Exclusive: Pete Townshend's Thoughts on Pedophilia

FOX NEWS ^ | January 13, 2003 | By Roger Friedman

[new cruelty]

Exclusive: Pete Townshend's Thoughts on Pedophilia

The Who's Pete Townshend has been arrested in Britain for suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children and of incitement to distribute indecent images of children, relating to research he claims to have been doing on the subject via the Internet.

The Fox 411 has obtained an impassioned letter Townshend wrote and posted to his own Web site a year ago — and since deleted — which may or may not demonstrate that he was doing what he said he was doing.

Titled "A Different Bomb," Townshend discusses his own difficult childhood at the hands of a domineering grandmother. He writes about the suicide of a friend who was the victim of child abuse, and then observes: "On the issue of child-abuse, the climate in the press, the police, and in Government in the U.K. at the moment is one of a witch-hunt."

"The world of which I speak is that of the abusive pedophile. The window of 'freedom' of entry to that world is of course the Internet. There is hardly a man I know who uses computers who will not admit to surfing casually sometimes to find pornography. I have done it. Certainly, one expects only to find what is available on the top shelf at the news agents."

Townshend, possibly to his own detriment, exhibits in this article a wide range of knowledge on this subject.

"This issue came to my attention when in 1997 a man who had briefly worked for me was arrested in the U.K. for downloading pedophilic pornography. Until then I was unaware of the scale of the problem. I was cautious of openly condemning him until he had been tried. He had performed in one of my musicals and was a popular figure in the soft-pop pantomime of the U.K. music scene. When he went to trial, the buzzword that the newspapers kept reprinting -- that he had allegedly used in his regular Internet searches — was 'lolita.'

"A few weeks into the trial The Guardian newspaper revealed that www.uksearchterms.com listed 'lolita' high on the list of the most searched words in the U.K. ('sex' is often No.1). It seemed to me that there was some hypocrisy going on.

"Who were all these people typing 'lolita' into their browsers? They were surely not all pedophiles. Perhaps they were simply curious of what they might find."

Townshend stated in this piece that he was after two things — one was eradicating child abuse and pedophilia. His other goal was to argue that innocent people could be harmed by a Big Brother attitude on the part of the police.

"Since 1997 I have been attempting to prepare some kind of document with respect to all this for wider publication," he wrote. "My feeling is that if Internet service providers (ISPs) can be enlisted by the police and other authorities to 'snoop' and provide information about customers downloading illegal pornography, they could just as easily filter search terms -- or better yet, practice combinations of such search terms on a regular basis and then block specific site names. Many ISPs do such work. It is part of their regular housekeeping. But pedophilic pornographers are fearless criminals. Banned sites are replicated, renamed and replaced in days."

Now the question is: Do we really know what goes on behind blue eyes? Has Pete Townshend, a rock legend, been maligned in a rush to judgement by an overeager Scotland Yard? Did he ominously predict his own fate? Or is there a kernel of truth to the allegations? For all of that, we will have to wait and see.

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[Chad Fairbanks]

Worst case, he's a sick pervert, Best case he was a dumbass...

[GirlShortstop]

The Who's Pete Townshend has been arrested in Britain for suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children and of incitement to distribute indecent images of children, relating to research he claims to have been doing on the subject via the Internet.

What sort of "research" would require producing kiddie porn?!  My hunch is that Peter is a card-carrying member of NAMBLA.... Rough Boys comes to mind.

Tough boys, running the streets, come a little closer
Rough toys, under the sheets, nobody knows her
Rough boys, don't walk away, I very nearly missed you
Tough boys, come over here, I wanna bite and kiss you

[visualops]

>>suspicion of making and possessing indecent images<<

It's possible that is simply the 'charge'; in other words the description of the illegal actions covered by the law on the books, not that he necessarily did it all.

I agree that, if he's being truthful, it was monumentally stupid. With so despised a subject, especially when he was apparently aware & concerned someone could be falsely accused, why on earth not go thru other channels? Surely a man of his resources could have enlisted the help of university professors and/or social service people and psychologists etc?

As to the comments about the song 'Rough Boys', it was dedicated to the Sex Pistols, and these were Pete's comments about the rumors it started:

TOWNSHEND: I released Empty Glass and then went on to do the Who tour, and I could see the difference immediately. There were all these girls coming backstage asking, "Which one of you wrote Let My Love Open Your Door?" So there were all these girls, very different from the Who audience, the Who Rottweilers, I called them. Even the women were quite macho--they had to be to survive the front-row nonsense. Maybe five percent of the audience was female at Who concerts, whereas I seem to have a mixed audience. Then I started to get letters from young gay men who were delighted with Rough Boys, because they thought that I had come out, so they were in the audience, too.

PLAYBOY: What was behind all the reports of your coming out?

TOWNSHEND: It was that song, which is ironic because the song is actually taunting both the homosexuals in America--who were, at the time, dressing themselves up as Nazi generals--and the punks in Britain dressing the same way. I thought it was great that these tough punks were dressing as homosexuals without realizing it. I did an interview about it, saying that Rough Boys was about being gay, and in the interview I also talked about my "gay life," which--I meant--was actually about the friends I've had who are gay. So the interviewer kind of dotted the t's and crossed the i's and assumed that this was a coming out, which it wasn't at all. But I became an object of ridicule when it was picked up in England. It was a big scandal, which is silly. If I were bisexual, it would be no big deal in the music industry. If I ran down a list of the men who have tried to get me into bed, I could bring down quite a few big names in the music business. And no, I wont't do it.

[Moosehead]

I had always thought that Townsend had come out; obviously I was ill-informed. His story should be relatively easy to prove or disprove. If his credit card was only charged once, I'll buy his explanation.

[Eowyn-of-Rohan]

I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie
I'm glad you won't see or hear me
As I fiddle about
Fiddle about
Fiddle about !

Your mother left me here to mind you
Now I'm doing what I want to
Fiddling about
Fiddling about
Fiddle about!

Down with the bedclothes
Up with the nightshirt!
Fiddle about
Fiddle about
Fiddle about !

You won't shout as I fiddle about
Fiddle about
Fiddle about
Fiddle about !
Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.

[razorback-bert]

The song "Fiddle About" was written by John Entwistle.

[Eowyn-of-Rohan]

Still, quite apropos i thought

[Kevin Curry]

Entwistle, eh? So, there were two pedophiles in the Who?

[Interesting Times]

Here's what Pete Townshend said in the famous "I am a woman" interview:

1990 Timothy White publishes his mammoth book of interviews with rock performers, Rock Lives. It contains a 1989 interview with Pete where he states "one of the things that stunned me when Empty Glass came out was that I realized I'd found a female audience, just by being honest. Not necessarily by saying, 'I am gay, I am gay, I am gay.' But just by being honest about the fact that I understand how gay people feel, and I identify. And I know how it feels to be a woman. I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman. And I won't be classified as just a man. To an extent the gay lobby infuriates me sometimes. With Empty Glass I got lots of letters from gays who said, 'Good on you, Pete, for coming out.' And I would write back and say, 'No, I haven't come out.' And then I realized maybe that was just pride. That in a way it was a coming-out. That it was a real acknowledgment of the fact that I'd been surrounded by people that I really adored -- and was actually sexually attracted to -- who were men. And that the side of me that responded to those people was a passive side, a subordinate side." This part of the interview makes all the headlines as the British tabloids scream "My Gay Secret," "Out Of The Closet" and "I Am Woman." Pete gets classified in the "gay" category. Pete does not officially deny the rumors until late 1999.

From TheWho.net.

[visualops]

It's interesting but certainly doesn't mean he's gay or a pedophile of course. I suppose I just hope he's being truthful, maybe that's because I don't want someone who is such a freaking musical genius could turn out to also be evil.
The Playboy interview sheds a bit more light on what you posted-

PLAYBOY: In the recent unauthorized biography of Mick Jagger, he was said to have had affairs with almost every pop star there is.

TOWNSHEND: Yeah, and if you ever tried to pin him down about it, I don't think he would disclaim it because he's smart enough to know there's value in that mystery. In my roasting of the Stones at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I joked about the fact that I am one of the few people lucky enough to have slept with Mick Jagger. [Laughs]. So when it all came out about me, I fought like hell not to comment.

PLAYBOY: Do you like to keep people guessing?

TOWNSHEND: No. But I don't want to let anybody down. I don't want to let it be known that it is in any sense an important part of my self-image to be thought of a breeder. I don't want to deny bisexuality as if I were being accused of child molestantion or murder, as if it were some crime or something to be ashamed of, because that would be cruel to people who are gay. But I was bitter and angry at the way the truth had been distorted and decided never to do any interviews again. Not because I had been manipulated but because I didn't trust myself to be precise about what I was saying.

[inquest]

"Fiddle About" was part of the Tommy rock opera. It was about just one of the trials and tribulations young Tommy was faced with (in this case from his Uncle Ernie). I think it would be highly unfair to accuse Entwistle of being pedophiliac just for writing it, since he was describing what was clearly intended to be understood as a sinister character.