Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend served as lead guitarist and chief songwriter for the Who between 1964 and 1982 while also joining the band’s sporadic post-breakup reunions. He gained widest recognition for large-scale conceptual pieces, crafting both Tommy and Quadrophenia along with most of the group’s remaining catalog. His initial solo outing, Who Came First, appeared tentatively in 1972; dedicated to guru Meher Baba, the record extended ideas first explored on Who’s Next and drew on songs originally slated for the unfinished Lifehouse project, ultimately achieving only modest commercial returns. Two years later he paired with former Small Faces bassist Ronnie Lane for the 1976 duet album Rough Mix.

His debut proper as a solo artist arrived with Empty Glass in 1980, an effort that moved a million units, climbed into the Top Five, and yielded the Top Ten single “Let My Love Open the Door” plus the lesser-charting tracks “A Little Is Enough” and “Rough Boys.” The follow-up, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, landed in 1982 with diminished results. Concluding he could no longer compose for the Who, Townshend watched the band dissolve after a final North American trek at year’s end. He issued the two-disc demo collection Scoop in 1983, with a second volume following in 1987.

Townshend resumed thematic work via the 1985 album White City: A Novel, which spawned the Top 30 single “Face the Face.” That same year he released the short-story volume Horse’s Neck. To accompany the White City project he assembled the short-lived band Pete Townshend’s Deep End, whose handful of concerts included one that was filmed and recorded, producing the 1986 live album Pete Townshend’s Deep End Live! In 1989 he issued a record inspired by Ted Hughes’ children’s tale The Iron Man; the set featured guest vocals from John Lee Hooker and Nina Simone plus two tracks that included the three surviving members of the Who. A concurrent reunion tour with the band overshadowed the album, which sold only modestly.

Psychoderelict, another conceptual album, surfaced in 1993 to mixed notices and weak sales. By then Townshend had successfully pivoted toward Broadway, as the stage production The Who’s Tommy became a major success, securing him a Tony Award and encouraging further theatrical ambitions. Those projects remained unrealized through the remainder of the decade, during which he instead offered live and archival material—including the long-awaited Lifehouse—via his website while preparing another Who reunion.

Following the band’s 1996 return to perform Quadrophenia at Hyde Park, the Who maintained an active schedule that included frequent touring from 1999 onward until John Entwistle’s sudden death just before a summer 2002 run. Townshend and Roger Daltrey continued under the Who name, releasing Endless Wire in 2006—the group’s first studio album in twenty-four years and Townshend’s first batch of new songs in thirteen. Regular performances ensued, highlighted by a fiftieth-anniversary tour in 2015. That summer also saw the arrival of Classic Quadrophenia, a symphonic reinterpretation of his 1973 rock opera featuring Townshend alongside Billy Idol, Alfie Boe, and Phil Daniels, with orchestrations supplied by his partner Rachel Fuller.