Word: townshend
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That was the period when Townshend started to push. "I thought we had to do something grand, almost daft ... and possibly pompous." That was Tommy, and The Who finally had what it was after: a general audience success to match its reputation among rock fans...
...Daltrey left, vowing to form another group, and came back a week later. "I thought if I lost the band I was dead," he says now. "I realized The Who was the thing, the reason I was successful. I didn't fight any more ... for a couple of years." Townshend, however, was not trying as strenuously to keep to the path of nonviolence, and, after one disagreement in the recording studio, brained Daltrey with his guitar. Daltrey responded by punching Pete into the hospital...
...better than stewing about for months," Daltrey says, but by 1967, Moon and Entwistle were both fed up, and took a walk together. "I was always breaking up fights," Entwistle remembers, "pulling Roger off somebody, usually Pete. Keith and I were fed up with all the punching, and with Townshend's being so bigheaded, thinking he was a bleeding musical genius." Moon and Entwistle had eyes for a new group, and had even come up with a name and a rough design for an album cover. It was abandoned when Moon and Entwistle returned to The Who soon after...
...Shakespearean fool, commanded perhaps the greatest affection from the audience. He was also dosing himself for disaster, and he began to undermine the group. During an American tour in 1975, he failed to show up for a sold-out concert in Boston and, Daltrey says, "Pete never forgave him." Townshend and Daltrey had wrangled bitterly over Quadrophenia, and during the first half of the '70s each member of the band had spent as much time on his own solo projects as he had on band activities. Each put out at least one solo album. By 1976 the band had effectively...
Torn like a page of parchment, Townshend brooded about all of this, decided that he was finally going to say, "Right, that's it: The Who becomes a business." He expected the others to turn him down. Instead, sensing that he was in a state of crisis, they supported him. The strongest backing, to Townshend's considerable surprise, came from Daltrey. "He said to me, 'I don't care whether we tour or make records or don't make records. I just always want to be able to work with you, always be able to sing your songs and, above...