Saturday, January 2nd, 1971

Sounds magazine prints an interview with Pete conducted by Penny Valentine.

If anyone has this issue of Sounds, please share!

Thanks to PeteTownshend.net for this clip:

Well one barrel [of Lifehouse] is fiction in the way Tommy was fiction. It has music, a story, adventures in it. On the other side is the story about man's search for harmony and the way he does it is through music. Through going into this theatre and setting up certain experiments... the general thing is that I'm attempting to do… to mirror with rock music the creative process - creation if you like. But the reason why this has to be done is the insinuation I'm making about the audience in the theatre. In other words they're attempting to find a piece of music which reflects the harmony of mankind, allows them to realise that you end up with a piece of music that is representative of the note. If you like, the thread of life. So I've been working on a piece of music that goes from the first single note – oneness – then it divides into twoness, then threeness, then it's rock music. Then it wasn't to be oneness again. From there we go to people. We're the notes, we're the divisions, we're the spearheads - the highest form of intelligence – and we're the people that have got the problem.

I'm not setting myself up as the Saviour of Rock Music. I just feel that the next step has to be made musically. That's why the whole accent of this thing is that music pervades everything - scientifically or mystically vibration is the source of everything. If you accept, for instance, that hydrogen is a note - which it is - then you must accept that humans, which are made up of walking collections of atoms and elements are cacophonies. That's what it's down to finding - a set of limitation we can work in and then accept the challenge and do it. And really we know we're no good just as mouthpieces of people. You have to look and challenge yourself.