Who I Am by Pete Townshend HERE IT IS!

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                                                                        ICONIC 


(I'm going to be reading and and reviewing Pete's new memoir over the next few days. This is not going to be the syrupy and fawning review by a life long Who fan. This is going to be NSFW real! And Pete is coming to the East End tomorrow....WooWHO!)


So after consulting the index and reading both Ken and Matt Kent's entries I skimmed over the the later chapters and thought...what cack! "Chunderooney" I said to myself as I read a sentence of Pete rebuffing a "mildly Ethiopian looking"  hot chick here and way too much information style references to hooking up with his partner Rachel there. And are my eyes actualy reading that Pete went to a Mankdonna concert? I'm not trying to take the piss with my first world problems folks but f*ck that. This comparatively 'big print" book is really "it"?

As I pathetically customized my Facebook status update to exclude Lawrence Ball, Irish Jack, Michael Cuthbert, Dougal Butler and Simon Townshend I moaned about "not wanting the dream to die" and "free book if you want it" and the best  (and most inadvertently dating one) "I feel Horses Neck was the true definitive bio..." and took it down two minutes later.

Pete Townshend is like Leonardo DiCaprio or Russell Crowe; a star and a myth who can't be mass branded or homogenised to make you feel comfortable-even if you are a long time fan. You see DiCaprio on screen and no matter what he's in, "Titanic" is going to come to mind and instantly you can't really look at what he's doing without seeing this huge overlay of what you think he's supposed to be. But then about ten minutes into a film like "The Departed" you are thinking, "Christ, he's astonishing and this is one of the all time great and most magnetic presences".  Russell Crowe is caught off guard at "In and Out Burger" and he still looks scary and handsome as fuck. Pete is astonishing and resplendent in this exact same way. And I feel like this is Pete Townshend on the big screen; his life squashed down to a few hours and them blown up 40 feet high.

And now I've not really slept much because the book is so great,  starting from the start.  I was about when Pete uploaded an early germination of this memoir and it is wonderful to recognize the bits he kept in. Am I the only one who's noticed that oddly his dark time at his Grandmother's also coincided with the year Meher Baba was in a near fatal and life altering car crash? And that there is no formal dedication. He won't wear Macca's golden suit and hat-ever.

Ken Russell as a biographer of a musicians is smiling down and all around at this book. It's because of Ken that I can see the book as a film and because of Pete that I can hear it and I'm so thankful for that- miserable, crazy and pretentious as I am sometimes. Pete is deserving of his own Ominbus musicians bio and I'm sure Ken is working on it now.

There has been nothing like this book thus far for Who fans and curious Pop culture aficionado/non die hard fans alike.  Just has Tommy "eluded Broadway for thirty years" there has been no major biography (much less autobiography) of this great man so I  literally expected angels, larger than life people and London buses to leap from the pages and what do you know folks? They do!

 BUY THE BOOK PEOPLE!!


He could a tale unfold...."