Pete Townshend is a pivotal figure within rock history. As the primary songwriter of the Who, Townshend helped will genres like punk and metal into existence. He invented the guitar windmill and the rock opera. He’s arguably the person who first figured out how synthesizers could work in a rock context. He’s also a notoriously egotistical dick. And now he’s just out here saying that he’s glad he doesn’t have to deal with his dead bandmates anymore.

The Who are about to release a new album called Who — their first album in 13 years and their second in 37. The album is, by all accounts, pretty surprisingly good, even though the Who did not record it as a band. (Townshend and his sole surviving bandmate, singer Roger Daltrey, recorded their parts separately, with separate producers. They were almost never in the same place at the same time, and they spoke with each other only with intermediaries.) On the occasion of the new LP’s release, Rolling Stone profiled the band. And in that article, Townshend, if I’m interpreting it right, said that he’s glad Keith Moon and John Entwistle are dead.

Keith Moon, the Who’s beloved wildman drummer, died in 1978 at the age of 32 after overdosing on a drug that treated his alcohol withdrawal. John Entwistle, the band’s stoic bassist, died in 2002 at the age of 57 after suffering a cocaine-induced heart attack. In that Rolling Stone feature, writer Stephen Rodrick, noting that Moon and Entwistle both appear via video screen in the Who’s current tour, asks Townshend if he ever gets nostalgic looking at that old footage. Townshend does not. Here’s Townshend’s response:

It’s not going to make Who fans very happy, but thank God they’re gone… Because they were fucking difficult to play with. They never, ever managed to create bands for themselves. I think my musical discipline, my musical efficiency as a rhythm player, held the band together… John’s bass sound was like a Messiaen organ. Every note, every harmonic in the sky. When he passed away and I did the first few shows without him, with Pino [Palladino] on bass, he was playing without all that stuf… I said, “Wow, I have a job.”… With Keith, my job was keeping time, because he didn’t do that. So when he passed away, it was like, “Oh, I don’t have to keep time anymore.”

Fuck, man. You can read that feature here.

UPDATE (11/27): Pete Townshend has issued a clarification about his Rolling Stone comment on his Facebook page, first by addressing himself (“PETE! FOR FUCK’S SAKE PUT A LID ON IT!”) and then going on to write about Moon and Entwistle’s place in the band.

“No one can ever know how much I miss Keith and John, as people, as friends and as musicians,” he wrote. “The alchemy we used to share in the studio is missing from the new album, and it always feels wrong to try to summon it up without them, but I suppose we will always be tempted to try. To this day I am angry at Keith and John for dying. Sometimes it shows. It’s selfish, but it’s how I feel.”

Here’s the full post: