Pete Townshend sat down for a conversation with radio presenter Simon Mayo on 2 July for a special charity event at the outdoor canopied Opera Holland Park Theatre, situated in the middle of London's leafy Holland Park. The proceeds from the event went to the Terrence Higgins Trust, to help raise funds for the UK’s leading HIV charity.
Pete's appearance looked fitting for the venue, dressed casually in a dapper summer coat and scarf, and wielding a walking cane to help with his dodgy knee. He told the audience, "The reason why I wanted to do this today was for two reasons. One is it's a fairly unknown venue. I bet a lot of you here today didn't know it was here. It's a really wonderful opera venue that takes incredible chances. But also, the proceeds of this affair goes to Terrence Higgins Trust, which is the first organization that started to raise money and spread the word about Aids. So those two things are obviously dear to my heart."
Photo credit: Horace Austin
The conversation started out with the familiar territory of Pete's upbringing, musical parents, early friendships, first guitar, etc, before moving into a deeper discussion about a major musical project that has been in the works for years, an operatic version of his 2019 novel The Age of Anxiety.
Pete explained the concept of the project, "The Age of Anxiety is an opera that I've been working on for 17 or 18 years. Around 2007 or 2008, I felt I was getting on, and if I was ever going to write another big piece like Quadrophenia or Tommy or Lifehouse I was going to have to get stuck in. But also not limit myself at the time, and take as much time as I wanted to, so like 20 years, and spend as much money as it took, because it cost a lot of money too. But I needed to know what to write about. I wanted it to be in the form, and using the function of rock music. The function of rock music is we write songs for our people, for our neighborhood. The story for me was that I needed to find something that reflected my neighborhood. I lived in what many people thought was the best house in Richmond. It was a beautiful house with rock and roll history. I loved living there, but I didn't really get involved much in the neighborhood. I knew it was a very wealthy neighborhood, there were lots of big cars and everyone's kids went to private school. I started to think I was too much of an introverted snob, I live here, this is my neighborhood, these are my people. So I went out and started to talk to the people of the community, and I discovered that they all shared one issue, they were all fearful of the future. They were worried that their kids would not survive the next 20 years. They were terrified about all kinds of things, global warming, terrorism, difficulties around street violence, and for many traders in the money markets, about the money markets collapsing. Those kinds of things. I realized that how it manifested was anxiety. On the surface they were really happy and well put together, but very anxious. So I decided to write an opera about anxiety. It's called The Age of Anxiety."
Photo credit: David Stark
Photo credit: David Stark
During the discussion, Pete played a few recordings from his iPhone, which included 3 songs from The Age of Anxiety. The first was a beautiful version of Hero Ground Zero with Pete on lead vocals and orchestration. The song was originally released on The Who's 2019 WHO album, with Roger Daltrey on vocals. Pete introduced the song, "This is my version of a song that was on a Who album recently called "Hero Ground Zero". It's written for and sung by an old rock star who loses his mind and finds himself up in the hills of the Lake District, and he goes nuts basically. Roger did a version on vocals that is slightly different than mine, and he was convinced he had improved it. I think mine is better. This is sung by an aging rock star who has lost his mind. In the opera itself, this is the role that I perform, that I sing. There's not many songs by this guy. There's this one, which my wife Rachel is working on this project and helping me to produce it at the moment, and for the timing she said to cut this song, so it may be the last time you hear it."
Photo credit: Horace Austin
Photo credit: David Stark
Pete then played a couple of intense soundscapes that were recorded for the project. Pete described the first one, "In the story there's a young man, he's a rock star who is referred to the older guy by an art dealer. He also suffers from a mental crash, and he starts to hear the anxiety of the people who come to see him perform. Now this might seem like a little bit of a stretch, but it happens to me. I can hear your anxiety. And I hear it as sound. I started to hear music when I was about 11, I started to hear it in the air. For a long time, that's what I wanted to hear. When I was a composer what I wanted to hear was the music I heard as a kid. But now what I hear when I try to listen to the air around the audience, even when I'm playing music, is I hear a sound that's coming from the audience. So I took that as an indication for the story and wrote these essays based on conversations that I had with people walking around Richmond, Sheen and Twickenham where I was living at the time about the things they were concerned about, all the things that worried them. So I wrote these essays and I thought, I'll compose orchestral pieces, but I tried and I tried and I just couldn't do it. What I did in the end was I got a friend Jamie Morgan and his wife Juliette Pochin to do a test, and this is the first one that they did for me. It's a soundscape, and it's something that Walter, my hero, is on stage and hears this sound and interrupts the performance. It's not one that I composed, it's one that I commissioned. I wrote the essay and said to James and Juliette, just write some music that evokes that essay. And there are 14 of them. They provided a backbone to the story. The story is just about this young man who has to leave his band because he suffers from this affliction."
Photo credit: Melissa and Gary Hurley
Photo credit: Melissa and Gary Hurley
The second soundscape was created with Pete's collection of vintage electronic music instruments. Pete said, "I did an electronic version of it. I had this fantastic collection of electronic music instruments, and when I finished this I donated them all to my old university with the hope that I never see them again. I went to a couple friends of mine and said, can we do this thing, this impressionist expression of someone's inner turmoil with an orchestra and a choir, so they can be performed live without any gizmos. Because this would be flying in with electronic music performance. But a couple of the things I've seen in the past when they play electronic music you find in a way it seemed to be about machines.I did the orchestral one and it worked out so well.
With the Age of Anxiety what I've tried to do is lots of songs like Hero Ground Zero, and tackle as a composer the inner feelings that we are all feeling at the moment about the world and the state of the nation. It's the most audacious piece of writing that I've done. I'm actually very excited."
Pete also played a recording of The Ferryman, Part 2, from Rachel Fuller's 2024 musical The Seeker.
Photo credit: Horace Austin
After the recordings were played, Pete took a few questions from the audience. One question was if Pete would ever consider doing another solo tour. Pete said, "I do consider it all the time. When I did it I enjoyed it, I got great reviews, and I put together some great bands. But I never wanted to tour. If I didn't have the opportunity to tour with The Who, I never had the desire to tour on my own. It's much, much harder to perform solo than it is to perform with the Who. Even now Roger struggles with his voice and his fitness and his health. The way he sings is an incredible physical task. I just get on with a guitar and an amplifier, and it's easy. But doing solo work, I have to sing and play, and get contact and mirror the audience, it's a much tougher job. So, I think about it all the time. I've got some solo shows coming up. My Eric Clapton Crossroads event in September (Austin, TX), and The City Of Hope for a friend of mine in October (Los Angeles, CA). If someone asked me to do a charity show I would probably do that solo maybe. But yeah, I'm thinking about it. I suppose I'm thinking at this age if I manage to rope my way up to the stage and play a few songs, it's not going to be that hard, but we shall see."
Many thanks to Horace Austin, David Stark, Gary and Melissa Hurley for all the great photos and videos from the event!
Photo credit: Horace Austin
Photo credit: Melissa and Gary Hurley
Video credit: Melissa and Gary Hurley
Video credit: Melissa and Gary Hurley
Video credit: Horace Austin
Video credit: Horace Austin
Video credit: Horace Austin
