Pete Townshend Goes Acoustic on ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’
On October 9th, The Who‘s Pete Townshend sat down with Rolling Stone head honcho Jann Wenner for a chat about the legendary guitarist’s revealing new autobiography, Who I Am. You can watch the full discussion above – and stay tuned until the end, when the rocker kicks into the Who‘s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” It’s quite a sight: Townshend breaks out an acoustic guitar for an unplugged rendition of the classic cut, his voice ragged but strong and his strumming so furious, he seems ready to bust out a windmill at any moment.
“The kind of book I wanted to write would be more like war journalism, a war biography – I have survived,” Townshend explains. “I think what I wanted to write about was about the way that the post-war period in the U.K. set up this atmosphere, this set of conditions, that was exactly right for when we discovered R&B.”
Be sure to check out our report from the night’s festivities, as well as our review of Who I Am, which Rob Sheffield calls “intensely intimate, candid to the point of self-lacerating. It’s a rock god opening up his most human frailties.”