Pete Townshend Quotes

I am not a technical drummer at all. I'm more from the Keith Moon/Lars Ulrich school of, 'Hey, look at me!' I just get up there and bash.

The first rock stars were incredibly theatrical. Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley - they were theater artists.

Trying to seduce an audience is the basis of rock & roll.

Plus, you know, when I was young, there was a lot of respect for clowning in rock music - look at Little Richard. It was a part of the whole thing, and I always also believed that it released the audience.

The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing.

That was our first major tour and we got a chance to play in front of like 5000 people every day so it was like a Rock and Roll boot camp for us really, we learned a lot and made a lot of good friends.

The best rock musicians are the most exciting people in the world.

Bands in the Nineties seem to forget the entertainment aspect of rock music.

When I'm singing my songs on stage, I feel like I'm doing a rock show, even though I don't think all my music is particularly straight up rock.

Joel? He's the rock star! When you see Joel step on stage... he's born to be a rock star.

We're able to blend and rock any crowd. If you put us on a tour with Garth Brooks, we'll take his crowd too.

The music's rehearsed a lot. All people think about is, they think, in rock 'n' roll, they get the music off right and they think it's okay standing, looking macho. Well, it's not. That's boring. If you want to be a performer you've got to do a lot more work than that.

Everybody has forgotten about showmanship. People don't look like rock stars any more. They just look like regular dudes off the street.

Rolling Stones, Beatles, we gave them all the break they were looking for. All they needed was a good opening act, and we went out there and performed as well as we could... over 15,000 kids chanting.

I went to see 'Shine a Light,' and it was the most perfect thing I could have done to watch that man do what he does in front of an audience. It's primarily Mick Jagger, but they're all so confident and relaxed and in love with what they do, and aware of the power of what they do. It's just deeply, deeply attractive.

After I saw Kiss on stage, I wanted my show to look like the fourth of July. The persona of Rick James was wild and crazy, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

My job is to go out and entertain the most people possible.

Unless the clients want, I don't like to have dancers for my shows. I prefer a rock show look and like performing with a live band.

I had no musical or athletic ability, and I wasn't particularly good looking. Comedy was something I could do for attention.

I know I'm not Freddie Mercury or Ann Wilson, and that's okay. You don't have to be a great singer to sing rock and roll. That's not what it's about.

You learn fast from others how to be an entertainer as well as a musician; you don't necessarily have to get out there and just play - you can be an entertainer, too.

The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.

I love live performance and have huge admiration for people who can really do it. It's the same with music: I'll play a record and think that I'm not really into country or ragga. But, if it's live and the musicians are good, I'll listen to pretty much anything.

In the broad spectrum of the arts, two worlds rarely overlap - the literary world and the world of rock music.

We never considered ourselves to be a good band or anything, we just thought we were playing for fun and we wanted to play music that sounded like Black Sabbath or Soundgarden or the music we were into at that time.