Word: townshend
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...bass that looked like a football boot with a neck sticking out of it," and recruited Entwistle on the spot. Soon after that, Daltrey decked the Detour's lead singer and took over the vocals himself. Now the Detours needed a rhythm guitar player. Entwistle mentioned his school chum, Townshend, whom Daltrey recalls as "looking like a nose on a stick...
...greatest bloody triumph of my schooldays was when Roger asked me if I could play guitar," Townshend recalls. "If he had ever said, 'Come out in the playground and I'll fight you,' I would have been down in one punch. Music was the only way I could ever win. But I've despised him ever since...
...were from a working-class background in London. Daltrey's father was a clerk, Entwistle's a mechanic. But both Townshend's parents were dance-band musicians. "My dad's a great player," Townshend says. "Not a cowboy, but a great player. My mom was a singer. She was a bit of a cowboy." The band found its own cowboy, or show boater, one night when a half-drunk rowdy took the stage, displaced the drummer and gave an uninvited audition that ended when he kicked over the drum kit. Keith Moon was a member of the band...
...right clothes and shoes was important. Riding the right motor scooter was important. Gobbling the right pills in the right quantities and listening to the right music were important. All this has been captured well in Quadrophenia; there is a kind of masquerade Mod revival in England right now. Townshend, however, points out that the original Mod movement "was about fashion, but that doesn't mean it was superficial. Fashion, in a sense, is description of events after the fact. And the Mods had great taste in music...
Meaden wrote two Mod anthems, Zoot Suit and I'm the Face, for the group's first single, which was no particular success. Shortly after, the band switched managers, changed its name to The Who, and Townshend started writing his own tunes, widening the focus past Mod to take in all the audience. I Can't Explain, My Generation, The Kids Are Alright were as fresh and nervy as battle reports from the front lines where youth was locked in a tag-team match with the forces of the Establishment...