Pete Townshend Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“I have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion.”

“But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.”

“I've learned a huge amount because I've been tested and, more importantly, I've been trusted.”

“He is the king. If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble', I would have never picked up a guitar.”

“I'm only interested in rites of passage stories.”

“I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'”

“In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief.”

“Some of our early work was two minutes twenty when it actually came out on vinyl, very, very, very short. Sometimes if you made a three-minute record they would make you do an edited version for radio, particularly in America.”

“As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.”

“I don't really know any other musicians like me. I grew up backstage with my dad who played in a post-war dance band, so I always feel at home at a venue.”