Pete Townshend: A Minstrel's Dilemma

by Larry David Smith

Smith explores Pete Townshend's artistic struggle between his own creative impulses and those of the commercial public. Faced with a modern version of the minstrel's dilemma, Townshend, early in his career, ignored his creative instincts to satisfy commercial agendas. After his success, he slowly withdrew to resolve his conflict between creativity and commercialism. Townshend's creative vision unfolds against the conflicts and compromises battled with the entertainment industry. A common theme, that of the seeker, weaves throughout the various phases of Townshend's career and highlights his own quest for complete artistic expression free from compromise.

In The Minstrel's Dilemma , Townshend is shown as a musician confronting the same battles begun by early minstrels and later fought by composers such as Beethoven and Mozart. He is referred to as a rock auteur, creating music that reflects his personal experiences and creative views. He is called a seeker, in search of artistic freedom toward personal expression. And at the end of his thirty-year struggle he is a true artist, able to live up to audience expectation while attending to his own artistic impulses.

Hardcover

First published March 30, 1999

Reviews

[JeffBarber67 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clear and scholarly approach to the lifework of Pete Townshend. Townshend has long been one of the most well-documented musicians of his generation--perhaps because he has long been one of rock's most unabashed interviewees, and one most likely to speak at length on what he has written. Since his beginnings in the mid-60s, he has been brash, outspoken, combative, contradictory, but always illuminating. By turns full of passion, violence, wistful yearning, and spiritual seeking, he has put a full body of work out there. This book looks at the contradictory needs of his inner muse and the demands of the audience, balancing his desire to stay true to his art with his equally ardent hunger for acceptance and fame. This is a well-researched book, drawing on many other treatments of Townshend's career, and incorporates existing knowledge into an overarching view of Townshend as auteur.