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Pete Townshend

13 quotes

Pete Townshend is one of those voices you encounter and immediately want to hear more from. With equal ease, Pete Townshend moved between Music and Sad, finding connections others missed. Discover 15 of Pete Townshend's most memorable quotes, ranging across Music, Sad, Age, Society, and Home. One quote that captures their voice: "It's sad when people break up."

“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

Music

All Quotes by Pete Townshend

“What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.”

— Pete Townshend

Music

“Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.”

— Pete Townshend

Sad

“I have to say that anger is the blanket that comes around me, and that blunts and blurs my sense of proportion.”

— Pete Townshend

Anger

“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

Music

“I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.”

— Pete Townshend

Music

“The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.”

— Pete Townshend

Music

“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

Music

“It's sad when people break up.”

— Pete Townshend

Sad

“What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.”

— Pete Townshend

Music

“We tried not to age, but time had its rage.”

— Pete Townshend

Age

“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.”

— Pete Townshend

Music

“I want to age with some dignity.”

— Pete Townshend

Age

“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.”

— Pete Townshend

Dad