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Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend (born May 19, 1945 in Chiswick, London) is an influential British rock guitarist and songwriter best known for his work with The Who.

Biography

Born into a musical family (his father Cliff was a professional saxophonist and his mother Betty a singer), Townshend exhibited a fascination with music at an early age. He had early exposure to American rock and roll (his mother recounts that he repeatedly saw the 1956 film Rock Around the Clock) and obtained his first guitar from his grandmother at age 12, which he described as a "Cheap Spanish thing."

In 1961 Townshend enrolled at Ealing Art College, and, a year later, Townshend and his art school friend John Entwistle founded their first band, The Confederates, a Dixieland duet featuring Townshend on banjo and Entwistle on horn. From this beginning they moved on to The Detours, a skiffle band fronted by then sheet-metal welder Roger Daltrey, which, under Townshend's leadership, would metamorphose into The Who. They were soon taken on by a mod publicist who convinced them to change their name to The High Numbers to give it more of a mod feel. After bringing out one single (Zoot Suit), they were signed on by two new managers, Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert. This was the beginning of The Who.

Townshend's biggest guitar influences include Link Wray, John Lee Hooker, and Hank Marvin of The Shadows.

The High Numbers once again became the Who. The early singles Townshend wrote for The Who, including "I Can't Explain," "Substitute," and "My Generation" matched an ironic and psychologically-astute lyrical sense with crashing, sometimes crude music, a combination which would become the hallmark of the band. During the band's early days, Townshend became known for his eccentric stage style, often interrupting concerts with lengthy introductions of songs, swinging his right arm against the guitar strings windmill-style, and sometimes smashing his guitar on stage. Although the first incident of guitar-smashing was thought to be an accident, the onstage destruction of instruments became a regular part of The Who's performances. Townshend, always a voluble interview subject, would later relate these antics to Austrian painter Gustav Metzger's theories on auto-destruction, to which he had been exposed at art school.

The Who thrived, and continue to thrive, despite the death of two of the original members. They are regarded by many rock critics as one of the best live bands of the late 60s - early 70s, the result of a unique combination of high volume, showmanship, a wide variety of rock beats, and a high-energy sound that alternated between tight and free-form. Their 2005 performance at Live 8 was much applauded.

Townshend remained the primary songwriter for the group, writing over 100 songs which appeared on the band's 10 studio albums. Among his most well-known accomplishments are the creation of Tommy, for which the term "rock opera" was coined, pioneering the use of feedback, and the introduction of the synthesizer as a rock instrument. Townshend revisited album-length storytelling techniques throughout his career and remains the musician most associated with the rock opera form. Townshend also demonstrated prodigious talent on the guitar and was influential as a player, developing a unique style which combined aspects of rhythm and lead guitar and a characteristic mix of abandon and subtlety.

Townshend has been a follower of the Indian religious guru Meher Baba, who blended elements of Buddhist and Sufi mysticism with conventional Christianity. Baba's teachings were a major source of inspiration for many of his works, including Tommy, and the unfinished Who project Lifehouse. The Who song "Baba O'Riley," written for Lifehouse and eventually appearing on the album Who's Next, was named for Meher Baba and minimalist composer Terry Riley. Although Baba's teachings require abstinence from alcohol and drug use, Townshend has had several public battles with substance abuse.

In addition to his work with the Who, Townshend has been sporadically active as a solo recording artist. Between 1969 and 1971 Townshend recorded a trio of little-heard albums devoted to Meher Baba. His first major-label solo release, 1972's Who Came First was a moderate success and featured demos of Who songs as well as a showcase of his acoustic guitar talents. He collaborated with The Faces bassist and fellow Meher Baba devotee Ronnie Lane on a duet album (1977's Rough Mix). Townshend's solo breakthrough, following the death of Who drummer Keith Moon, was the 1980 release Empty Glass, which included a top-10 single, "Let My Love Open the Door." This release was followed in 1982 by All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, which included the popular radio track "Slit Skirts." Through the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s Townshend would again experiment with the rock opera and related formats, releasing several story-based albums including White City: A Novel (1985), The Iron Man: A Musical (1989), and Psychoderelict (1993).

Townshend also got the chance to play with his hero Hank Marvin for Paul McCartney's Rockestra sessions, along with other respected rock musicians such as David Gilmour, John Bonham and Ronnie Lane.

In 1979, Townshend became the first major rock musician to donate his services to the human rights organization Amnesty International when he performed three songs for its benefit show The Secret Policeman's Ball - performances that were released on record and in the film of the show. The show was Townshend's first major live solo appearance. Townshend's acoustic performances of three of his songs (including Pinball Wizard and Won't Get Fooled Again) were subsequently cited as having been the forerunner and inspiration for the "unplugged" phenomenon in the 1990's. Townshend had been invited to perform for Amnesty by the producer of The Secret Policeman's Ball Martin Lewis who stated later that Townshend's participation had been the key to his securing the subsequent participation for Amnesty (in the 1981 sequel show) of Sting, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Phil Collins and Bob Geldof. Other performers inspired by Townshend's early committment to Amnesty International to support the organization include Peter Gabriel and U2 singer Bono who in 1986 told Rolling Stone magazine: "I saw 'The Secret Policeman's Ball' and it became a part of me. It sowed a seed..."

Townshend has also recorded several live albums, including one featuring a supergroup he assembled called Deep End, who performed just three concerts and a TV show session for The Tube, to raise money for a charity supporting drug addicts. In 1984 Townshend published an anthology of short stories entitled Horse's Neck. He has also reported that he is writing an autobiography. In 1993 he and Des MacAnuff wrote and directed the Broadway adaptation of the Who album Tommy, as well as a less successful stage musical based on his solo album The Iron Man, based upon the book by Ted Hughes. (MacAnuff and Townshend would later co-produce the animated film The Iron Giant, also based on the Hughes story.)

From the mid-1980s through the present, Townshend has participated in a series of reunion and farewell concerts with the surviving members of The Who, including a 2002 tour immediately after Entwistle's death.

Townshend suffers from partial deafness and tinnitus as a result of extensive exposure to loud music through headphones and in concert, including one notable 1970s concert where the volume level was claimed to have been measured at 120 dB 40 m from the stage. Part of his condition may be attributed to an infamous 1967 appearance on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, during which Keith Moon set off a large amount of explosives inside his drum kit, while Townshend was standing in front of it.

Townshend met Karen Astley (daughter of composer Ted Astley) while in art school and married her in 1968. The couple separated in 1994 and divorced in 2000. They have three children, Emma (b. 1969), who is herself a singer/songwriter, Aminta (b. 1971), and Joseph (b. 1989). For many years Townshend refused to confirm or deny rumors that he was bisexual. In a 2002 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, however, he explained that, although he engaged in some brief same-sex experimentation in the 1960s, he is heterosexual. Townshend has been romantically involved with musician Rachel Fuller for several years. He currently lives in Richmond, England.

Child pornography vigilantism

In early January 2003, Townshend publicly acknowledged having used his credit card on a single occasion to obtain access to a commercial child pornography website. He stated that he had visited the site once while researching child abuse and child pornography on the Internet. Townshend made the admission after a story was illicitly leaked to a British tabloid newspaper that a single credit card transaction of a well-known rock star had been found amidst thousands of UK transactions recovered by "Operation Ore," a large anti-child pornography operation undertaken in the UK. Townshend made a statement identifying himself as the individual hinted at in the tabloid story. (No investigation was made of who leaked information known only by the police to the tabloid newspaper and no charges were ever brought for the illicit leak of classified information.)

He stated that he had only viewed the site briefly as part of his research, that (in his opinion) he had not downloaded any images, and that he had not retained any images. Townshend also volunteered his willingness to fully cooperate with a police investigation. The Metropolitan Police arrested him on 13 January2003 on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, making such images and inciting others to distribute such images. The police duly searched his home and offices and confiscated a total of 14 of his computers, which were all returned several months later after a forensic examination had failed to reveal any evidence that Townshend had downloaded or possessed indecent photographs of children (thus indirectly acknowledging Townshend's claim that the computers contained not one single image of child pornography). In May 2003 the police formally cautioned Townshend, thereby making him subject to the requirement to notify police of his personal details (for a period of 5 years, the period defined as being appropriate to cautions and non-custodial disposals): this also means that his details will be held on the Violent and Sex Offender Register.

Townshend claimed he was researching the subject of child abuse for his autobiography - and revealed that he had been sexually abused as a child by a mentally disturbed relation. He referred also to the commonly-known fact that he had written specifically about the topic in Tommy (whose protagonist was also sexually abused by a disturbed relation); indeed, two of the Who's earlier hit singles, "I'm a Boy" and "Happy Jack," dealt with child abuse either directly ("I'm a Boy") or by implication ("Happy Jack"). Townshend also stated that he had notified an anti-abuse group about the website immediately after encountering the site. This claim was confirmed in February 2003 when the anti-abuse group searched its email archive and discovered several emails from Townshend - sent at the time that he had claimed. The group released a statement to this effect. Townshend's claim was further reinforced by a document he had written and posted on his official website in January 2002 - a full year before the incident became public. The emails and his published warnings about the topic - predated Townshend's first awareness (in January 2003) that his name might publicly surface as a result of the Operation Ore investigation.

In "A Different Bomb," Townshend forewarned that portions of the Internet represent a terrible danger because "they provide deviant material to deviant people." In March, 2004, Townshend was featured on a BBC television documentary in which he described his experiences as a result of the child pornography charges. He apologized for the incident and stated that he was so upset by the accusations made against him and the subsequent perceptions that he had briefly considered suicide.

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Incidentally, the law in England at the time of Townshend's transaction in 1999 explicitly outlawed the downloading of pornographic images, something that the police found no evidence of Townsend ever doing. But there had been no legal ruling in 1999 on the topic of what Townshend did do - which was to pay money to access a website that contained child pornography. The first legal ruling in England on this specific issue occurred in a case in 2001 - nearly two years after the solitary occasion on which Townshend had accessed the website. At that time - a judge ruled that a law passed in the 1970's in respect of the purchase of printed child pornography should be applied to purchases made on the internet. Irrespective of whether it was for prurient purposes or legitimate research. That ruling meant that anyone who had made any transaction at any time since the 1970's would have infringed the law - even though the person would have been unaware (till the 2001 ruling ) that the old law applied to internet purchases. Townshend might thus have been found guilty in 2003 of a technical infringement that occurred in 1999 of a law that neither he (nor anyone else in England) could have been aware was relevant to his activity prior to 2001.

Musical Equipment

Throughout his solo career and his career with The Who, Townshend has played (and destroyed) a large variety of different guitars.

In the early days with The Who, Townshend played 6-string and 12-string Rickenbacker semi-hollow electric guitars primarily (particularly the Rose-Morris UK-imported models with special f-holes). However, as instrument-smashing became increasingly integrated into The Who's concert sets, he switched to more durable and resilient (and sometimes cheaper) guitars for smashing, such as the Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster, and various Danelectro models. In the late-60s, Townshend began playing Gibson SG models almost exclusively, specifically the Special models. He used this guitar at the Woodstock and Isle of Wight shows in 1969 and 1970.

By 1972, Gibson changed the design of the SG Special which Townshend had been using previously, and thus he began using other guitars. For much of the 1970s, he used Gibson Les Paul Deluxes, some with only two mini-humbucker pickups and others modified with a third pickup. He can be seen using several of these guitars in the documentary "The Kids Are Alright".

During the 1980s, Townshend mainly used Rickenbackers and Telecaster-style models built for him by Schecter and various other luthiers. Since the late-1980s, Townshend has used the Fender Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster, with Lace-Sensor pickups, both in the studio and on tour.

Townshend has used a number of other electric guitars, including various Gretsch, Gibson, and Fender models. He has also used Guild, Takamine and Gibson J-200 acoustic models.

There are several Gibson Pete Townshend signature guitars, such as the Pete Townshend SG, the Pete Townshend J-200, and two different Pete Townshend Les Paul Deluxes. The SG was clearly marked as a Pete Townshend limited edition model and came with a special case and certificate of authenticity, signed by Pete himself. There has also been a Pete Townshend signature Rickenbacker limited edition guitar.

Solo discography

• Who Came First (1972)
• Empty Glass (1980)
• All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982)
• Scoop (album) (1983)
• White City: A Novel (1985)
• Another Scoop (1986)
• The Iron Man: A Musical (1989)
• Psychoderelict (1993)
• A Benefit For Maryville Academy (1998)
• Live: The Fillmore (2000)
• Live: The Empire (2000)
• Live: Sadler's Wells (2001)
• Live: La Jolla (2001)
• Scoop 3 (2001)

Compilations and EPs

• A Friend Is A Friend (1990)
• English Boy (1994)
• Coolwalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking (1996)
• Avatar Chronicles (2000)
• Lifehouse Chronicles (2000)
• Lifehouse Elements (2000)
• Jai Baba (2001)
• O Parvardigar (2001)
• Scooped (2002)

Collaborations

• Happy Birthday (album) (With Ronnie Lane) (1969)
• I Am (With Ronnie Lane)(1970)
• With Love (With Ronnie Lane)(1971)
• Rough Mix (With Ronnie Lane) (1977)
• Deep End Live! (With David Gilmour et al) (1986)
• The Oceanic Concerts (with Raphael Rudd) (2001)

In 1969 Townshend assembled a band called Thunderclap Newman, produced their album Hollywood Dreams, and played bass on it under the alias Bijou Drains. The album contained the band's number one single "Something in the Air".

For albums Townshend composed as a member of The Who, see their entry. Not included are albums by other artists on which Townshend played as a session musician. Through much of 2005, Pete Townshend has been recording and performing alongside his partner Rachel Fuller, a classically trained pianist and singer songwriter.

See also

• Rolling Stone's List of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time

External links

• The Who Discussion Forum
• Who Reference
• Pete Townshend's equipment
• The Who Location Guide
• Townshend document as posted by The Smoking Gun website
• Pete Townshend's personal web site
• Interview With Pete Townshend
• Pete Townshend's blog

References

1. Townshend arrested over child porn, The Guardian, Tuesday 14 January 2003

• 1945 births
• British guitarists
• British songwriters
• Guitarists
• The Who
• Londoners
• Music from London