‘Somebody Saved Me:’ Is Pete Townshend's
New Audio Book Worth a Listen?
PJ Media,
by
Ed Driscoll
Original Article
Posted By: Hazymac,
5/23/2022 6:49:57 AM
In 2019, Pete Townshend, the guitarist and chief songwriter of The Who, released one of his periodic works of fiction, The Age of Anxiety. That title would have worked equally well for his new Audible audiobook, Somebody Saved Me. With a running time of two hours and one minute, the book covers the era of Townshend’s life from 1977 to 2002. Those years are bracketed by the death, in 1978, of the band’s legendary hellraising drummer Keith Moon, and 2002, when their bassist, John Entwistle died. (Cutting his audio book off in 2002 also avoids having to rehash the unpleasantness that would follow Townshend for years soon after.)
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Hazymac 5/23/2022 7:24:25 AM (No. 1163440)
There were four absolutely essential British invasion bands that came into existence in the early 1960s, and made it big in America: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and The Kinks. The music they have made holds up, even decades after it was recorded.
Townshend and Daltrey, the surviving members of The Who, along with Zac Starkey (Ringo's son) have carried on, even releasing an excellent new album in 2019. Not surprisingly, it sounded like the Who! In 1965's "My Generation" Townshend wrote, "I hope I die before I get old." Now he's old, and we Who fans are glad he's still with us. I must say that few things can get me going strong like a good Who song.
23 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 5/23/2022 9:38:59 AM (No. 1163568)
Ahhh YES! Magic Bus ( too much).........
4 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Stencil 5/23/2022 10:24:30 AM (No. 1163625)
I love these posts from OP/1. For me, the song Behind Blue Eyes was their best - absolutely haunting.
I will add that perhaps there should be five British "Invasion" (didn't seem an invasion to me but then, I wasn't an American rock & roller) bands on that essential list: The Hollies, with Allan Clarke and Graham Nash, and their Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress, Carrie Anne, Air That I Breathe, et al. were foundational.
Thanks, Mac.
8 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Hugh Akston 5/23/2022 12:35:50 PM (No. 1163732)
I like to listen to Quadrophenia when I'm driving to the beach...and when John Entwistle's bass riff kicks in on "The Real Me" after the opening 2 minute intro of the sound of the surf, I have a hard time not doing another 10 mph faster than the 10+mph over that I'm already doing.
And when Pete's guitar starts off the transition to the title song after that I really have to watch the right foot. Beach, here I come. The quickest 1 hour and 20 minutes of an approx 4 hour drive to the SC coast.
5 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Zeek Wolfe 5/23/2022 12:38:41 PM (No. 1163734)
Sorry, I have no clue who this person is.
2 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Hazymac 5/23/2022 12:48:40 PM (No. 1163750)
Re #3: Agreed on everything, especially about "Behind Blue Eyes," the arch theme song for a listener's (Pete's) sad, dark side. The 'Oo have recorded many great songs, some of them anthemic, but they never did anything more intense than that song. It's quite my favorite, too. (As a guitarist since my mid-teens, this song was one of the first I learned for performance. This song was essential to know. It can be done in several ways, whether hushed or snarling, or something in between.)
Rock and rollers are generally not known for historical understanding, or for political good sense. Townshend is one of the exceptions. When some well know British rockers started hating America out loud in the 'Seventies, Pete publicly disputed them. Born 19 May 1945, after Hitler's Walther PPK (put to good use) suicide as Hitler's Nazi henchmen were being rounded up, Townshend was thankful for what America did in coming to Great Britain's defense. His 1982 song "I've Known No War" brings us a poignant image in the second verse.
"In and out of reach loft the medals are lost / They belong to a lone broken sailor / His provinces now are the bars of the town / His songs and his poems of failure / For his grandchildren can't see the glory and his own kids are bored with the story / But for him they'd have burned behind netting / From the brink they were grabbed And I'm sure I'll never know war."
They'd have burned behind netting for sure. Pete reminds us to be thankful for the sacrifices made on our behalf by noble people who valued a future of liberty more than their own lives.
One other factoid. Ed Sullivan's Sunday night show, which ran until 1971, featured all the aforementioned British "invasion"* bands, plus a few more. There was one British band of that era that appeared on Sullivan a record nineteen times. Who was it? (Okay, it was the Dave Clark Five aka DC5.)
*It was a friendly invasion. The Beatles first appeared on Sullivan on 9 February 1964, to record ratings. In the lead up publicity before Americans got hip to the Fab 4, some journalist called them the "Stampout Beatles." Monday, 10 February at school, we third graders knew all their names. My favorite at first was the blue-eyed Beatle, Ringo.
4 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
DaddyO 5/23/2022 2:14:51 PM (No. 1163804)
Picked up his biography Who I Am going through an airport years ago.. remember him saying at an early age he heard angels singing the most beautiful music he ever heard. I dont think he made it up.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Stencil 5/23/2022 4:49:55 PM (No. 1163885)
Thanks, XI, for the reminder. I'm sure I've listened to I've Never Known War but never really listened to it.
Oddly, one of of my other favorites of theirs played next on the streamer I'm using - Eminence Front. Down the rabbit hole I go . . .
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