Pete Townsend Needs to Go Home

Was watching the "History of Rock and Roll" last night ... presented with all the pomp of "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire". Nothing more enchanting than watching a clique patting itself on the back. Pete Townsend has gone from "cool" to a bad-tempered, grumpy old man whom nobody should be allowed to interview - about anything. Something about all the 60's artists who died: "I don't care if they were your f**cking icons, they were my f**king friends, and they're dead!"

Aw gee, whaddya want, Townsend? A medal? Man ought to go home, sit in his rocker and bitch at the world; that's about all he seems talented at, these days. Funny as hell: that whole "watch me destroy my rotor cuff" move he did onstage was stolen from one warm up move Keith Richards did - once - Townsend thought he was copying Richards and kept repeating it. Richards, when he heard about it, apparently looked at Townsend as though "he were a germ". First time I ever liked Keith Richards.

Had to halfway agree with them on disco, though; one of them (I forget which one) made the comment that the entire disco craze consisted of hoardes of people dancing like zombies to an electronically produced (i.e., soulless) beat - although I doubt any of the dancers were thinking, "I'm representing our generation's sense of alienation by doing this" -- in that one comment, you see the problem: the musicians tended to see everything about music through the self-fashioned lens of their own one-way form of communication; they seemed to forget the public's (or the listener's) social element in that whole disco craze - the social element of going to clubs - "Saturday Night Fever" depicted that element of disco brilliantly. Perhaps it was the public's own own statement, "Musicians take themselves way too seriously; we're going to socialize and have fun without you, by replacing you altogether with some really bad music". HA! Bet that never occurred to a single one of them, did it?

Yeah, the music sucked - big time - but that wasn't all there was to the disco craze. But they were all off in their own ivory towers and British mansions and had no clue what real people were doing anyway.

Originally published:  Nov. 26th, 2007 at 4:07 AM