What I’m trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It’s my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it’s very much alive.
Don’t cry Don’t raise your eye Its only teenage wasteland.
Let my love open the door To yourheart.
As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that’s what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.
Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.
But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol’s work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell’s soup can.
It’s sad when people break up.
I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.
Bob Dylan did the first really long record – Like A Rolling Stone – I think it was four minutes.
I bought a Dutch barge and turned it into a recording studio. My plan was to go to Paris and record rolling down the Seine.
I want to age with some dignity.
I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.
I’m only interested in rites of passage stories.
I’ve learned a huge amount because I’ve been tested and, more importantly, I’ve been trusted.
It’s an ordinary day for Brian. Like, he died every day, you know.
It’s like the mod thing is happening again.
Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.
Give love, and keep blood between brothers.
We are musicians, entertainers. We can do it. We have the right tools. No worries.
Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood.