{"id":24099,"date":"2022-12-10T05:30:33","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T10:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24099"},"modified":"2022-12-10T10:04:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T15:04:09","slug":"take-five-deep-cuts-from-pete-townshend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/10\/take-five-deep-cuts-from-pete-townshend\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Five: Deep Cuts from Pete Townshend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pete Townshend is best known as the guitarist and visionary songwriter for The Who. But Townshend plays all manner of instruments, and even in the earliest days of the band he created multitrack demos of his songs in his home studio. And Pete launched a solo career to showcase material that didn\u2019t fit neatly into The Who\u2019s body of work. His first solo album, <em>Who Came First<\/em> was released 50 years ago. Here are five deep cuts that display some of the best Pete Townshend solo material.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cStreet in the City\u201d<\/strong> In 1977 Townshend embarked upon a rare collaborative project. <em>Rough Mix<\/em> was a homespun, understated album made with Faces guitarist\/bassist Ronnie Lane. The folk-rock flavored record flew under the commercial radar; in fact it was the fourth album the duo had made together. This track stands apart from the rest of the record thanks to its sophisticated orchestration.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-K3HhFDEFlQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Sea Refuses No River\u201d<\/strong> One of Townshend\u2019s most sweeping, dramatic and emotional compositions is this song, the second track on his idiosyncratic 1982 LP, <em>All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes<\/em>. The album was poorly received on original release but has enjoyed a well-deserved critical reassessment in later years.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jOghvUdWEB0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cCrashing by Design\u201d<\/strong> Following on from earlier narrative works like The Who\u2019s <em>Tommy<\/em> and the aborted <em>Lifehouse<\/em> project, Townshend made a film\/album in 1985. <em>White City: A Novel<\/em> featured superb contributions from Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour on two tracks, but this overlooked cut is one of the record\u2019s strongest songs, with strong lyrics and searing guitar work.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lSrfHfFj8OE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cEnglish Boy\u201d<\/strong> Townshend released his last solo album of new material in 1993 \u2013 nearly 30 years ago \u2013and on its release <em>Psychoderelict<\/em> was widely panned. The conceptual\/narrative work is no <em>Quadrophenia<\/em>, but it\u2019s still fascinating and engaging, and contains some excellent music. Echoing both The Who\u2019s \u201cJoin Together\u201d and \u201cEminence Front,\u201d the opening track \u201cEnglish Boy\u201d sets the tone for the quasi-autobiographical album.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uk23GPnAO_k\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cSave it for Later\u201d<\/strong> Townshend has only rarely recorded or performed songs by other artists, making the choice of this 1982 hit by ska heroes The (English) Beat all the more special. The song was a staple of Pete\u2019s concerts fronting his supergroup Deep End in the mid 1980s.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bT_7JdomlEg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pete Townshend is best known as the guitarist and visionary songwriter for The Who. But Townshend plays all manner of instruments, and even in the earliest days of the band [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1689,2190],"class_list":["post-24099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-pete-townshend","tag-the-who","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24515,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24099\/revisions\/24515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}