Pete Townshend Quotes & Sayings

“Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.”

“We tried not to age, but time had its rage.”

“When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment.”

“If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high you'd laugh and say nothing that simple, but you've been told many times before messiah's point you to the door though no one's got the guts to leave the temple.”

“The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.”

“Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.”

“The bad part about growing older is I'm going bald. The good part is my nose seems to be getting shorter.”

“Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.”

“I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.”

“Keith Moon is not interested in jazz and won't ever be a jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.”