Review: Who I Am: A Memoir

Who I Am: A Memoir by Pete Townshend
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Long in coming, this is a rocker autobiography well worth waiting for. (And, waiting for me to get around to it.) In this audiobook, having Pete narrate it himself makes it more personal and adds dimension as he frequently chuckles or sighs in a way adding nuance to key passages.

So, this is not a Who memoir, but a Townshend memoir. Whole Who and even solo albums can be dispensed with by a sentence or two. There is none of the detailed session notes and track-by-track minutiae that often comes with such histories. Now, I like those too. This is about Townshend's career outside of the band; solo career, (book) publishing efforts and more, including his family life, life on the road, and battle with coke and the bottle.

Also in there is him grappling with the realities of his own remembered abuse as a child, being outed as a bisexual, and his child-porn arrest. There may be a lesson for anyone confronted with criminal charges here. While he claims to have been researching for his 2002 treatise, he also decided on admitting he used his credit card to gain access to a child-porn site. The guitarist was placed on the sex offenders register for five years while apparently no proof could be found that the credit card company took the money. (Maybe tht financial insitution was more circumspect than Townshend.)

Something that jumped out at me is while The Rolling Stones get mentioned about twenty times, Led Zeppelin is only-named dropped five times and seem to be a subject that is a present absence and there seems to be a dismissive tone to the few mentions. This made my Google:

"led zeppelin" "pete townshend"

Apparently, I am not the only one suspicious that Townshend harbors ill feelings for that group. One thing that does get mentioned much is his prescient vision for the internet as it would affect music distribution and creation. He seems so spot-on in hindsight on so much it makes me wonder if he could really have had the gift of so much accurate foresight.

This makes me feel a few aspects of the Townshend personality and story could be shaded differently with the perspectives of others close to his life.

Anyway, I had no idea of his deep adherence to Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master who said he was God in human form, and how this affected the Tommy storyline. Also, Townshend is very forthcoming on his awkward attempts to participate in the changing sounds - punk included - while his hairline receded over his boiler suits and Doc Martens. He admits to a lot of unfortunate rage, fisticuffs, and destructive behavior if not to the lengths that eventually subsumed "John" and "Moonie".


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