Quote

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.'

Pete Townshend

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Pete Townshend
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: May 19
Banjoist
Composer
Guitarist
Mandolinist
Musician
Screenwriter
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
London
England
Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend
00122214237 IPI
00054760672 IPI
Rocks
Reflecting
Called
Elegance
Audience
Pops
Society
Holding
Rather
Roll
Felt
Mirror
Philosophically
Music
Mirrors
Reflective
Something
Rock
Spiritually

More quotes by Pete Townshend

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We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer.
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I don't need to fight / To prove I'm right / I don't need to be forgiven
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I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man.
Pete Townshend
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Respect yourself. Try to remember that not everything in life can be perfect. You will make mistakes. That's inevitable. But you are not ugly. You will only be ugly when you behave in an ugly way.
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Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood.
Pete Townshend
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Most of my songs are about Jesus. Most of my songs are about the idea that there is salvation, and that there is a Savior. But I won't mention his name in a song just to get a cheap play.
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When I grew up, what was interesting for me was that music was color and life was gray. So music for me has always been more than entertainment.
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I don't really know any other musicians like me. I grew up backstage with my dad who played in a post-war dance band, so I always feel at home at a venue.
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Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired.
Pete Townshend
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Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color.
Pete Townshend
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Man makes machines to man the machines that make the machines.
Pete Townshend
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All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.
Pete Townshend
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What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.
Pete Townshend
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Looking back, I don't know why we needed it to be quite so loud all the time.
Pete Townshend
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The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.
Pete Townshend
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No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned
Pete Townshend
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Deep inside of every human being is this feeling that nothing is ever going to be complete, that the circle will never connect - and that itself is the secret to infinity.
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Good old Pete. That's me. But I find it hard to think of myself in the first person when I'm writing about The Who. So many times he has willingly sat down to write about the good old Who. Isn't he too old to masturbate?
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Enjoy life. And be careful what you pray for - remember, you will get it all.
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Even as age humbles me it feeds my arrogance. There is still nothing that interests me as much as myself.
Pete Townshend