The Age of Anxiety

by Pete Townshend

In his debut novel, rock legend Pete Townshend explores the anxiety of modern life and madness in a story that stretches across two generations of a London family, their lovers, collaborators, and friends.A former rock star disappears on the Cumberland moors. When his wife finds him, she discovers he has become a hermit and a painter of apocalyptic visions.An art dealer has drug-induced visions of demonic faces swirling in a bedstead and soon his wife disappears, nowhere to be found.A beautiful Irish girl who has stabbed her father to death is determined to seduce her best friend's husband.A young composer begins to experience aural hallucinations, expressions of the fear and anxiety of the people of London. He constructs a maze in his back garden.Driven by passion and musical ambition, events spiral out of control -- good drugs and bad drugs, loves lost and found, families broken apart and reunited. Conceived jointly as an opera, The Age of Anxiety deals with mythic and operatic themes. Hallucinations and soundscapes haunt this novel in an extended meditation on manic genius and the dark art of creativity.

Genres: Fiction, Music, Contemporary, Audiobook

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 5, 2019

About the author

Pete Townshend (born Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, composer, and writer.

Townshend made his name as the guitarist and principal songwriter for rock band The Who. His career with them spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the greatest and most influential rock bands of all time, in addition to being "possibly the greatest live band ever." Townshend is the primary songwriter for the group, writing well over 100 songs for the band's eleven studio albums, including the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations such as Odds and Sods. He has also written over 100 songs for his solo albums and rarities compilations. Although known mainly for being a guitarist, he is also an accomplished singer and keyboard player, and has played many other instruments on his solo albums, and on some Who albums (such as banjo, accordian, synthesizer, piano, bass guitar, drums).

Townshend has also written newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, Rocker Pete Townshend wrote this novel. But, it's nothing like you'd expect and is an absolutely awesome meditation on music, art, love, madness, witchcraft, and sexuality. It's more of a character study than a traditional storytelling novel. Think of a narrator slowly and gingerly peeling away the many layers of his life and discovering as the reader discovers what his life has been about. Where does madness end and creativity begin? Where does love end and jealousy and possessiveness begin? At what point does one sell out and is the truth found by living in the woods?

The characters here are complex and, like many a traditional novel, you see their lives, their glories, their errors, their madnesses play out over the decades. Louis lost himself in drugs and his wife ran off. A rock musician lets it all go to live in nature and make charcoal drawings. Two Irish sisters, Siobhan and Selena, and their friend Floss all fall for Louis' godson who leaves pub rock to listen to the music in the void and create a labyrinth of shrubbery for fifteen years. The three women are by turns bewitching and one claims psychic powers. All these lives are interlinked in a complicated soap opera of madness and seduction.

As noted, it's not a classic mystery and not a story of gunfights and sorting through the clues. The prose, however, is beautiful and absorbing. This is a top notch literary work about people, their characters, their motivation, their visions, their grip on reality.

[Hilary "Fox" · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was utterly perplexing.

Louis is a dealer in Outsider art who gets a new client, an ex-rockstar who claims to have seen a whole host of angels. Louis's godson, Walter, has begun to hear the anxiety of the people in the front row at his concerts in auditory hallucinations. Selena claims to see angels and be able to heal people through them. This is just a taste of the host of characters this book throws at you in quick succession.

There is not so much a story as this is a collection of character studies that slowly moves along. The plodding pace would be forgivable if the characters were more sympathetic and if the writing was better. The writing goes from being downright gorgeous, as was gotten in Pete's previous writing experiment Horse's Neck to cringe inducing terrible. Sometimes it goes from beautiful to amateur in the course of a single sentence which is jarring. The characters, while interesting, become despicable in fairly short order through the choices that they make. The whole thing just doesn't fully hold up.

By the end of the book I was left deeply confused and disturbed. I've no clear image of what Pete was attempting to accomplish in this book and the theories I can discern are all troubling to me. There was a bit too much of his own life present between these coves and it offered glimpses that I'd really rather not have seen. I wish I had enjoyed this book more. I wish it had been more like Horse's Neck which I quite adore.

At the very least I hope he eventually does release the album that accompanies this book to perhaps shed a bit more light upon it and what he was attempting to do through this writing experiment.

[Keshia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Self indulgent novel about self obsessed characters.
I was intrigued by the synopsis of the novel, thinking it would be told from different povs about their difference experiences with anxiety, drugs, and spirituality...but that’s a hard no.
We get a story told from a godfather (ex druggie, abandon husband, art dealer) POV about his godson (rock star and as the story continues douche) and how he navigates an existential crisis within himself and those around him.
Definitely wouldn’t recommend.

[Gary Daly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like reading a teen romance novel. There are some but very few good passages in this novel. For me a tortured and agonising reading experience. The constant reference to young ‘sexy’ women all falling head over heels in and out of love with a herd of boring and rich boorish artists. The characters, an old rocker, the new kid on the block who in turn becomes an old rocker returns to the stage after a fifteen year hiatus of gardening. The comeback is the main scheme of narrative in this pot boiling reminiscence of the new/old rocker by his uncle, an art dealer! Erratic storytelling and a bus load of Mumbo-jumbo when the original old rocker passes on his ‘wisdom’ to the young (and of course devilishly handsome) nephew of the art dealer. The old dealer in art spends pages leering and creeping over a number of (of course all exceedingly beautiful) young women. Not to say this doesn’t happen in the arty world of rock, but fuck me the porno dialogue is hilarious and sleazy. Pete Townsend throws little of any creative effort into this long overdrawn Mills & Boon romance (Jilly Cooper actually gets a mention in the book as some kind of inside recognition of the novels yawning superficiality). One star because the the cover art is really good.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

RTC

But I have to say I didn’t realise that the author was a former rockstar and I don’t really know who he is/his music.
Which I feel is a good thing because I don’t have the “musician turned author” in the background/prejudices.

For a debut book, it was pretty good. This is definitely a book outside of my usual genre but I did enjoy it.

3.5 stars

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's. Finally. Over.
The story is of Louis, who's an art dealer, a dealer in Outsider Art. It's also the story of Walter, a semi famous harmonica player for a rock band. Walter think's he going insane and hearing the feelings of the people in the audience. This is also, most poignantly, a story about Selena a self professed 'dealer in angelic miracles'. She sees and speaks with angels of all sorts, heals the sick, councils the lost, etc. There are various wives, daughters, lovers, some interchangeable as the story goes on, band mates, band manager, old rock stars who've lost their marbles. And wrapping all throughout the book we get pages and pages of Walter's written description of his visions. After the first ten interludes or so I just skimmed. It was dark, pretentious, mostly boring. Sadly so was the dialog, especially the female characters. Their conversations were horribly stilted and unbelievable. Oh, did I mention drugs? Not actually IN the story but in the flashbacks or forwards or segues sideways. This story meandered from the present to the past, then further into the past then popping into the present to say hi before jetting off somewhen else. It was a truly confusing mishmash and to be honest I only finished to see if there was any magnificent twist at the end. Or was there? Sorry Pete, stick to music.

[Nathaniel]

Bought this at a library sale. I can see why they didn’t want it in their system.

[Sophie Perry · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a fan of The Who and musician/writer myself I really wanted to like this book. The premise was interesting and it started off ok. I was very intrigued by the two characters Old Nick and Walter who were having strange visions/aural hallucinations respectively. Actually one of the big issues I have with the book is that I wish it was told from Walter’s perspective. Instead though Townsend’s main character is the art dealer Louis Doxtader who is a collection of character flaws-self absorbed, lecherous, etc. and whose redeeming qualities seem few and far between. (Please understand this is not to say I don’t appreciate a flawed character but when a character is presented as a protagonist there should be something that you like/want to root for.) Unfortunately many of the characters in this book seemed shallow and self absorbed though it’s hard to tell whether some of them are actually this way or whether that is a consequence of our unreliable narrator.
Unfortunately this brings me to the portrayals of women in the book that pretty much run that gamut of shallow to outright misogynistic. The narrator’s view is the male gaze on steroids as many of the women are described in terms of their looks or sexuality. (We get it! She’s hot and has boobs! Move on already!) In many cases the women are painted as being catty with each other to the point of outright hatred while being in awe of the men in their lives. Even in the cases where women are shown as friends (such as Floss and Selina) the bond is tenuous and fraught with tension.
This actually brings me to the worst part of the book where it’s revealed that at Walter’s first wedding to Siobhan, Selina witnesses Floss get raped by either Louis or Ronnie while drunk/high. (I say either because while Selina tells Louis it’s him Ronnie admits to it and Selina then admits to lying to Louis but by this point she has proven herself to be such a lying conniving little character that honestly I don’t think she knows what the truth is.) I had already been having doubts about the validity of this “friendship” when Selina seduced Walter (at that point in the book Floss’s husband) but watching Floss get raped and not doing anything??? She has no right to call herself a friend. Friends don’t let friends get raped.
So TLDR: a promising premise that fell apart due to an awful protagonist, shallow characters/relationships, and a rape that is glossed over and probably didn’t need to be part of the plot in the first place.

[Joshua · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t buy this because I thought I’d like the story or the writing. I bought it because I’m hoping it will enhance my appreciation of Who (or whatever the next album is called). There is some precedent. I’d loved the White City album for years, but it wasn’t until I the script of its companion “novel,” that I understood what half the songs were about. Age of Anxiety is almost certainly meant to be seen as another facet of the Lifehouse/Boy Who Heard Music concept, but its narrator shares even more history with the author than Ray High, and so do some of the other characters. So, without spoilers: the story is shite, the writing is shite, but the jury is still out; we need to hear the album.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a week since I finished this...and I'm still thinking...reflecting...researching. Pete Townshend (yes, THAT Townshend) has written a novel about art and music and madness. About waiting for inspiration. About drugs and broken relationships and redemption. And I'm just as confused by it all as I was reading it...but sometimes you don't have to understand...you just listen, or watch, or view. You just let the words wash over you.

There IS a story...beginning with the rock star who makes a movie, and then disappears into the wilds for years, only to return as Old Crazy Nik, now a visual artist and visionary. Or a visionary visual artist.

Louis, a bit of a reprobate, an art dealer, a failed husband, a devoted god-father. A drunk and druggie...reformed, maybe.

And Walter. Louis's god-son. Quirky musician with a cult following, leader of a band with strong personalities and ideas of where the group should go...Walter who begins to hear other's anxious feelings and thoughts.

These three characters and their stories don't have the gravitas, I don't think, to hold the center here, but Townshend makes me care about them, Walter especially. Walter seems the most vulnerable and the one who loves without any conditions.

In one interview, Townshend said his goal was to write about strong women...but I didn't feel that. Selena thinks she's manipulating events, Louis's ex wife keeps secrets, as does Walter's...

There was, ultimately, an unfinished feeling about the book...while strings of narrative were all woven together at the end, a little TOO coincidentally, it didn't satisfy the way I'd hoped. But the journey never promised satisfaction (Whoops...wrong rock band). It promised a journey into a creative mind that astounds us all.

Discussing the book with my friend who recommended it, he has a theory about the garbled relationships at the end, that also account for the time between Townshend's 'author's note' and the actual publishing date.

And that actually follows with Old Nik's theory that you can't force creativity...that you must wait for inspiration...and you must be true to that inspiration, even if audiences don't quite 'get you.' Walter listens to Nik, and creates avant-garde soundscapes of all the anxiety he hears. Louis listens, and finally creates a kind of peace in his life. And maybe Townshend listened to Nik and let his story sit.

This is a work by an artist with more ideas in his head and heart than he can ever put on paper, or in a song. I wonder if his talent is a burden, as it appears for Nik and for Walter.

OH, and listening to it as I walked, I stopped in my tracks when I heard Louis, the narrator talk (twice) about the "Doors of Perception." Talk about double allusion. One more example of Townshend's genius being bigger than this book could contain.

[Mario Valento · Rating 1 out of 5]

God awful

[Brittney Gibbon · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Footsteps fleeing, footsteps following. A chase. A clearing. A cleaning. A cleansing of woodland, jungle, wild animals, human body and soul. And then the clunk, click, clank of huge switches being thrown, the buzz of brilliance and electrons. Blinded again, by brilliance, the future, by fear, by anxiety and shame.”

Welcome to The Age of Anxiety. A sprawling tale, spanning the entire lifetime of some of the characters within it, intercepted by ‘soundscapes’ like the one above. Walter, the rockstar of the piece, is on the verge of an artistic breakthrough, or some kind of nervous breakdown (depending on how you look at it) and is adamant that he can HEAR the anxieties of the world. As he and the others around him navigate their lives in their own little bubbles, the narratives are broken up by these soundscapes, serving as a reminder of the anxieties and stresses we, the world, are surrounded by on a daily basis.

I’ll take a step back, though. As the blurb outlines, this is a novel containing stories of a cast of individuals. In a lovely touch, none of them are as removed from each other as you, or they, may think. Book 1 sets this all up, introducing each character and their individual plight. Books 2 and 3 bring it all together—each separate narrative weaves its way back into another; the actions and paths taken by each individual inevitably feeding into the actions and paths of another. The execution of this was flawless and had me nodding along in awe as certain surprises were unravelled, and journeys tied off with intricately woven little bows to end them.

The Age of Anxiety is an exploration of all kinds of relationships, obligations, jealousies and insecurities. Human beings are complicated creatures and this cast of characters, all with their own hang-ups and motivations, remind us of that in every step they take.

[M.C.Fuller · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to be about the struggles of ambition and the toll it takes on the soul; I could not have been more wrong.

I know nothing of Pete Townsend, but this book seems like a confession on how he views women.

Louis Doxtador--the narrator of the novel--describes every woman by her attractiveness, even his daughter. Their worth is based on how much sexual appeal they have to the male characters. They are described by the shape of their bodies; "her extraordinary body, statuesque and curvaceous," "a wide and luscious mouth," "conventionally pretty." Every woman Louis encounters, he is attracted to, even if they are half his age. In fact, most of the women he lusts over ARE half his age. Two reoccurring characters, Floss and Selena, he first meets when they are eighteen, and he describes them as "pretty girls." Girls, not women. He almost seems to become obsessed with them as they become infatuated with his godson Walter. He lives vicariously through Walter, manipulating him in his relationships and career, becoming a constant in these girls' lives. He haunts the narrative, hinting at some awful thing that happened at Walter and Siobhan's wedding. Which (spoiler) turns out to be rape. And this rape is just blown aside because it resulted in a baby. Nobody seems particularly worried that Floss was raped, instead focusing on the fact that she can be a mother now.

Louis thinks he is the rapist until at the very end Selena admits to us readers that she is manipulating the story. So, it was never Louis's fault, it was a WOMAN manipulating everyone. I say this in the most sarcastic way possible. Any unfaithfulness or awful thing a man does in this book can be described as a woman's fault or a work of an entity attached to the man. "No, this was not who he was, not the real Walter. Selena had psyched him up (193)." Like, we get it, men are never at fault, men can't help their instincts, women are always in the background making it worse. God, I hated this book.

There is nothing to like about any of these characters. There is no character development. There is no plot. I suggest Pete Townsend should just stick to music.

[maisy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Firstly, this book is categorised under ‘fantasy’ which it definitely is not.

The narration and pacing were all over the place but not in a way that seemed intentional. Trying to connect with Louis was difficult from the start, he was a poorly developed and unlikeable narrator who appeared to have some unresolved romantic feelings towards his own godson.

The characters of Shioban and Selena intrigued me but they were only discussed in relation to Louis’ attraction towards them. To introduce such a harrowing backstory as killing your own father at aged eight for it then not to be explored is frankly criminal. If the whole book had been narrated by Serena it would have been far more interesting.

I cared little for Walter despite the whole book revolving around him. He really added nothing to the story. He had no development in fifteen years and I kind of hated him towards the end. He found out his wife was in hospital but didn’t visit her because he had heard (from a physic who he’d slept with) that she might have been cheating on him. like what? we’re supposed to believe he’s a good guy??

Almost every single plot point annoyed me. Pamela and Shioban (which got no explanation or backstory and was just randomly chucked in for the sake of having a gay couple), Ronnie being a literal r*pist (but don’t worry everyone, he’s gay) and the worst was Selena and Louis ending up together. He is a serious predator.

The ending was the worst bit for me. Louis is revealed to be a (potential) r*pist and instead of feeling any guilt about it, his only concern is not being found out and keeps reiterating that he was on drugs. That he bought and distributed. At his godson’s wedding. So in any way you look at it, it’s completely his fault. But it’s okay because although he was happy to r*pe Floss, he passed out before it happened. So therefore he’s still a good guy! And they all lived happily ever after.

In summary, this book seems to perfectly epitomise the saying ‘men are trash’. Don’t waste your time reading it.

[Melissa Mustain · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Pete Townsend is one of the most gifted song writers of our time. The Who is also one of my top three favorite bands, which is why I asked for this book for Christmas. I had a hard time staying interested in the book, and much of the story was hard to follow. I am glad that I read it, but I'm not sure I would recommend it to others, unless like me you're a huge fan of Pete Townsend.

[Alyssa White · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cover? LOVED
Back of the book? LOVED
Book? What in the world did I just read!?!
Book 2 Chapter 19 was my favorite part! Yup, that is it.
First person, second person, third person, what is it? Sex, drugs, rock and... no, no roll. I honestly don't know how to properly review this. I don't recommend it.

[David]

Didn’t work for me. Many reasons. Poor choice to have a first-person narrator, especially when a second first-person narrator wrestles for narrative control towards the end. Some utterly implausible plot twists. Basic factual errors—which, I suppose, could be on the part of the drug-addled unreliable narrator but don’t immediately seem so—unnecessary passages and verbiage, (he said, critically) and far more tell than show. Well-intentioned. But less well executed.

[Alicia Huxtable · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure about what I just read, but I did enjoy it. It was a bit of a ride for sure.

[Zechariah Montoya · Rating 1 out of 5]

WTF did I read!?!? This book was weird, some parts were beautifully written and then other parts were trash. The story was painfully slow for me, Pete Townsend should stick to playing halftime shows and stay away from writing books.

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Usually when famous actors or singers write novels, I find myself forcing myself to get through them. Pete Townshend is the exception, as this book was a mixture of weirdness that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I hope to read more from him in the future.

[Jo-Ann Duff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pete Townshend is part of the biggest rock band to ever grace this earth. The Who. If you are of a certain age, you will remember them well, but still today their rock anthems are used in advertisements and as the theme tune to one of my favourite crime shows, CSI.

Pete is what some may call a manic genius. He sold millions of records and held stadium concerts packed with thousands of people, he is also the mastermind behind Tommy and Quadrophenia. However, it all went south in 2003 when he was arrested and ultimately cleared of lurking in the dark corners of the internet where child exploitation and abuse is rife. Although Townshend stated that the reasoning for delving into these areas was research on his experiences as a child, which rang true for most, the dark stain has never really lifted, which he refers to in a Rolling Stone Magazine interview. This, along with the decades of being a world-famous rock star, responsible for some of the biggest rock hits ever made, there had to be some elements of Townshend life and certain characters who have surrounded him over the years to appear in his first novel.


Can an ageing rock star write a good novel?

There are strong parallels to celebrities, ex-wives and partners in The Age Of Anxiety and quite enjoyed trying to suss out who they were. It’s a part monologue with the main characters being tied together by Louis Doxtader, an art dealer and a man who cuts a rather lonely figure as the conduit for two manic geniuses along with a selection of strange and beguiling women who enter into his life.

There are strong themes of music, stardom, mental breakdowns, sex and drugs in The Age Of Anxiety, but don’t be fooled by the subject matter as Townshend writes with a sense of humour and the plot unwinds at an even pace without getting too bogged down in anything too heavy. Even the subject of rape, well, supposed rape is delivered in a very personal way, avoiding broad strokes and focusing squarely on one night and two people. If you are at a wedding and you are both completely off your head on drugs, is one, or both able to consent? What if you don’t even remember the evening? An interesting dialogue which I’m still pondering.

Yes, it’s a little self-indulgent at times, but I think we can cut Pete some slack there. If I was the composer of two popular rock operas and sold over 100 million records worldwide, I would probably be a little self-indulgent too!

[ba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tigger alert: This book contains (non-graphic) discussions and recollections about rape

I'm a big fan of Mr. Townshend's music—less so of his interviews and previous writing. As an example I found his autobiography, Who I Am, to be poorly-written and dubious. On the other I felt that The Age of Anxiety leveraged some of the very qualities I disliked about the autobiography (conflation of love, lust, and spirituality which bordered misogyny) to good effect. By writing fiction about several characters which reflect aspects of his life experiences or view of self, Townshend succeeded in getting me to consider his less-palatable (to me) notions without scoffing as hard.

Central to the work are accounts of audio hallucinations and soundscapes, in which fans of Townshend may recognize elements of Quadrophenia, The Lifehouse Project, and even Mr. Townshend's association with Meher Baba. Themes and phrases in the book also echo themes and lyrics from the newest Who album.

The book is no masterpiece, in my opinion, but it is an enjoyable read, and a well-realized novel, which was more than I went in expecting. If you take issue with reports of Mr. Townshend's reported behaviors or positions, you will probably want to skip this, as this does not rise to the level of, say, a Woody Allen film or a Louis C.K. routine—it's not even really worth the discussion of whether a flawed person's art is worth consuming.

As a fan, I found this to be a surprisingly good effort and well worth reading. It's not something I would passionately recommend to someone unconvinced about or uninterested in Pete Townshend, but then again, I'm not really the sort to try to convince people of my views anyhow.

[Doug Trani · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a story replete with more improbable coincidences than “Candide”, it is no coincidence that Louis Doxstader, the protagonist in this novel, is cast as a dealer in outsider art. This book is the literary equivalent. Although Pete Townshend’s writing craft does not rise to the level of a Kazuo Ishiguro or a Salman Rushdie, it is still impressive. Possibly even more so because of his outsider status. When Michael Jordan left basketball in 1994 to try his hand at baseball, no one expected him to be a hall-of-famer. But his performance, especially off the field, was remarkable. The same can be said for Townshend’s entry into the field of creative writing, particularly when one considers that this story was conceived jointly as a novel and an opera. Evidently, there are plans to turn it into an “opera art installation”. Is it possible that creativity, like energy, cannot be created or destroyed? Does it simply shift from one form to another? This venture by a 75-year-old rock star suggests that it does. “The Age of Anxiety” is an amazingly creative endeavor by an amazingly talented individual. This book/future opera art installation is a remarkable achievement for someone who, by all rights, should be well past his creative prime. Pete Townshend, Who Are You?

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably liked this more than I should, but I am a huge fan of The Who. That said, one of my initial thoughts of this book was that if anyone else had written it, it would have likely been self-published. That's a bit harsh. However, at one point, Townshend's narrator aptly described himself as a pretentious bore, or something to that effect. But the book is fascinating primarily because Townshend wrote it: the insights into the creative process and lifestyle excesses were worth it for me. I also appreciated Townshend's struggles with describing certain artistic concepts; he struggled in his autobiography as well. Perhaps due to his operatic leanings, the plot was a bit tightly contained and all-too-neatly wrapped up. Still, it genuinely surprised at times and captured my interest.

[Carole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't feel qualified to render an opinion really, because this was not my type of book. Based on my knowledge of Pete Townshend's life, it seemed that he drew on his own life experience, and his approximate age, etc. Oddly, I am 67 as I read this book. But it relies too much on creativity, metaphorical stuff, and poetry to suit me. I don't read poetry, and I have little patience for high art. I love Pete Townshend and the Who, and have been seeing them in concert before they were even playing arenas, so appreciate Pete's talent. I'm sure the book is good, it just isn't a book for me.

[John DiConsiglio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Who are you? Why, you’re Pete Townshend, the songwriting brains of the Who. In your first novel, you take us on a not-so-amazing journey into a middle-age wasteland of hallucinations & madness. Rock star loses his grip on reality. (Walter, can you hear me?) Weirdly, it’s mostly talking in pubs & leering at pretty girls—more Acid Queen Jane Austen than Quadrophonia. Pretentious, absurd, humorless. (One good line: “We aren't the f-in' Who. We don’t f-in' well sell out.”) It wants you to get excitement at its feet, but you're not gonna take it. I won't get fooled again.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most boring books I ever read. I got a few chapters in and realized there was nothing to hold my interest. I didn’t care about any of the characters, or even remember most of them. There’s no plot; nothing happens except for long, boring stories. It just wasn’t the book for me.

[Jmolentin]

Pete, stick with the music.

[Becky Shepkowski Shaw · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish. What seemed an interesting premise was executed poorly with far too many tales fetishizing the author’s previous excesses.

[Lenny D · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Artists maybe see things differently to you and me. Or perhaps the difference is that they try to let us share what they see.” (36)

You know, I liked this novel. Exceeded expectations. I figured Pete was going to be pretentious as shit, which he was, but I appreciated that he wrote about themes I wanted to see him write about — rock music, fame, creativity — and threw in some really pretty moving poetry for good measure.

I liked the fact that he put it in the first person. It authorizes a very casual diction, which helps him not get too far over his skis. With a sensibility doubtless honed as a rock instrumentalist — where inventively maximizing your limited skill is the paramount form of creativity, and which he did arguably better than anyone — Townshend creates material that he is competent at delivering.

We get scenes of vanilla dialogue that, while never good, move quickly; characters that actually manage to engage and surprise us; a genuinely inspiring depiction of the miracle of artistic creation. (I was inspired to write a song during it, so moved was I by the sonic descriptions! I really appreciated that. Coming from the artist who probably inspired me more than any other, to be finding myself still authentically thrown forth into the desire to create by his work made me happy.)

The plot was suitably complex and not at all what I expected. Townshend does drift extremely baroque with all his high-toned love shit, but then again, this is the guy who tagged himself with Love Reign O’er Me.

I had a fairly good hunch that by sleeping with Selena he had realized that he did in fact love her almost as much as she had always loved him. And yet, if he was a man like me, I can hazard a guess that the love he discovered — and then had to acknowledge — did nothing to reduce his old love for Siobhan, or his love for Floss. (173)

Too much of the novel reads like this, where he uses "love" almost the way Shakespeare did, as this binary and finite stage of a relationship. Annoying.

In this book, we see what life is like for the aged Mr. Townshend: amid an effortlessly (cluelessly) elite cohort of UK socialites, his stand-in, Louis Doxtader (ok?) luxuriates across country homes and posh weddings, art openings and drug-fueled concerts; he has meetings with powerful agent types and personal conversations with the geniuses they market. He is, above all, horny. Even more than neuroticism or inspiration, Louis’s primary propulsion through life is lust, along with the jejune social anxieties it incites. The book is full of women Louis wants to fuck — I think every named female, if memory serves — and though he stops short of flattening them totally, Townshend is honest about the primary dimension through which he views the beautiful women who populate his world. (Actually, I have to say, I really liked this aspect of the book. Gives me hope that the flames of youth don’t need to die out.)

Men want to have certain women entirely to themselves. Certain women are willing to sign up for that deal if they are sufficiently exalted and protected. At the basest level, men want to exert power; women want evidence of that power and the ability to channel it. (173)

Sure.

Though his life is serene, now a comfortable decade removed from a middle-age drug addiction (not sure I’ve seen Pete meditate on his heroin addiction publicly before this) the people around Doxtader are swept up in crises of personal evolution. Walter, his godson, is a genius rock musician who starts to hear disorienting soundscapes that eventually tear him away from his band, Walter and the Stand. He follows his hero, an older rock musician who has had his own seizing artistic visions, and creates a work of cosmic profundity, which are the soundscapes Townshend poetically describes throughout.

As a B-plot, Louis engages with an ensemble of women who are generally after Walter's heart who engage in various forms of conniving. This subterfuge gives Townshend the baffling claim that this story is about how we can't verify the claims that Greta Thunberg makes. I can kind of see it.

I want to focus on the name of the band in the story, though. It contains two opposing dynamics that together defined my experience reading this book.

In the story, Walter is a virtuoso harmonica player for a throwback-blues outfit for which he is the primary creative and frontman. They are very successful among a core group of fans, the lowest level of musical success Townshend knows how to write. (By the way, I loved that he kind of slyly created an alternate history of classic rock. One of the bands in the story is a Fleetwood Mac / Genesis hybrid with the success of 2000s U2… just a reminder that to him, all of what I learned as Rock History was a series of random happenstance.)

Walter’s band is named after a famous pose he strikes with his harmonica right before an explosive solo. Being (stuck) in a band named after a gimmick certainly reflects Townshend’s own experience, the well-documented “pounding stages like a clown” and having audience members shout for his most tropeish stage moves. The performance and to some degree the industry of rock music always bothered Pete, not because he was above it, but because it got in the way of the true reception of his art.

Pete Townshend uses this novel to fantasize about a world in which he was able to use this utterly democratic art form to express the real art within.

We see an example of that in the following section. This is right after the climactic concert at the end, for which Walter has reassembled his old band to recreate his wild sonic visions, not to play the old hits. Part of the reason this is funny is because Townshend famously professed hating The Who and having no romance for it. Yet in this book, he is deeply sentimental about “getting the band back together” — but only for the purpose of faithfully performing this new art, which somehow conveys losslessly to a mind-blown, transported audience:

Many in the audience would no doubt have come to hear rock music. But maybe they had been reminded in some way that the music they loved most would always spring ultimately from them, and from what they deeply felt and needed, not just from their musical heroes. [HAHAHA it is so adorable seeing Pete still having this much faith in the audience. It explains why the yobbos who wanted to hear My Generation again always stung him so much.] Perhaps the audience were the real engineers of the [artistic, abstract] music they had heard that evening? Although they may have been unconscious that they had elected Walter to the stage that night, they had done so, and he had spoken to them as a true artist — heart-to-heart. (241)

All of which is to say that Walter and The Stand represents a liberated prison to Townshend. It was gratifying to see him tackle a subject close to his rock and roll life.

So that was the aspect of the book I really liked. I want to read Pete Townshend ruminating on music & writing and on performance and getting boxed in.

At the same time, just look at how fucking uncreative and random this band name is. “Walter and The Stand?” Named after the pose he strikes with his harmonica? Pete couldn’t come up with a more scintillating name for the pose or the band? Something cool that would actually sound like an artist idolized by the masses?

This is a clunker of an idea, and it wasn’t the only aspect of the book to feel that way. It’s not really Townshend’s fault, I guess. He is an amateur, and in fact deftly made Doxtader a dealer in outsider art as a little apologia for the amateur nature of this novel, itself a piece of outsider art.

Still, Pete really did a good job constructing an interesting, weaving, deeply personal read. Worth shouting out here some of his poetry, which was audacious yet which he landed admirably:

Gasping, moaning, cries of orgasm, women weeping and panting in the pain of childhood, men reeling from punches, children crying, laughter, gulping air, shouts, screams, hollers. What is this sound? Humanity, making its noises. Babbling conversation in a hundred languages, singing, chanting, a face being slapped, a slash of a blade, the sound of a fall, a slip, a slide, the crash of a human body as it lands after a fall from a high building. The sound of a kiss being started, broken. Entreaties, endearments, pet names in endless and absurd lists, meaningless, puerile, sweet, silly. Shouting loud enough for God to hear. Then a painful birth, remembered as an echo in an explosion of brilliant yellow rays.

Nice job Pete! Or this line about death, from a character about to die: “The end, with no date, no time, no sun or moon, nor tide nor moment: Nik just saw it all coming.”

The plot was pretty random — mostly about love affairs and malicious innuendo, set against the backdrop of overclass randiness and high art — but it was interesting by being offbeat.

The scenes of musician idolatry and drug use and stuff were cool because they came from real lived experience. When he said that all of a group of women were after one rock-star guy intensely, you know he’s seen stuff like this all his life. When envy turns a beautiful woman's great cocaine high bad, you know he’s seen that happen. When he talks about Walter being adulated as a genius, well, Townshend was. He's been there. There’s a great moment (72) when Louis sees the band, growing in popularity, get into an egotistical fight that jars them. “This would be a first for the band,” the narrator notes. How many bands has Pete seen this happen to up close? It’s just cool reporting from the front lines of a rock life.

The beleaguered artist thing, the overriding self-pity, I could always do without. (The constant use of the word “work” for any artistic output is vintage Townshend.) But overall, that’s what you’re getting from Pete Townshend. It's all there, good and bad.

Broadly speaking, this is the novel I wanted him to write. Like it or not — and it really was pretty good — everything I know about him and his life distills into this story very richly.