Gonna get inside, gonna get inside
Gonna get inside your bitter mind
Uh, "Rough Boys" was dedicated to the Sex Pistols and is about a rock star in his mid-30's trying to relate to being called a "boring old fart".
I would think the term "bitter mind" should be a giveaway that the song's about Johnny Rotten.
P.S. - "Who Are You" was written about a drunken Townshend encounter at a bar with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Pistols ("I remember throwing punches around and preaching from my chair").
(White) Was 'Rough Boy's written for the Who?
(Townshend) "No, no. How could 'Rough Boys' be written for the Who? It's about homosexuality."
(White) The party line has been that the song was triggered by Jimmy Pursey of Sham '69, the punk band, after he'd put the Who down in public.
(Townshend) "No. What, in a sense, 'Rough Boys' was about was almost a coming-out, an acknowledgement of the fact that I'd had a gay life, and that I understood was gay sex was about: it was not about faggetry at all. It was about violence in a lot of senses. It leans very heavily into the kind of violence that men carry in them.
(Townshend)And then I realized maybe that was just pride. That in a way it was a coming-out. That it was a real acknowledgement 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.
And from a later interview with Playboy also courtesy of Google:
"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."
"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."
Make of all that what you will. I suppose the more-than- denial-non-denial in the ladder interview would be necessary to assuage all of his insecure male rock fans, at least. Perhaps that's how the story about the song being about "confronting about a punk rocker" originated.