I was a bigger fan of the Who when I was younger, but I still have a healthy respect for the band's place in rock history (a healthier respect than I have for the Stones). I haven't bothered checking out his solo material, but this article makes me think I should. (A perceptive mind, though, is no guarantee of a musician's appeal to me: I have yet to warm to Elvis Costello, for instance.)
I didn't understand Townshend's well-known dislike for Steve Jobs and Apple's iTunes until I read this:
He is working on another long-form piece called “Floss”, for which he has written about 40 segments and is currently reinforcing the narrative. But will anyone hear it? In the age of iTunes, when we buy individual tracks with a click, the notion of a story-led album seems whimsically outdated. “I’m finding it very difficult to change,” Townshend says. “I’ve been through phases where I’ve wanted to get on a plane and kill Steve Jobs.”I can understand his feeling about his fans without endorsing it.
Townshend used to feel, “like David Cassidy”, he was being buried under so much fan mail that he could never process it. Most of it came from “maybe 400 people” who wrote regularly. They still do. How does he feel about them? “I don’t like fans really. But that’s because they’re my employer—I don’t like the boss. I feel much happier about the record company giving me a load of money to piss away rather than someone coming up to me in the street saying, ‘I saw you in Blah Blah Blah and you were really great —when are you going to do another tour?’ It feels to me like, you know, ‘When are you going to put in a decent sink, or whatever it is that you do?’While Townshend's right that "fans" are performers' "bosses", he's also smart enough to know that fame and fans are always potential side effects of sharing one's art. If you don't like fandom, should you perform? (I don't have an answer. But methinks he doth protest too much.)
(I think I got this from LongReads, but I'm not sure.)
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