our next guest has sold uh this is just crazy 100 million uh record albums he's a founding
member of the legendary rock and roll band the who and he recounts his storied life and career
and this acclaimed a new autobiography entitled who i am ladies and gentlemen welcome back to
the program pete townsend nice to see you look at the information here you and i both have uh
tinnitus or tinnitus yeah how do you pronounce it
tinnitus describe for people who may not know what this is it's uh ringing in the air that you get
when you've been exposed to very loud noise but you can get it from other things as well it can
be a congenital thing which means that you just get it because your parents had it or whatever
and it's a something to do with the nerve the fiber endings in your ears are vibrating yeah
you know right now dave and i don't have it badly i i i have done quite a lot of new age medicine
stuff to kind of help me and a homeopathic teacher a homeopathic doctor helped me a lot with this so
i would recommend that if you have it do you remember the first time you noticed it because
the first time i noticed i had it it was quite alarming because you think oh there's
an appliance making a noise and you i walked through the house listening to anything that
was was plugged in and then i realized oh it's something that's not plugged in it's your head
well you know for me it started in in a delightful way i used to wake up in the morning
you think i can hear the birds singing
i've never been able to hear the birds singing now i can hear the birds singing
and i'm in a dungeon and i can still hear the birds singing it started with kind of peeps
and whistles and beats so it was very much like bird singing but of course it wasn't helped by
by but the fact that you know when i wrote songs i would be at home and um
i would wear earphones and um you know write a really good hit song and i'd go down and say my
wife you know i've written a hit i've written a hit you know this lovely darling i'm just
bathing the children and i go back up and i'd get my brandy bottle and i'd drink the
bottle and put the earphones on again it's a hit it's a hit hit louder more brandy louder louder
and um and then the wake up the next day i wonder why i couldn't hear anything yeah do you think
your uh pursuit as a rock and roll uh singer uh songwriter performer had anything to do with this
absolutely on stage on stage the who weren't as loud as they were out front you know the legend
has it that we were one of the loudest bands in the world uh out front and uh people often
come up and blame me for the fact that they're deaf yeah and um and um you know i have to be
very careful to to accept any liability because you know my insurers would uh would bark loudly
no that the the worst thing that ever happened to me was of course the smallest brothers show
where uh keith moon went into league with this this guy who was a backstage guy who's
who'd just been sacked from the show and he was a special effects guy and uh keith said
i want my bass drum to explode when we play my generation and um this guy said i can do that
how big do you want it to be and keith went
you know keith's one of those guys that when he first heard according to my friend
tom wright when tom wright explained super glue to keith moon keith moon went
super glue and the next day in his hotel room all the furniture was stuck to the ceiling that's what
it's for for god's sake and that is genius that's what it used to be really strong anyway so so so
this guy who's got a chip on his shoulder against whoever it was that ran the smothers brothers show
packed this cannon with extra extra explosive and it just so happened when that explosion
went off i was standing right in front of the drum and it went off with a big bang and i was
deaf for about a month but you know what really worried me is the back of my hair caught fire
and in those days i had a good hair and and i was pretty keen on having good hair because it
you know it's kind of it was what we did in those days and it was all gone yeah it was just gone
and you could see me on the tv show kind of going oh
and tommy smothers and i had agreed that i was going to smash his guitar
i was going to rip it from him and smash it up and i was just so incoherent but worried about my hair
sure i couldn't do it forget that you were deaf it was your hair you were concerned about uh now when
we come back uh let's talk about the smashing of the guitar and then also uh kind of this deal you
know what i'm talking about i do yes yeah okay is that ringing bill when you're banned um you came
from a um a generation loosely applied use of the word a generation of the great british rock and
roll bands uh among them the rolling stones uh the the kinks and paul would be able to fill in
100 other blanks you guys must have fed off each other's energy or or knew that you were on to
something or or uh it was symbiotic in a way was it was yeah and and the stones first shows were
in the neighborhood ealing where i lived where i grew up where my father took decided to have
his home and where his parents lived there was a an art school there where i went to college and
we heard rumors about this band that played in a place called the healing club which was where this
guy alexis corner started the rhythm and blues um scene in london and a couple of the guys in the
stones used to go and play with alexis corner and cyril davis two real extraordinary early musicians
of that era probably 50s rather than 60s and uh so we were and you know a couple of the guys in
the stones were at art college uh ray davis from the kinks was at hornsey art college we were all
listening to the same music but we're also subject to the same semi-kind of revolutionary stuff this
idea that you know post-vietnam post-cold war or in the middle of the cold war that we needed to
change the way that we entertained ourselves the way that we communicated with each other and the
way that we represented ourselves to our future fans and this came i believe uh from uh keith
richards something that you saw him doing is that right yeah we we we were a little band we
were a little r b band i was probably still at art college and we supported the stones on two shows
they were brand new they were young they had one hit with a chuck berry song called come on
and uh watching them met them first backstage they were all very charming uh as the curtain opened
keith richards is kind of doing this she's kind of going ugh you know i'm thinking wow that's so cool
and and as the curtains open his first call is no dude so i thought it was part of his thing
anyway a couple of weeks later we support them again at a little club out in in
in south london and i watch him carefully waiting and he doesn't do it so i go up to him afterwards
and i said keith you didn't do your arm swing thing and he went what i said you know that kind
of windmilly thing you know your thing and he went i can't tell you what he said yeah
like i'm keith richards do you really think i'm gonna do ballet
and uh was the inference so i picked it up and i i was inspired by it by keith richards in many ways
one wonders how many questions keith richards has answered with the question what but
and then and then a little more demonstrative uh uh killing the guitar setting it on fire and and
uh that that was the the the genesis for the keith moon drum kit explosion where where did the guitar
that came from a very you know people don't believe me this came from art school it was a
it was an artistic act and if i ever did it today it would be we did it once right here on the floor
i took this beautiful guitar remember it was worth
ten thousand dollars i smashed it and we auctioned it for 75 000 the next day
it was it was hard you know for me well it's one of those times it's uh
it's like uh i don't know it was like paris before the war or something
it was uh great great music and uh with every great piece of music uh great great stories uh
about the the folks who made up the the movement that came out of great britain
and uh this is certainly one of those gentlemen right here pete townsend ladies and
my gentlemen thank you