Name: Pete Townshend On How He Got His Trademark Windmill Move | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-05-05T22:01:25.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Pete Townshend On How He Got His Trademark Windmill Move | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Pete Townshend On How He Got His Trademark Windmill Move | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-05. Transcript available.

our next guest has sold uh this is just crazy 100 million uh record albums he's
a founding member
of the legendary rock and roll band the who and he recounts his storied life
and career and this
acclaimed a new autobiography entitled who i am ladies and gentlemen welcome
back to the program
pete townsend nice to see him looking at the information here you and i both
have uh tinnitus
or tinnitus yeah how do you pronounce it tinnitus tinnitus describe for people
who may not know what
this is it's uh ringing in the ear that you get when you've been exposed to
very loud noise but you
can get it from other things as well it can be a congenital thing which means
that you just get it
because your parents had it or whatever and it's a something to do with the
nerve the fiber endings
in your ears are vibrating yeah you know right now dave i don't have it badly i
i i have done quite
a lot of new age medicine stuff to kind of help me and a homeopathic uh teacher
a homeopathic doctor
helped me a lot with this so i would recommend that if you have it do you
remember the first time you
noticed it because the first time i noticed i had it it was quite alarming
because you think oh there's
an appliance making a noise and you i walked through the house listening to
anything that was was plugged
plugged in and then i realized oh it's something that's not plugged in it's
your head
well you know for me it started in a delightful way i used to wake up in the
morning
you think i can hear the birds singing
i've never been able to hear the birds singing now i can hear the birds singing
yeah and i'm in a dungeon and i can still hear the birds singing it started
with kind of peeps and
whistles and beeps so it was very much like birds singing but of course it wasn't
helped by
by the fact that you know when i wrote songs i would be at home and um i would
wear earphones and
you know write a really good hit song and i'd go down and say to my wife you
know i've written a hit
i've written a hit and she's just lovely darling i'm just bathing the children
and i go back up and
i get my brandy bottle and i drink the bottle and put the earphones on and it's
a hit it's a hit louder
more brandy louder louder and um and then they wake up the next day and wonder
why i couldn't hear
anything yeah do you think your uh pursuit as a rock and roll singer a songwriter
performer had
anything to do with this absolutely yeah on stage on on stage the who weren't
as loud as they were out
front you know the legend has it that we were one of the loudest bands in the
world uh out front and
people often come up and blame me for the fact that they're deaf yeah and um
and um i'm you know i
have to be very careful to to accept any liability because you know my insurers
would uh would bark
loudly no the the the worst thing that ever happened to me was of course the smathers
brothers show
where uh keith moon went into league with this this guy who was a backstage guy
who's who'd just been
sacked from the show and uh he was a special effects guy and uh keith said i
want my bass drum to explode
when we play my generation and um this guy said i can do that
how big do you want it to be and keith went you know keith's one of those guys
that when he first
heard according to my friend tom right when tom right explained super glue to
keith moon keith moon
went super glue and the next day in his hotel room all the furniture was stuck
to the ceiling
that's what it's for for god's sake now that is genius that's what it used to
be really strong
anyway so so so so this guy who's got a chip on his shoulder against whoever it
was that ran this
mother's brother show packed this cannon with extra extra explosive and it just
so happened when that
explosion went off i was standing right in front of the drum and it went off
with a big bang and i was
deaf for about a month but you know what really worried me is the back of my
hair caught fire
and in those days i had a good hair and and i was pretty keen on having good
hair because it you
know it's kind of it was what we did in those days and it was all gone yeah it
was just gone
and you could see me on the tv show kind of going oh and tommy smothers and i
had agreed that i was
going to smash his guitar i was going to rip it from him and smash it up and i
was just so incoherent
but worried about my hair sure i couldn't do it forget that you were deaf it
was your hair you
were concerned about uh now when we come back uh let's talk about the smashing
of the guitar and then
also kind of this deal you know what i'm talking about i do yes okay does that
ring a bell when your
band um you came from a um a generation a loosely uh applied use of the word a
generation of the great
british uh rock and roll bands uh among them the rolling stones uh the the kinks
and paul would be
able to fill in a hundred other blanks you you guys must have fed off each
other's energy or or knew
that you were onto something or or it was symbiotic in a way wasn't it it was
yeah and and the stones
first shows were in the neighborhood ealing where i lived where i grew up where
my father took decided to
have his home and where his parents lived there was a an art school there where
i went to college
and we heard rumors about this band that played in a place called the ealing
club which was where this
guy alexis corner started the rhythm and blues um scene in london and a couple
of the guys in the
stones used to go and play with alexis corner and cyril davis two real
extraordinary early musicians of
of that era probably 50s rather than 60s and um so we were and you know a
couple of the guys in the stones
were art college uh ray davis from the kinks was at hornsey art college we were
all listening to the
same music but we were also subject to the same semi kind of revolutionary
stuff this idea that you
know post vietnam post cold war or in the middle of the cold war uh that that
we needed to change the
way that we entertained ourselves the way that we communicated with each other
and the way that we
represented ourselves to our future fans and this came i believe uh from uh keith
richards something
that you saw him doing is that right yeah we we we were a little band we were a
little r b band i was
probably still at art college and we supported the stones on two shows they
were brand new they were
young they had one hit with a chuckberry song called come on and uh watching
them met them first backstage
they were all very charming uh as the curtain opened keith richards is kind of
doing this he's coming
like ah you know i think wow that's so cool and and as the curtains open his
first chord is
so i thought it was part of his thing anyway a couple of weeks later we support
them again at a little
club out in in south london and i watch him carefully waiting and he doesn't do
it so i go up to him
afterwards and i said keith you didn't do your arm swing thing and he went what
i said you know that
kind of windmill thing you know your thing and he went i can't tell you what he
said yeah
like i'm keith richards do you really think i'm going to do ballet and um was
the inference so i picked
it up and i i was inspired by by keith richards in many ways one wonders how
many questions keith
richards has answered with the question what
and then and then a little more demonstrative uh uh killing the guitar setting
it on fire and and
uh that that was the the the genesis for the keith moon drum kit explosion that's
right where did the
guitar what does that came that came from a very you know people don't believe
me this came from art
school it was uh it was an artistic act and if i ever did it today it would be
we did it once right here on
the floor i took this beautiful guitar do you remember it was worth ten
thousand dollars i smashed it and we
auctioned it for 75 000 the next day
it was it was art you know for me well it's one of those times it's uh it's
like uh i don't know it
was like paris before the war or something it was uh great great music and uh
with every great piece of
music uh great great stories uh about the the folks who who made up the uh the
movement that came out of
great britain and uh this is certainly one of those gentlemen right here pete
townsend ladies and
gentlemen who i am