First published 2013
Pete Townshend opens his life story as a young Londoner caught up in the Mod scene, dreaming of careers in sculpture, journalism, and dance before music took over. He reveals how The Who nearly became The Hair, how he accidentally smashed his first guitar in 1964, and how he invented the Marshall stack and feedback that would define rock music. Townshend recounts wild years of excess that nearly killed him multiple times, from cocaine binges to alcohol poisoning to an LSD trip on an airplane where he felt his body disappear. He describes following Keith Moon off a hotel balcony into a pool, getting banned from Holiday Inns, and spearing activist Abbie Hoffman with his guitar head. The memoir traces his evolution from a musician inspired by the Everly Brothers to a composer and writer who helped rescue Eric Clapton from heroin addiction. Townshend addresses the tabloid scandal that haunted his later years while reflecting on a career that spanned decades of creation and destruction. At its heart, this is the story of an artist who planned to write his memoir at 21 but needed 46 more years of living to have something worth saying.
Genres: 20th-century, autobiography, biography-memoir, music, 21st-century, musicians
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, redemption
Setting: Holiday Inn, London
Period: 1964
Audio CD · Harper
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, substance-abuse