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.
No one respects the flame quite like the fool who’s badly burned.
Punk rock was the tsunami that threatened to drown us all in 1977.
The music we play has to be tomorrow’s, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.
Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.
Like so many addicts, I’d thought that if I could only sort out my life, I could then sort out my drinking. It was a revelation to see that it would be simpler the other way around.
Dance is the only thing that lets you lose yourself and find yourself at the same time.
For a while I was perfectly happy not performing with ‘The Who.’ From 1982 to 1989 I felt ‘The Who’ did not exist. I let the band go, in my heart. However, Roger Daltrey had other ideas. He would not let go.
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.
All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.
What the Who is all about is exactly that and it always has been. If it exists today for this concert, it’s in response again to a function which is happening out there on the street.
What the English like to do is to face reality with a glass of port and a tear and fade off like Basil Rathbone into the sunset.
There’s a man upon that ledge, he’s only cleaning windows. What a shame for the pain we’re missing. Gonna lean back on my wall and pray for him to fall.
I want to get inside your bitter mind and see what I can find.
Prayer TV looks like pay TV to me.
Give blood, but you may find that blood is not enough.
Parade your pallor in iniquity.
The facts don’t always reveal the truth, but the truth always reveals the facts.
Turning something into low resolution data does seem to make it worth less in the modern world.
Water is more precious than oil. Both are more precious than music. Music won’t heat a house or help a plant to grow.
I respect those who follow religious routes only if they seem to me to be morally proper and in accord with the modern world.