Saturday, June 1st, 1968

Disc and Music Echo carries an article about Pete's recent wedding

 

Transcript:

 

Happily-wed PETE TOWNSHEND talking . . .

“I went to make my will

—and then I thought:
Why not get married?”

“The only basic thing that means a light is love”

“IT’S TRUE,” says Pete Townshend, “that marriage is on the way out.

“These days people seem to prefer just to live together.”

But Townshend is—since last week—the latest addition to a long, long line of married group members. And he recalls his wedding day to his lovely, tall bride Karen as “one of the happiest days of my life”.

So why get married—and then the week after admit that marriage is a dying institution?

Bliss

Sitting in the brightly-coloured lounge of his London flat with the lovely Karen attending to a tea-tray, presenting the perfect picture of marital bliss, pop-star style, he replied:

“Like most men I thought I’d never get married. I just never felt it was necessary. Karen and I had been living together for about two years and it was okay.

“But then I realised there were so many problems if you didn’t get married. Actually I went to make out my will, because I wanted to leave something to Karen, and then I thought, ‘Well, why not get married? Then she would get everything anyway if anything happened to me.’

“And if a girl is just living with you, you miss out on tax relief, and if you should die the girl gets nothing.

“So we got married. I wanted it to be a quiet sort of thing, but of course families love that sort of thing. And funny enough I had the time of my life at the wedding—I really enjoyed it.”

But there was another—and very important—reason for the decision too.

“I’d like to have some kids sometime, and you just can’t bring up kids outside the context of society. It’s true that illegitimate kids get the thin end of the wedge.

“And then again I might get a brainstorm in about 20 years time, when Karen’s gone a bit grey and got a few wrinkles. I might still have a million fans and I could still get pretty young chicks. So what would happen to Karen then?

“You can call it responsibility, but it’s not. It’s all down to love. No family can get on under all the strains and pressures unless there’s a happy union in the first place.

“You can’t love an anonymous benefactor—like Dad comes home from work, throws his wage packet on the table and then goes out to the dogs. The kids just don’t know who he is.

“You shouldn’t always be continually striving for a change—although ambition, drive and ego are ruling parts of life. You can’t keep away the bad times, but you can’t keep away heaven either.

“It’s everyone’s right to be happy, but then you could think you’d be happy if you had a million or if you were married to Sophia Loren—but in fact it wouldn’t make any difference. Just be happy with whatever happens.”

With his incredible capacity for getting things together, Pete has obviously thought deeply about the whole subject of marriage and worked out the best way to act as a married man. So what’s the formula?

“If you’re married and your wife tells you to do something—just do it. Don’t start arguing about who’s she to start giving orders.

“Authority is out of place—and so is freedom. Neither exists in marriage. The only basic thing that means anything is love, which means everything.

“Marriage is basically hypocritical because it’s applying rules and regulations to something for which there can be no rules—the coming together of two people.

“Love goes beyond sexual attraction and glamour. In the States, Karen and I are reckoned to be a glamorous couple, but glamour soon goes away when it comes up against people’s dirty habits and little things, like you don’t like the way the other person talks sometimes or you think they talk too much.

“It takes a lot of guts to breach your privacy as an individual. But to be an individual is only building up your own ego—the big ‘I Am’—and that’s what makes people hate you.”

His marriage will not, Pete thinks, affect the Who’s fortunes—or fans—much at all. “The whole group thing has changed. Before, guys joined groups for just two reasons—to get fast bread and lots of women!

“I think in the States a lot of fans are just waiting for their idols to get married, so they can break their attachment.

“We’ve got two amazing fans here, called Linda and Lesley, who actually came to the wedding. They babysit for the group and giggle. And they seem to like pop stars AND their wives and girlfriends . . .”

• PETE with KAREN: “If a girl is just living with you you miss out on tax relief.”