listening.
Townshend has given his opinion on the feature, and how it will turn out.(Faroutmagazine)
“When you talk about it as a Keith Moon biopic,” he said, “It’s going to be the first semi-fictionalised, dramatised Who story. It will be a Who biopic. Somebody is going to have to play Pete Townshend. I’ve read some very, very varied opinions about what my relationship was like with Keith. I view it one way, and other people view it another way.
And in his own way, he admired Moon as a person, feeling that his personality added to the mosaic of sound that made the band’s explosive trajectory. The two men regularly tried to outdo one another, as Moon would throttle his cymbals to the beat of Townshend bashing his six-stringed instrument to the ground.
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During the interview, Townshend revealed that the record company told him they had found a track named ‘Ambition’ featuring Keith Moon from the ‘Lifehouse’ sessions. Later on, he also found a demo he had completed at home. Pete Townshend recalled spending a week finishing the demo and then sending it to the record company. However, they didn’t want to include it in the album, so it remained unreleased.
There’s talk of a documentary, all of this stuff. It makes me want to run away! The record company had found a track they said was from the ‘Lifehouse’ sessions. This track, called ‘Ambition,’ had Keith Moon, John Entwistle, and me playing on it. And then, I found a demo that I had done at home with a vocal.So they were like, ‘Well, let’s just get Roger to do a vocal on the version that the other guys in the band did, and we can add it to the record, and it will be brand new.’ So I spent a week reconstituting or finishing off the demo, sent it to the record company, and they said, ‘Ah, no … maybe you could put it on a solo album?’ So I said, ‘Well, you know, there’s a reason it’s never been released before. It’s because it’s crap!'
