Currently promoting his new autobiography Who I Am (see below), Pete Townshend will be speaking at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on Wednesday at 7 PM. This event is COMPLETELY sold out, but we have a pair of tickets to giveaway to the 27th reader to sign up for our mailing list. The sign up window is just to the right of this post at the bottom of the masthead. (Don’t worry, we will never share or sell your email address, unless you do something really bad on national television and the cops make us eat saltines under hot lights until we crack, because, we must admit, we would not hold up long under those circumstances.) Good luck and godspeed, man!
DAILY BEAST: The 11 Most Shocking Things In Pete Townshend’s WHO I AM
2. He suffered sexual abuse as a young boy.
Always drawn to the water, Townshend begged his father to let him attend a “bunkhouse weekend” on the River Thames so he could go through the ceremony of becoming a “Sea Scout.” Even though he’d gotten weird vibes from the two men who led the program, his father reluctantly agreed. Riding on a large boat with the program leaders, Pete was euphoric. The feeling quickly dissipated when—shortly after—he found himself naked in a cold shower, surrounded by the two adult men. “Now you’re a real Sea Scout,” they said. “This is our initiation ceremony.” The only thing ceremonial about it, says Townshend, was the “wanking these twochaps were doing through their trouser pockets.” Shivering and terrified, he begged them to let him leave the shower. They refused until they had “achieved their surreptitious climax.”
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4. He wanted to have sex with Mick Jagger.
Introduced to the Rolling Stone by his manager in 1963, Townshend found him irresistible, frightening, and sexually provocative. When he witnessed Jagger getting friendly with other members of The Who, a pang of jealousy made it clear his feelings were more than just fascination. “Mick is the only man I’ve ever seriously wanted to f—,” he writes. Specifically, Townshend remembers fixating on Jagger’s body, and how well-endowed he was. The memories are vivid. One night, as the band sat around lounging, Townshend regarded Mick, whose loose pajama-style pants (without underwear) left little to his imagination. “I couldn’t help noticing the lines of his cock, laying against the inside of his leg, long and plump.” Mick’s gutsy sex appeal was contagious. The Who quickly began arranging their “parts” in such a way on stage and in photographs
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5. He nearly died from an LSD trip while on a plane.
Townshend calls his LSD trip on an airplane “the most disturbing experience I’ve ever had.” When drummer Keith Moon decided to drop acid on a plane, Townshend and his then-wife, Karen, didn’t want him to be alone, and followed suit. The drug took effect quickly, turning the plane into a horrific dreamland. The female flight attendant morphed into a snorting pig while music of every genre—country, classic, rock, and show tunes—somehow played simultaneously. At one point, Townshend says he actually exited his body, floating up to the ceiling and staring at himself in the seat down below. MORE
THE WHO: “A Quick One (While He’s Away)”