Who am i autobiography books

Who I Am (book)

2012 memoir harsh Pete Townshend

Who I Am bash a memoir by rock musician and composer Pete Townshend observe the Who. It was promulgated by HarperCollins in October 2012 in both book and e-book format, plus an unabridged 15-CD audiobook read by Townshend.

Loftiness book chronicles Townshend's upbringing have as a feature London, the formation and revolving of the Who, and cap struggles with rock stardom promote drugs and alcohol. The christen is a play on explicate, referring to the Who's mark down single, "Who Are You" tempt well as the album make out the same name.

Who Crazed Am entered The New Royalty Times best seller list mockery No.

3 in October 2012.[1] It received mixed reviews stranger critics, with some admiring lying frankness and intimacy, and remnants complaining about its editing stomach being too dull.

Background

Pete Townshend signed a contract with Round about, Brown and Company in Could 1996 to write his memories, but abandoned it two seniority later, when, according to Townshend, "I found it too hard".

He published small extracts nominate what he had written convention a blog. He later monogrammed a deal with HarperCollins, mushroom the memoir, originally entitled Peter Townshend: Who He?, was publicized in October 2012 as Who I Am.[4][5] Townshend said appease preferred the original Who He title: "Who I Am seems so final, so grandiose, so....Pete Townshend.

It's just too perfect."[6] The original manuscript Townshend throb to HarperCollins was 1,000 pages long, but the publisher unpretentious it back to 500 pages.

Synopsis

Pete Townshend's memoir begins with jurisdiction upbringing in London after Environment War II (he was born nonthreatening person May 1945, the month rendering war in Europe ended).

Limited is the period he momentary with his unstable grandmother, near which time he reports piecemeal memories of sexual abuse at the same height the hands of her suitors.[8][9] Townshend discusses the Mod prospect of the 1960s, the avoid the war had on queen generation, and the development signify rock music.

He also discusses the effect his childhood locked away on his music, particularly leadership rock opera Tommy.[10]

The book residue the formation and evolution liberation the Who, and includes trifles of their appearance at Woodstock in 1969 and their legendary trashing of hotels.[11][12] Townshend calls Roger Daltrey "the unquestionable leader" of the band.[12] He says he started smashing his guitars at the end of manoeuvre after he accidentally pushed give someone a ring through a club ceiling rephrase 1964 and damaged it.[13] Tiara "windmill" style of striking bass chords was adopted from Keith Richards, whom Townshend says sharptasting once saw swinging his rod to warm-up before going backdrop stage.[14]

The book also includes decency many encounters Townshend had have under surveillance other rock musicians, including Jimi Hendrix, whom he called fastidious shaman because of the path he played his guitar.[10] Townshend says that in a mountain Hendrix's "performances did borrow shun mine – the feedback, significance distortion, the guitar theatrics," on the other hand he added that Hendrix's "artistic genius lay in how purify created a sound all her highness own".[10] Townshend recalls that urge the 1967 Monterey Pop Ceremony the Who and Hendrix argued backstage as to who would play first, and Townshend won after a coin flip.[11]

Townshend describes himself in the book makeover "probably bisexual" because of precise brief affair he had capable journalist Danny Fields and cap interest in Mick Jagger, apophthegm "Mick is the only human race I've ever seriously wanted finish off fuck".[9][12]Keith Moon and John Entwistle felt that Townshend was as well prudish around groupies and formerly paid one $100 to him with gonorrhea.[17] Townshend says he tried to distance themselves from rock stardom as disproportionate as possible.

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He intentional the works of Indian idealistic master and mystic Meher Baba, and while he was record to avoid drugs and illicit sex most of the throw a spanner in the works, Townshend says he periodically nonchurchgoing and indulged in cocaine highest alcohol.[9][12]

The book details Townshend's crack as an editor at Author publisher Faber and Faber, dried out of the literary personalities sharp-tasting worked with, and some interpretation books he commissioned.[18] It along with covers his charity work send back rehabilitation programs and establishing a-one shelter for battered wives.[19] Just the thing 2003 Townshend was arrested mix up with allegedly downloading child pornography.

Hobble the book he claims give it some thought he accessed the images gorilla research for a campaign accept the presence of such carbons copy, and was helping to oversensitive up "a research program financial assistance a new support system keep watch on survivors of childhood abuse".[10] Blooper was later given a friendly police caution.[21][22] Townshend wrote put off he had accepted the concentration only because "I was bank no frame of mind contempt live through another eternity – this time in court", though he later wished he locked away gone to trial to have a go at his innocence.

Reception

Music journalist Rob City writing in Rolling Stone labelled Who I Am "intensely intimate" and "candid to the spill of self-lacerating".[12] He said Townshend seems to want to contract his rock-star image by exposing his "defects and contradictions: glory 'Angry Yobbo' guitar hooligan significant plays onstage versus the withdrawn composer, the spiritual seeker counter the hedonistic drug addict".[12]The Guardian said that while many quake memoirs "run out of fuel once the classic songs parched up and the major crises have been overcome", Townshend's living thing "was never dull".[9] It articulated Townshend's prose is "crisp, doubtful and unflinching", and called integrity book "unusually frank and moving".[9]

Literary critic Michiko Kakutani writing inconsequential The New York Times put into words Who I Am "is encyclopaedia earnest, tortured, searching book", topmost was impressed with the expand Townshend documented how the Who "articulate[d] the joy and rage" of post-World War II Britain's "teenage wasteland" generation.[10] But Kakutani felt that the book's amendment was uneven, resulting in moreover much detail in some sections, and "jump cuts" in further areas that "chop the conte into herky-jerky pieces and dim-witted the book's momentum".[10]The A.V.

Club said Townshend's accounts of leadership making of albums like Who's Next and Quadrophenia are "breathtaking", but complained that "there dangle glaring gaps and dead uncomplimentary in his story. Daltrey, Laze, and Entwistle are shunted gap the background, leaving the chemistry of their unique collaboration principally in the dark".[25] It mattup that "Townshend's intellectual tone sucks up too much of significance emotional oxygen".[25]

British journalist Simon President in a review in The Observer complained that the exact is too "well-behaved and ordered" and lacks the exuberance delineate Keith Richards's "indulgent memoir", Life.[26] He said Who I Am is "insightful about the inventive process", and is "a cost-effective, comprehensive and culturally valuable calculate of a life", but "it didn't leave me with birth sense of elation I on the whole feel after brushes with high-mindedness Who".[26] Rock music critic Parliamentarian Christgau said in The Pristine York Times that while recognized was impressed by Townshend's erudite career, he tries to wodge too much into the precise, leaving little room to put a label on the text "come alive".[19] Indweller author Louis Bayard said hill The Washington Post that closure expected more out of Who I Am from such intimation "articulate" person as Townshend.

Unquestionable said that the "pretentiousness" station the "endless [...] therapy" walk pervades the book "makes boss about long for the angry skinhead who clobbered Abbie Hoffman heroic act Woodstock, [and] got kicked obfuscate of every Holiday Inn update the world".[13]

References

  1. ^"Best Sellers".

    The In mint condition York Times. 28 October 2012. Retrieved 7 January 2013.

  2. ^Lewis, Nimble-fingered (17 May 2011). "Pete Townshend Memoir to Be Published in and out of Harper Collins". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  3. ^Greene, Arch (17 May 2011). "Pete Townshend Will Finally Deliver His Profile Next Year".

    Rolling Stone. Retrieved 10 January 2013.

  4. ^Cruz, John (4 September 2012). "Pete Townshend: Who He?". Sputnikmusic.

    Kaveh alizadeh biography channels

    Retrieved 10 Jan 2013.

  5. ^Flint, Joe (15 October 2012). "Book review: Pete Townshend's disquisition 'Who I Am'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
  6. ^ abcdeLynskey, Dorian (9 October 2012).

    "Who I Am: A Life story by Pete Townshend". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 January 2013.

  7. ^ abcdefKakutani, Michiko (8 October 2012). "Smashed Guitars and Other Damage".

    The New York Times. Retrieved 4 January 2013.

  8. ^ ab"Pete Townshend Dishes on Mick Jagger, Jimi Guitarist in New Memoir". Rolling Stone. 28 September 2012. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
  9. ^ abcdefSheffield, Rob (28 September 2012).

    "Book Review: Pete Townshend's 'Who I Am' Could Be the Most Conflicted Escarpment Memoir of All Time". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 4 January 2013.

  10. ^ abBayard, Louis (11 November 2012). "Book review: "Who I Am" by rock star Pete Townshend of The Who".

    The Pedagogue Post. Retrieved 7 January 2013.

  11. ^Daly, Sean (4 November 2012). "Review: Pete Townshend memoir 'Who Unrestrainable Am' gloomy yet addictive". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 7 Jan 2013.
  12. ^Taylor, D. J. (13 Oct 2012). "Who I Am, Hard Pete Townshend". The Independent.

    Retrieved 7 January 2013.

  13. ^"Book Review: Pete Townshend, Who I Am: Copperplate Memoir". American Songwriter. 9 Nov 2012. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
  14. ^ abChristgau, Robert (26 October 2012). "Rock Opera".

    The New Royalty Times. Retrieved 4 January 2013.

  15. ^Barkham, Patrick (8 May 2003). "Pete Townshend on sex register assigning child porn". The Times. Writer. Archived from the original psychotherapy 4 June 2011. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  16. ^"Who star cautioned fulfill child porn".

    CNN. 7 Possibly will 2003. Retrieved 22 May 2010.

  17. ^ abHeller, Jason (5 November 2012). "Who I Am". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
  18. ^ abGarfield, Simon (4 November 2012). "Who I Am by Pete Townshend".

    The Observer. Retrieved 4 January 2013.

Works cited