Pete Townshend
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Review by Karl Lozier
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DAD Stock Number: Classic 24/96 DAD 1038

 

  The listener receives a great deal of music and Pete Townshend here. In fact you get two discs full, but they may not be playable on some CD players but are compatible with DVD video players. You'll not hear The Who on this recording and I doubt you have ever heard "Eminence Front" sound like this before. Though very different from The Who, the song "It's In Ya" the last one on disc 2, has more performers than the others. It has Pete on Eric Clapton's old Fender Stratocaster (subsequently sold for charity) plus five other performers. Pete's running commentary says that this selection is a typical rehearsal tape.

Though not a historical review, the selections cover about a twenty-year period. Fans of Townshend probably would enjoy this accompanying booklet seemingly written entirely by Pete. Much of the recordings were done by Pete in most every imaginable way including even an old 3M 8-Track machine and cassette machines. Many of his performances are on keyboard instruments including different pianos and synthesizers. This was due at times to his injury that prevented him from feeling comfortable with his guitar. There is much experimentation here that needs to be heard to be completely appreciated by music lovers or Pete Townshend fans.

I do not think anyone is going to claim state-of-the-art sound quality here, but it is definitely quite good. With all his experimenting with different instruments, many recording machines and techniques I find it difficult to believe that Townshend did this good on all these tracks. Some credit must go to Classic Records for what appears to be consistently good audio quality with no apparent added irritations, harshness or distortions.

I thought of Pete's notes as being like a diary and of interest to his fans and probably to other serious listeners. Classic refers to Pete's writings here as "bringing to life a notebook of his art that may seem to be a bit unorthodox to some". A couple of examples should give you a strong hint of what's different on these two discs. He wrote "Can You See The Real Me" for The Who; here it is all acoustic and slowed down and I would now consider it to be a ballad. His famous "Eminence Front" now is also acoustic featuring a piano and also sounds as if it were a ballad. There's a great many more tracks on these two discs that will be of great interest to at least all Pete Townshend fans. As you probably know, two others of the great original group, The Who are no longer around to be able to perform with Pete.