Townshend's 'Excruciatingly Uneven'

By Robert Palmer

New York Times Service

Several readers have written letters accusing this column of "ignoring" the latest solo album from Pete Townshend of the Who, the enigmatically titled "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes" (Atco). It has been out for several weeks and has become one of the most frequently requested new albums on FM, but it is an excruciatingly uneven record that includes some flashes of illumination and some outright maundering.

"I was just 34 years old and I was still wandering in a haze," Townshend sings at the beginning of the album's most affecting song, "Slit Skirts," and that tidily sums up the sort of thinking this record passes off as a point of view.

Townshend has been painfully conscious of approaching middle age for the several years, and his lyrics for albums like the Who's "Face Dances" (MCA) and his own "Empty Glass" (Atco) have been full of ambivalence, self-recrimination and self-pity. Some of the songs on the album get positively maudlin ("The Sea Refuses No River" is probably the worst offender), but that isn't the trouble with most of them. The trouble is that Townshend sounds terribly confused, and although confusion has resulted in some first-class rock'n'roll, especially when it is coupled with anger or other strong emotions, here it is just confusing.

In songs like "Exquisitely Bored" and "Uniforms," Townshend sounds so guilty about living the life of a pampered rock star and punctures the pretensions of his fellow stars so savagely — "they wink and snort their line and say how great their Bentley is" — one wonders why he doesn't just give his cars away and live in a hut.

And what is one to make of lines like "flames like tongues impassioned in a moments burst" and "embraces parting hard steel surfaces revealing pages" and "the peasants here" "look like barrels out in space?" Bad poetry can't be redeemed by even the most stirring rock'n'roll, something Townshend ought to know by now.

Unfortunately, the music on Townshend's album is not even good enough to redeem the lyrics that are more or less palatable. The producer, Chris Thomas, has given the record a glossy sheen that is perfect for FM radio but has no raw edges, no guts. Where are the drums? The bass? Where's that slashing guitar Townshend used to wield so mightily? It is here and there, but on most of the songs it is practically buried in the mixes.

And if Townshend insists on complaining, why can't he focus his rage, instead of wasting it on glutinous arrangements, subdued rhythms, received-sounding melodies and reams of wildly uneven verbiage? There are some good songs here, maybe even a great one ("Slit Skirts"), but overall, "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes" is an embarrassment. Townshend can be focused and tart and trenchant as well as arty, and one hopes he will be again. He owes it to his fans, and he owes it to himself.

Pete Townshend . . . 'terribly confused'