The Kids Are Alright (1979)

Pete Townshend: Self (The Who)

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• Pete Townshend : When I'm on the stage - let me try and explain - when I'm on the stage, I'm not in control of myself at all. I don't even know who I am, you know. I'm not this rational person that can sit here now and talk to you. If you walked on the stage with a microphone in the middle of a concert, I'd probably come close to killing you - I *have* come close to killing people that walked on the stage. Abbie Hofmann walked on the stage at Woodstock and I nearly killed him with me guitar. A cameraman walked the stage - a, a, a policeman came on when the bloody building at the Fillmore in New York was burning down - and I kicked him in the balls and sent him off, you know. Because - I - I'm just not there, really. It's not like being possessed, it's just - I do my job. And I know that I have to get into a certain state of mind to do it.

• Pete Townshend : Kit turned around to me and said, "I think you should write something linear, something with continuity. Perhaps a ten-minute song." So I said, "You can't write a ten-minute song!" I mean, rock songs are two-minutes-fifty - by tradition! It's one of the traditions, you know, they only allowed you one modulation, four chords, or five - you know, five chords, you might be up before the committee. Ten minutes? It's ridiculous!

• Pete Townshend : One of the reasons for having music and things particularly loud, is because you get so many people who turn deaf ears to what you do, you know. They just won't listen to what you're doing. And it doesn't matter how good or bad it is. In fact, the bigger it is, normally, the more they'll close their ears to it. So, the louder you got to work, you know. Volume's a fantastic thing. Power and volume. Power and volume.

• Pete Townshend : If you steer clear of quality, you're alright, you know. No, really. This is the truth, you know.

  Female Interviewer : But wouldn't you say The Beatles or people like that have a certain musical quality?

  Pete Townshend : Oooh, you know, that's a tough question. Alright, actually, this afternoon, John and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles, in which the voices come out of the one side and the backing track came out of the other. And when you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they're flippin' lousy.

• Pete Townshend : I've got a guitar up here if any big-mouth little git wants to come and fucking take it off me.

• Pete Townshend : What made us first want to go to America and - *conquer* it, was being English! Not because we cared a monkey's about the American Dream, or the American drugs situation, or the dollars or anything. It's because we were English kids! Right. And we wanted to go to America and be English!

• Pete Townshend : [Speaking in the early Sixties]  You have to resign yourself to the fact that a large part of the audience is sort of thick, you know, and don't appreciate quality however much you put it over. The fact that our group hasn't - hasn't got any quality. It's just musical sensationalism. You do something big on the stage and a thousand geezers sort of go, "Ah!". It's just basic Shepherds Bush enjoyment.

• Roger Daltrey : [singing]  I don't need to be forgiven, No, no, no, no, no, no

  Pete Townshend : Don't cry, Don't raise your eye, It's only teenage wasteland. Yeah!

• Pete Townshend : A large percentage of geezers that come to see the group, they've paid their money to see me at the amplifier with a guitar and see a guitar break, you know. A lot of girls come to see the group because of various things which people in the group wear, such as John's jacket and medals, or my jacket made out of flags, and Keith who wears sort of fab gear, pop art t-shirts made out of targets and hearts and things like this. The group is a fairly simple form of pop art. We get a lot of audience this way.

• Pete Townshend : As soon as I started smashing something up, Keith, who's a great sort of joiner-inner, he used to smash up his drum kit.

  [laughs] 

• Roger Daltrey : [singing]  People try to put us d-d-down

  Pete Townshend , John Entwistle , Keith Moon : Talkin' 'bout my generation

  Roger Daltrey : They do, just be-cause we get around

  Pete Townshend , John Entwistle , Keith Moon : Talkin' 'bout my generation

  Roger Daltrey : Things they do look awful c-c-cold

  Pete Townshend , John Entwistle , Keith Moon : Talkin' 'bout my generation

  Roger Daltrey : I hope I die before I get old...

• Russell Harty : Now, you've been together now as a group for how many years? Ten years?

  Keith Moon : Yeah, I'm leaving. Was it that long? Christ, almighty!

  Pete Townshend : It's known as the decay of The Who. Or was it decayed?

  Russell Harty : The decline of The Who.

  Pete Townshend : The decayed!

  Russell Harty : Oh, the decade...

  Pete Townshend : Who. Who decayed!

• Female Interviewer : Girls came to see you mainly to look at the clothes you wear. Don't you think that most of them come for a certain sexual thrill they get out of your performance?

  Pete Townshend : Look, you know, our group's probably one of the most unglamorous on the stage today, you know. I mean, no, really, I mean, this is one of our - was one our big problems, you know, and probably still is, you know. The group didn't have enough glamour.

• Pete Townshend : Off stage, the group get on terribly badly. There's a lot of despite and things which thrash around. The singer's a Shepard's Bush geezer who wants everything to be a big laugh and when it isn't, you know, he thinks somethings going wrong, terribly wrong. The drummer is a sort of completely different person to anyone else I've ever met. The bass player just doesn't seem to be interested in anything, you know, which makes it all - very difficult.

• Female Interviewer : In "My Generation" you wrote, "I hope I die before I get old." Do you in fact mean it?

  Pete Townshend : Yes.

• Pete Townshend : [singing]  I'll tip my hat to the new constitution, Take a bow for the new revolution, Smile and grin at the change all around, Pick up my guitar and play, Just like yesterday, Then I'll get on my knees and pray

  Roger Daltrey : We don't get fooled again, Don't get fooled again! No, no! No, no, no! Don't get fooled again - - - - - Yeah! Meet the new boss, Whoa! Same as the old boss

• Pete Townshend : It's, "You've got to go on, man. Otherwise, all those kids, they'll be finished! They'll have nothing to live for." That's rock-n-roll.

• Pete Townshend : No good. We can't go on doing it. It's no good. It's beyond the beyond.

• Pete Townshend : Pop music is crucial to today's art. And it's crucial that it should remain art. And it is crucial that it should progress as art.

• Tom Smothers : Where did you get that unique way of playing guitar?

  Pete Townshend : From bowling.