104.3, broadcasting from Radio Free Elsewhere. Your glitch in the airwaves.
The Broken RecordExtra
Pete Townshend
English musician and songwriter (born 1945)
Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend is an English musician and songwriter. He is the co-founder, guitarist, keyboardist, second lead vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Who, one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s.
His aggressive playing style, poetic songwriting techniques and authorship of two rock operas with the Who, as well as other projects, have earned him critical acclaim.
Townshend was born in Chiswick, West London, at the Chiswick Hospital, Netheravon Road, in England. He came from a musical family: his father, Cliff Townshend, was a professional alto saxophonist in the Royal Air Force's dance band the Squadronaires and his mother, Betty (née Dennis), was a singer with the Sidney Torch and Les Douglass Orchestras.
In addition to his work with the Who, Townshend has been sporadically active as a solo recording artist. Between 1969 and 1971 Townshend, along with other devotees to Meher Baba, recorded a trio of albums devoted to his teachings: Happy Birthday, I Am, and With Love. In response to bootlegging of these, he compiled his personal highlights (and "Evolution", a collaboration with Ronnie Lane), and released his first major-label solo title, 1972's Who Came First. It was a moderate success and featured demos of Who songs as well as a showcase of his acoustic guitar talents. He collaborated with the Faces' bassist and fellow Meher Baba devotee Ronnie Lane on a duet album (1977's Rough Mix). In 1979 Townshend produced and performed guitar on the...
Townshend was born ten days after Nazi Germany surrendered in the Second World War, and he grew up in the shadow of reconstruction in and around London. According to Townshend, postwar trauma was the driving force behind the rock music revolution in the UK. "Trauma is passed from generation to generation", he said, "I've unwittingly inherited what my father experienced." Townshend notes that growing up in this period produced the narrative that runs through his music of a boy lost in the stresses and pressures of postwar life. In his autobiography, he wrote: I wasn't trying to play beautiful music. I was confronting my audience with the awful, visceral sound of what we all knew was the single absolute of our frail existence—one day an...
British guitarist, composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and author, born 19 May 1945 in Chiswick, West London, England, UK. He is best known for his more-than 50-year association with the rock band The Who, as co-founder and leader, principal songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist.
Established and owned Pete Townshend's Home Studio (a series of six home studios). In the early 1970s, he unveiled a number of companies under the umbrella of Eel Pie, which incorporated the studios Goring Studios, Boathouse Studios/Oceanic Studios, Twickenham/Eel Pie Studios (in Twickenham, London), Eel Pie Studio, Soho, London and Grand Cru Studios. He sold the studios in 2008.
In 1983, Townshend received the Brit Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1990, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Who. Grammy Award winner in 1994 (Best Musical Show Album, for 572286) and again in 2001 (Lifetime Achievement Award). In 2001, he received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Son of Cliff Townshend and oldest brother of Paul Townshend and Simon Townshend. Owner of Towser. On 20th May 1968, he married Karen Astley, thus becoming son
Also known as: P Townsend, P Townshend, P. Townsend, P. D. Towshend, P. Taušend
From Discogs (free to use). Their entry
Liner notes
Pete Townshend, the records, oldest first
Happy Birthday
1970 album
I Am
1972 album
Who Came First
1972 album
With Love
1976 album
Rough Mix
1977 album
Empty Glass
1980 album
All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes
1982 album
White City: A Novel
1985 album
A Friend Is a Friend
1989 ep
The Iron Man
1989 album
Pete Townshend Live
1993 album
Psychoderelict
1993 album
O’Parvardigar
2001 ep
The Awakening
2003 album
Records from MusicBrainz; covers from the Cover Art Archive.
"A Quick One, While He's Away" is a song written by Pete Townshend and recorded by the English rock band the Who for their second studio album A Quick One (1966). The song also appears on the album BBC Sessions.
In the performance on their Live at Leeds album Townshend calls the nine-minute "epic" track a "mini-opera" and introduces it as "Tommy's parents".
Background
As Pete Townshend showed producer Kit Lambert the songs he had demoed, one was a mock oratorio called "Gratis Amatis". Going from that, Lambert asked about a "pop opera" played more seriously, possibly inspired in the single "Happy Jack", so that it could fill the remaining space in the upcoming and lead into a quick release. Taking "quickly" as the primary order, Townshend came to the title A Quick One for the album and "A Quick One While He's Away" for a song he started to write inspired by his childhood experiences.
Reception
Although never released as a single, "A Quick One, While He's Away" is widely regarded as one of the band's best songs. In 2012, Brian Tremml of Paste ranked "A Quick One, While He's Away" number seven on his list of the 20 greatest songs by the Who, though a list of the 20 greatest songs by the Who compiled by five Paste writers in 2023 did not include the song. In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked the song number four on their list of the 50 greatest songs by the Who.
Covers
Graham Coxon performed the song in late 2004 at the Queens of Noize Christmas Party.
"The Acid Queen" is a song written by Pete Townshend and is the ninth song on the Who's rock opera album Tommy. Townshend also sings the lead vocal.
The song tells the attempts of Tommy's parents to try to cure him. They leave him with an eccentric Romani, a self-proclaimed "Acid Queen", who feeds Tommy various hallucinogenic drugs and performs sexually in an attempt to free him from isolation.
Background
"The Acid Queen" is often grouped with the album's next track, "Underture", a lengthy instrumental which deals with Tommy's hallucinations and his experience with acid. The one cover song on Tommy, "Eyesight to the Blind", may have been included to introduce the character of the acid queen. Tommy's parents take Tommy to the Acid Queen to see if her "lascivious attentions" can cure Tommy of his ills. However, she is unsuccessful in awakening him.
