Word: petee
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Since most of the stories rely on series of images, it is significant that all the best ones are drawn from his songs. Pete provides one of the book's more striking moments when he describes his feelings about a woman he loves by echoing the chorus of "Athena": "Just a girl. Just a girl. His broken heart was unfeeling, like shattered glass in an acid bath." (Coincidentally, the song, on the "It's Hard" album, was written at about the same time as the book...
Although the images interspersed in the sketchy prose are sometimes provoking--such as the "fish-slippery pavement" or "champagne on the terraces"--Pete's poetry is absolutely atrocious. Surprisingly, the same artist who penned ballads like "The Sea Refuses No River" and "Blue, Red and Grey" during his songwriting career fails dramatically when it comes to writing verse unaccompanied by music. For no apparent reason, Pete includes fragments of his poetry at the book's beginning, bizarre stuff like...
Townshend also frames a story called "Pancho and the Baron" with a similar kind of dull shlock. This is pretty mean of ol' Pete, since he knows that all his readers really want is juicy anecdotes about...
...most engaging tale is "Fish Shop," which recounts a teenage Pete's frustrating romance with a sleazy girl named Fiona, who may or may not be the cousin of Pete's unsavory friend Bonzo. Already an aspiring songwriter in Acton, Pete tries to distinguish himself from the sordid company of Bonzo and his thieving friends. It is finally his relationship with Jaco, the owner of a fish-and-chips shop and a former rocker, that redeems him by reminding him of the palliative qualities of making rock music...
...even in this slightly substantial story--which comes across as almost a prose interpretation of his bittersweet anthem "Stardom in Acton" on the "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes" solo album--Pete vacillates and destroys his message...