an interview with peter townsend

Creem — How did the concert go last night?

Townsend — It wasn’t a failure in positive terms, like one of those things where everyone got that same vibe that we got that it hadn’t gone the right way. I mean it felt to me like a salvage operation. I think it must have felt like that to the audience.

Creem - One remark that Dylan once made was that sometimes he had to fight an audience because they tried to cast him into an image that he didn’t feel was his. Do you ever get the feeling that an audience is casting you with their expectations?

Townsend - No, because our image is too closely surfaced, already. We did our image. 1 mean the thing is I think that kind of thing is particular to Dylan and people like Dylan because he really is an image in his cap, but his images comes and changes with each song, each album, whereas our album is like as big as the band, is the band, really. Like when we very first started we were really conscious of being an image.

Creem - Can you describe this?

Townsend — In the early days it was very simple and straightforward. We were supposed to be young, clean-cut, impressive Mods, which you’ve probably gathered by now was a much more clear cut fashion.

Creem — About what year was this?

Townsend — Around early ‘65, late ‘64.

Creem — Is that when you first started playing together?

Townsend — No, we’d been playing together before that but never with an identity of our own. We went through the normal things that groups go through of not playing together, digging other bands, and being fairly inspired by the Beatles’ music, that sort of stuff. By about the Beatles’ second album we started to get ourselves together.

Creem — Can you point to any one song that marks your coming to terms with your image?

Townsend — I don’t know, it was so strange because we were such a . . . you see when you form an image and you’re not a part of it, it takes you a long time to start to live your own hype, as it were, and you do actually become what you set out to be. I mean, living in Detroit [turn the ranks (?)], I mean they really live and breathe that whole kind of breeding of like turn the people, the incredible politeness and the incredible starcraft. We met the Four Tops in England and they were really incredibly charming and groovey and really professionals and stars and stuff. It kind of set up a barrier and we felt they’d really attained probably what they set out to be, which was to be a “turn the mountain” star band. We actually have become what we set out to do and this is very strange. I think if you do set out to become a certain type of person you usually do become it. I was never really aggressive when I was a kid, I was always completely defensive, you know, like there two types of kids, the aggressive and the defensive, mostly the defensive, but we [the Who] kind of came out to our own image of being aggressive and hard and stubborn and image conscious and advertising conscious and media conscious and drugged out and the whole thing and eventually we became it. We became very heavily into drugs.

Creem — Do you think that influenced your music?

Townsend - Well, in the early days it made it very hizophrenic. It made the band very schizophrenic and very unstable.

Creem - In what fashion?

Townsend — Because we were on pills. I smoked a t of grass but was at art school so it was like a fferent trip. I smoked grass with the grass smokers and popped pills with the pill poppers, and so it was quite different.

Creem — What about the Gypsy Acid Queen?

Townsend — I really shouldn t be too hard on it

cause acid is something which tends to pass anyway.

Creem — Do you mind talking or not talking about drugs?

Townsend - No, no that’s cool. We’re completely clean in every respect now. 1 mean this is about tor 18 months or two years. 1 haven’t smoked since last August. I went through that thing of three months feeling stoned cause you’ve stopped sort of thing. I started to feel very straight and had a lot of ditticulty digging music and started to set very lazy with another flash cut half-way into the serial, whereas in England and Europe, T.V. comes over like silk, particularly the heavy station in London.

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Creem — Do you feel sometimes you have almost a sexual relation with the audience?

Townsend — No, its a parallel. Not really a direct connotation. Where the differences are are quite obvious really, because sex is a totally physical experience, and there’s no real physical cohesion, there’s a mental cohesion, and an emotional cohesion and communication, but no physical, not like that Barbarella stuff and screwing from opposite sides of tiie room.

Creem You mentioned that as a child you were somewhat defensive instead of aggressive. Do you feel that this lias sometimes reflected in your playing?

Townsend 1 think the whole group tends to be defensive sometimes. They tend to be like too. aggressive when they’re aggressive and too defensive when they’re defensive. I like that. The professionalism lies in turning up for the gig and going on stage when you’re supposed to go on stage and putting as much as you can into the performance, but it doesn’t come over in the fact that everybody puts on a very slick sort of act, as it were. 1 kind of like the extremes. 1 feel it most of all as a member of the group, as an individual 1 feel pretty well balance'd, but as a member of the group 1 feel incredibly unstable and schizophrenic. ,

Creem — What do you attribute these feelings to?

Townsend - It’s very difficult to be a member of a group, let’s face it. There’s nothing that takes more out of you and nothing which gives you as much.

Bob Fleck