In more than six decades of life, whatever wisdom has accrued to me has been in bits and pieces. Slowly, tentatively, with more than a few stops and starts, I have learned things of value. As the old saying goes, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then. However, I can think of one instance where I had a sudden and clear flash of understanding, one from which I did not have to backtrack or engage in much analysis. It was like a nugget of pure truth. Please allow me to explain.
In 1976, I was living on the second floor of a subdivided house on West 29th Street in Austin, Texas. My job, shortly after graduating from college, was that of a delivery-car driver; a fairly poor start on a career, we can all agree. At any rate, I was then an avid reader of Rolling Stone magazine. Whether I had a subscription to that bi-weekly rag, I do not recall, but I read it often almost from cover to cover. One day, I was reading an interview with Peter Townsend, lead guitarist for The Who, then among the top rock & roll bands in the world. I liked them and their music, including songs such as “My Generation,” “I Can See for Miles,” “Pinball Wizard” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Townsend, singer Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon made a heck of a group. They were still fairly young and energetic in the mid-1970s. (They have broken up, had reunions, and Entwistle and Moon have died and been replaced. These days, Townsend and Daltrey are balder, grayer, heavier and not nearly as handsome as before.) I admired Townsend and enjoyed his antics on stage—jumping around and using the flamboyant “windmill” technique with his guitar.
In the midst of reading this Townsend interview in Rolling Stone, I suddenly realized he was yapping and flapping his lips without saying much at all. The interviewer would toss a puffball question, and something like seven paragraphs of Townsend's bloviation followed. And he was not talking about music or something of interest from one of the band’s recent tours. Our boy Pete was philosophizing and not doing a very good job of it. He purported to have deep insights about life which he was conveying to the interviewer and by extension, to Rolling Stone readers. It was pablum, pure and simple.
I essentially stepped back and looked at that page of the magazine. I perceived that he was shamelessly indulging himself and pretending to be something other than what he was—an Englishman who played guitar well. Had I been star-struck before? I would like to think I had not, but I henceforth began to look at the yammering of musicians, jocks and politicians with a more critical eye. Never again would I plow through a long-winded interview such as that given by Townsend to Rolling Stone in 1976. In the ensuing years, I have become a more demanding reader and a reader less willing to put up with baloney.
As mentioned earlier, I really liked Townsend as a virtuoso guitarist for The Who some 40 years ago. He has been generous with his time, energy and money. To wit: Concerts given to benefit racial equity, to help flood victims in Mozambique and drought victims in Ethiopia, to help police and emergency personnel in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 Mohammedan terrorist attacks, to help a musician with multiple sclerosis and more.
Nevertheless, he would have been well advised to give shorter, more concise answers to interviewers and not to be so pretentious. Townsend’s career took a major hit in 2003 when he was found to have accessed a child-porn web site and ended up as a registered sex offender for five years. He told the police that he had merely been "conducting research.” That’s his story, and I guess he's sticking to it.
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