Pete Townshend Writing Quotations

The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage.

I am writing better Stephen Sondheim songs than even Stephen Sondheim is writing.

Good old Pete. That's me. But I find it hard to think of myself in the first person when I'm writing about The Who. So many times he has willingly sat down to write about the good old Who. Isn't he too old to masturbate?

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.

If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything.

Songwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline.