Townshend Bio

Sorry to be late putting in the synopsis of Pete's latest chapter but I've been at the beach on Christmas vacation and just got back on Monday evening.

For a good beach read, I took Mark Wilkerson's new biography of Pete. Amazing Journey: The Life Of Pete Townshend.

A lot of you have already read it online at Mark's site but this was my first time catching up with it (lazy, I know...) and it was very interesting to go through Pete's entire life to date as an artist without the artificial cutoff dates of Keith's death, the Farewell Tour, etc. The underlining themes in his work become a bit clearer and what he's doing now as a writer and guitarist make more sense. Get the book (here) or read it online but try to read it as all of one piece and you'll be amazed all the elements in Pete's work to which he returns again and again. For those of you following The Boy Who Heard Music check out this 1973 note from Pete about his part of Jimmy's character in Quadrophenia

I'm the good part of the character needless to say - the choir boy who doesn't make good, the sea scout who gets assaulted by the scout master.

By the way, as I'm typing this, I'm listening to the new album by the Japanese Mod band The Collectors Biff Bang Pow

It has Japanese-language versions of Mod classics of the 1960's including "Pictures of Lily." Check it out if you get a chance.