"Pete Townshend, My Surrogate Dad" | My F****d Up '70s Life - Chapter Three
Pete Townshend, My Surrogate Dad
Pete Townshend has saved more teenage lives than all the high school guidance counselors, ABC Afterschool Specials, and supersensitive Cat Stevens wannabes combined. No other songwriter has captured the alienation of youth and the arrogance of authority so perfectly. No one.
I was raised by Pete Townshend and the Who. They taught me how to live by three golden rules:
1. Lead with your heart
2. There's no room for cynicism
3. It's okay to be angry and sad
In the late '70s, I was living in Hawaii, a place you think would spawn countless hours of Polynesian joy. Instead, it was the opposite: a kid caught in the crossfire of divorce, pulled from his L.A. hipster save haven, and dropped on a Pacific rock alone with a double gatefold vinyl of Quadrophenia and some bad skunk weed.
The album centers around a British mod named Jimmy who popped a lot of pills and hung out on the beach. The song titles alone were a crash course in teenage angst: "The Real Me," "Helpless Dancer," "I've Had Enough," "Is It In My Head?," "Drowned." These were songs that knew where you had been, knew what made you tick, and knew how to pull you back from the ledge. Put Jimmy on a Hawaiian beach, turn him into a stoned black kid and you have my twin. Jimmy was everyone's twin: latchkey kids in Chicago, white trash dudes in Texas, outcast geeks in Massachusetts. Jimmy was us all.
Quadrophenia was the soundtrack of my lost Hawaiian Weekend (which lasted two years). It kept me company when I stole my stepmother's car and plowed it into a wall. It was there when I got my jaw wired. It was there when I picked up my paycheck at the supermarket where I was a bag boy. And it was there when I used that paycheck to buy a plane ticket back to Los Angeles. A teenage runaway wandering around just like Jimmy. Now I was living the dream.
I still circle back to Quadrophenia. Not for some nostalgic joy ride but to remind me of what matters in music. Music that feels like life or death. Music that feels like it will corrode your insides if it doesn't get out. Music that doesn't come with a matching lunchbox. Music that, like a good parent, tells you "life sucked for me too, it's gonna suck for you for awhile, then you're going to get tired of f**king up, wandering around, and you'll find yourself on the other side of it ready to move on. If you're lucky."
I was lucky. Still am. More tales next week. This week, I'm just here to give thanks to Pete for raising me right.
Drop by GetBack.com for your daily dose of pop culture pleasure -- music, movies, games, and more.
