Word: townshend
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...first song Pete Townshend ever wrote for the Who was called I Can't Explain. The title seemed particularly apt last week, after police in London questioned him for 80 minutes on suspicion of possessing child pornography taken from the Internet. Actually, Townshend insists that he can explain. One of rock's great human conundrums--aggressive softy, poetic guitar buster--Townshend has admitted that he once used his credit card to enter a child-porn site. But he maintains that he went there only because he is researching pedophilia for his autobiography, a book that he says will deal with...
...have looked at child-porn sites maybe three or four times in all, the front pages and previews," he told a London tabloid. "I have only entered once using a credit card, and I have never downloaded." If it's true that Townshend, 57, was sexually abused as a child, that could help explain his best music, which reached into reserves of fear and rage that many other rock musicians only pretend to possess. As both a head-banging rocker and the beseeching man-child who wrote, "See me, feel me/Touch me, heal me"--for Tommy, about...
British law exempts people who possess child porn for "legitimate" reasons. If he had been arrested in the U.S., however, it might not matter whether Townshend was using the images for research. In 1997 an American journalist was indicted and later pleaded guilty when a judge did not accept that he was sending and receiving over the Net pornographic pictures of children while researching a story about online pedophiles. Operation Avalanche, the investigation that netted Townshend, began in the U.S. in spring 1999 when a postal inspector came across Landslide, a husband-and-wife operation out of Fort Worth, Texas...
...ARRESTED. PETE TOWNSHEND, 57, legendary guitarist of the seminal 1960s rock group the Who; on suspicion of possessing, making and incitement to distribute indecent images of children; in London. Townshend admitted to visiting child-porn websites as part of research for an autobiography exploring the possibility of his own childhood sexual abuse...
DIED. LONNIE DONEGAN, 71, Scottish rock and blues musician who in the 1950s introduced Britain to "skiffle"--a precursor to rock 'n' roll that combines folk, jug band, country, jazz and blues--inspiring musicians like John Lennon, Van Morrison and Pete Townshend; after a long battle with heart ailments; in Peterborough, England. Among his hits were Rock Island Line and Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (on the Bedpost Overnight...