Who I Am: A Memoir

by Peter Townshend

  By 1994 I had completed the recording of Psychoderelict, done my first solo tour, put up the Broadway production of Tommy with Des McAnuff, an award-winning hit; the cast album had been a great coup, one of the last major projects George Martin would produce; I had at last managed to get Iron Man to the theatre; and I’d helped cast, rehearse and promote an American Tommy tour.

  Although my marriage was failing, I had a beautiful son as well as two beautiful daughters who were both doing well at university. I had fallen in love, and the girl I had found was slowly falling in love with me too. And I was rich. So what was messing me up?

  It would be easy to point to alcohol, but the problem wasn’t the booze; it was the fact that it no longer worked as a medicine to fix the dire consequences of my self-obsession, overwork, selfishness and manic-depression. Back in London around New Year’s Eve I attended a party at Ronnie Wood’s house on Richmond Green; it was a hoot as always, but I was shocked to wake up the next day and find my Mercedes outside my studio. I had no memory of driving it there. I promised myself this would never happen again.

  I could hear a distant echo from 1962 in the White Hart Hotel in Acton, where I first got drunk as a 17-year-old. The bartender’s words as the pub prepared to close were definite, and final.

  ‘Time, gentlemen, please.’

  26

  NOODLING

  I stopped drinking on 6 January 1994. I started seeing a professional counsellor in London twice a week, and found an informal group that gathered two or three times a week in my neighbourhood for group-therapy sessions and mutual support. I began meeting dozens of men and women who had all suffered as I had, either because of the ravages of drinking or because it had stopped working for them as medicine. I started feeling better very quickly, though I had created a lot of chaos in my life that needed sorting out.

  I was living in The Cube, my studio at the bottom of the garden, and I began looking after Joseph more regularly.

  Lisa and I had discussed my drinking back in December when I had been really having problems with it. She was always supportive and had introduced me to a friend of hers who gave me some telephone numbers of people I might look up in London who might help. Back in August Eric Clapton had reached out to me as well, and through him I met a professional relapse intervention counsellor and was carrying his card in my bag. One night at a party after the Iron Man show in London Karen had been introduced to two of Lisa’s friends at the bar, and realising who they were – or possibly mistaking one of them for Lisa – Karen left abruptly, and I had exploded. Lisa had been wonderful to me, but even before I stopped drinking I knew what I had to do.

  I wrote to Lisa to say that I couldn’t see her again, and that she couldn’t come to London. She responded by sending a book by Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life, with a note inside. It began sadly, then became angry, and closed with a sting.

  ‘I hope you find what you’re getting is worth what you’re sacrificing.’

  I would ponder this often in the years ahead.

  Roger had committed to an orchestral tour performing Who songs, to be called Roger Daltrey Performs a Tribute to Pete Townshend. At some point in December, bleary with overwork and black-outs, I’d told Roger I would perform with him at the first show in Carnegie Hall. In the new year I realised this event was filling me with utter dread. It was a lovely idea and I was greatly flattered, but in my fragile sobriety I was suddenly filled with an unusual anxiety at the prospect of performing.

  When I called Roger and told him I didn’t think I could fulfil my promise, he went ballistic. When Nicola tried to explain on my behalf he raged at her. In a poignant coincidence, while all this hysteria was going on, I heard that Harry Nilsson had died. The secret to being a successful hellraiser, it seemed, was to stop raising hell before hell razed you. I was doing my best.

  The last time I had stopped drinking, back in 1981, I talked all about it in the press, then entered therapeutic analysis and kept quiet. Like so many addicts I’d thought that if I could only sort out my life I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around.

  I took a deep breath, called Roger again, and agreed to appear. The concert was set for 23 February. Roger was rehearsing in London in January, and there would be a further rehearsal with the orchestra and a soundcheck in New York in the early part of February.

  I threw myself into counselling sessions and group meetings. I tried to look after myself, eat well and see old friends. Although my life in The Cube was very basic, my fast-launch Zephyr, a river commuter boat I had had built with my friend Bill Sims who sold me Oceanic back in 1976, provided a welcome bit of peace. I had a few business meetings in London in the first part of the year, and enjoyed the luxury and peace of commuting on the river rather than by train or busy road.

  Karen and Joseph accompanied me to New York for Roger’s concert. I had recently been prescribed spectacles, and wore a suit for the show. I’d decided to play two of my favourite songs solo, knowing they would sound superb with Michael Kamen’s orchestrations – ‘And I Moved’, along with an acoustic version of ‘Who Are You’. On the night my nervousness disappeared. What I did seemed magical, although I felt very detached from it. Lisa Marsh was sitting in one of the boxes with a group of friends, and Karen was in another close by.

  My friend John Hart said I was magnificent, and that everyone else on the show looked like rock throwbacks, but that wasn’t the prevailing view of fans or critics. One critic said I could have been Roger’s father. A fan wrote that she had been disappointed with me, having paid $1,000 for her ticket, because I had failed to have fun. She urged me to enjoy, not to worry so much. Roger went on record complaining I had deliberately chosen not to play any hits.

  In the background Roger and I were in legal conflict over the Tommy Grand Right document,* and how much he and John were earning from the show. Roger also didn’t like what Des and I had done with the play of Tommy. With John he had hired his own lawyers, while Ina and Sam acted for me. Fairly soon we would go to war – it was in the air between us every time we met.

  Karen and I had separate bedrooms in our large suite at the Four Seasons. There was an undercurrent of sadness between us, tinged with her irritation and the occasional outburst. But Joseph, five years old, was such a calming soul that he always seemed to keep us civil. Maybe Karen thought that because I wasn’t drinking we’d be able to rebuild as we had back in 1982; maybe she’d just had enough. I wasn’t capable of divining what she felt, and we weren’t getting along well enough to talk about it.

  Tommy productions were still rolling out faster than Des and I could handle them. John Hart had commissioned one of the first CD-ROM interactive applications, which would go deeply into Tommy using music and video as well as hypertext links and material from my archive. We were both very excited about it.

  Des and I were trying to build what he called a ‘clean-sheet project’, an entirely new play or musical, or even a music-theatre installation (for Las Vegas or Disneyland) that might be built into the fabric of a themed hotel. We were also hoping to persuade Ted Hughes and Matthew Evans to allow us to approach Disney and Warner Brothers about making an animation film of Iron Man. Both companies were interested, but Disney wanted to own the music – that was how their system worked – and I wasn’t ready for that.

  The theatre production of Iron Man closed on 14 February, with tickets still selling fairly well. Ted Hughes arranged for the giant junk-robot man from the Young Vic show to be hung up in a shed at his home in Devon, where I hope it remains today.

  In early March 1994 Karen and I had two sessions of couples counselling. We had both agreed to give it a try. Obviously it was partly for Joseph’s sake, but there was still great respect between us. Whether we were to stay married or not, we needed help. The first session was all right, but the second was less successful.

  Of course the work never stopped, nor did I really want it to. It was a welcome distr
action from my personal troubles. I made my first visit to Frankfurt to meet the producers of the proposed Tommy show, which was to be sung in English. The theatre was in Offenbach, on the opposite side of the river to Frankfurt, which evoked memories of lonely times on the road in Germany with The Who.

  At Frankfurt airport I was instructed at security to remove my jacket. Since I wasn’t wearing one, just a shirt with nothing underneath, I refused. A huge argument kicked off, and my own security man stepped in to try to quieten things down. I duly took off my shirt, and everyone had a good laugh, including me, and we all shook hands.

  ‘Alles ist in Ordnung,’ I said. ‘Kein Problem. Grüss Gott.’

  This had been the first real challenge to my ability to stay calm in the face of mindless authority since I’d stopped drinking. Back in London my recovering friends explained that this kind of encounter often surfaced for ex-drinkers, and that there would be more on the horizon. They all cited road rage as a real challenge – simple exchanges with other car drivers that could turn into out-and-out fist-fights. The secret was acceptance, they said. Only a few months sober, I really didn’t know what they meant.

  I became fascinated with astrology around this time, particularly the predictions of Patrick Walker and Shelley von Strunckel. I rarely acted on what I read, but it comforted me. Some nights I’d wake up, alert and buzzing. Sometimes I’d go to the window and see a fox in the moonlight. I was reconnecting with my psychic, intuitive, animal side.

  The Tommy CD-ROM and meetings about the Toronto show took me back to New York in June. By the time work began in earnest in Toronto, Lisa and I were trying to salvage things despite my renewed bouts of anxiety – and I was also suffering from withdrawal.

  I headed back to LA twice in July for more work on Iron Man (now called Iron Giant to distinguish it from the famous American comic of the same name), and to help launch The Who boxed set (Maximum R&B). I flew back home for Minta’s graduation from Exeter University (she’d taken French and Italian), which was a lovely occasion.

  In August I raced Pazienza in the classics rallies. There was a really bad storm one day after a race, while I was sleeping alone aboard Pazienza, and I spent the entire night fighting to keep the yacht from smashing itself up on a dock. I decided to buy a larger motor yacht to use as home base in Cornwall, and sent Pazienza off to the Mediterannean with a live-aboard crew.

  In Nice I found an adorable little boat, Nuovo Pensiero, owned by Bjorn Borg’s ex-wife. I now had a floating home in Cornwall so I could entertain Joseph without too much discomforting contact with Karen, and have space to live comfortably. I thought I had reached an agreement with Karen that she would stay at our house in Cornwall, and that when I returned to London I would take over Tennyson House. When the day arrived for Joseph to start school in Cornwall, however, he didn’t show up and and lost his place there.

  I called Karen to find out what was happening. She was coming back to London. I moved back into The Cube, and called Fran Bayliss, the High Mistress at Ibstock Place School in Roehampton, where Emma and Minta had been. There was a last-minute place available. Jose could once again run down the garden to see me any time he wanted.

  The Cube had been my composing studio when we first moved to Tennyson House. I was now using the small, narrow room once dedicated to electronics as a sleeping cabin with a single bed. There was a Yamaha piano in the large room, and since my wrist accident I had been using piano practice to loosen up and restore flexibility. My piano playing was improving, especially my ability to pull off basic chromatic runs and some fairly eloquent patterns around the black notes. I allowed myself to drift into creative reveries, recording hours of free-form piano and guitar, something I hadn’t really done much since winter 1981.

  Aunt Trilby had encouraged me to enjoy noodling, a word that is now in the dictionary: ‘informal: improvise or play casually on a musical instrument’. Now, back in The Cube, I noodled.

  I had found myself a one-to-one counsellor to work with, but continued to attend group-therapy sessions. In autumn 1994 I had a call from Alice Ormsby Gore, who was in rehab. She said it was hard to deal with the group therapy on offer because she felt she couldn’t speak openly about her time with Eric. I told her that if she didn’t speak about it she wouldn’t get clean. As much as I loved Eric, I told Alice to take care of herself for once. She stuck to her guns and died, tragically, the following year.

  My counsellor lived in Teddington, further up the Thames from Twickenham. It was a short drive, but often after our sessions I went off to find lunch locally. In January 1995 I met a remarkable young man there, collecting for a charity in the street. He explained he was working to raise money for the orphanage where he grew up, in Moscow. We spoke for some time, and he told me about his background. The story he recounted was to greatly affect the course of my life over the next few years.

  His parents had been addicts, and both had died when he was an infant. He was taken to a State orphanage where boys got up to mischief, stealing, buying and selling small amounts of drugs, running wild. If they were caught by the police they wouldn’t be arrested, simply ordered back to the orphanage where the men in charge would shoo the children out again so they could drink their vodka in peace.

  At the age of twelve the young man ran away from the orphanage to one run by an organisation funded by the Russian mafia. Conditions in this orphanage were far better. The boys were treated well, but were trained in the art of pickpocketing, selling hard drugs on the street, carrying drugs and so on. The girls were kept separate; their fate was bleaker because they were usually coaxed into prostitution.

  The young man’s name was Oleg; he said he was collecting money for a new orphanage in Russia that hoped to fill the gap between the State and criminal facilities. I gave him a few pounds and took his phone number. We shared the same area code.

  I had received an offer to license Psychoderelict as a movie as well as a show. I didn’t know how to respond. There was an irony in all this. Whenever I started work on a new song-cycle or rock opera, I saw myself moving through story, songs, recording, workshop, performance, shows with a new cast and then movies. Finally, I saw each piece as an orchestral score, outliving me for centuries, being performed all over the world. Although Psychoderelict was one of my favourite pieces, I was slightly bored with it, bored too with Iron Man, Tommy and Lifehouse. Des and I wanted more than anything to come up with a brand-new idea we could collaborate on, but we were both caught up in the spin of our personal lives, careers, and trying to manage the future of Tommy. At some point the creator has to let go, and in my life I had never been able to do that – indeed I had been discouraged from doing so by the rock system of endless recycling of old hits.

  Ticket sales in New York for Tommy waned. The show could have survived if we’d been able or willing to reduce running costs; on Broadway a minimum number of musicians is required, so we were paying for five who stayed home every night. The computer-controlled scenery required a larger technical team than usual, and strong New York trade unions made sure every small job was done by a separate backstage crew member. The fact remains, though, that the incredibly slick production in New York was what made the show so good.

  Bill Curbishley had always said that in the New York area The Who had a very solid fanbase of around 450,000 souls who could be relied on to come and see us play, a proportion of whom would support whatever any of us did as solo artists. I’m not sure every Who fan went to see Tommy at the St James Theatre, but by the time it closed in June many more than 450,000 people had seen it.

  I retreated to Nuovo Pensiero in Falmouth Marina in Cornwall whenever I could; I had more civilised living facilities on the yacht than in The Cube. Occasionally I took the boat to the Helford river to be closer to Joseph, who loved spending time on the water. I had a TV set with videos to watch, and a small jet-ski he and I rode around on. The sea is the last bastion of freedom and liberty from restrictions for both kids and old geezers on the water �
� at least it was then. I began to think seriously about whether I could live on a boat in London somewhere.

  Joseph had started at Ibstock Place School, and when it was my turn to run him to school he liked listening to Jazz FM on the radio. He began to listen to jazz albums at home, digging into my large vinyl collection, and became particularly fond of John Coltrane. I don’t know how he remembers our time together but I had a lot of fun, and we made each other laugh.

  Joseph’s favourite game was ‘Obstacle Course’: I would rearrange furniture, drape blankets that formed tunnels and climbing steps, and keep the time as he attempted to break his personal record for getting around the course.

  Paul Simon and I were respectful friends, introduced by Mo Ostin, but had fallen out over his breaking the artists’ boycott in South Africa. He had been forgiven by Mandela, and he was reaching out. He is a towering songwriter, and I appreciated his desire to reconnect to me. He invited me to perform at a charity event for a children’s ambulance and paramedical service of which he was a patron in New York.

  I agreed, then pulled out, then decided to perform after all. He was gracious about it. I was nervous, I suppose – I had no band assembled. I called Billy Nicholls, who still worked as my music director when required, and explained that I had been playing piano almost every day since I moved into The Cube, and I’d like to play piano at the show. I had never played it in public before, and to do so at such an event was a leap of faith.

  Paul’s band was put together by the jazz great Wynton Marsalis. I was using a MIDI piano that allowed me to add other sounds to the piano itself. In New York the rehearsals were pleasant and easy. Paul is a perfectionist, working long hours, but is also a supreme team leader.