Talking Heads 5pm on Sunday 16th at Questors Theatre

12 Mattock Lane, Ealing W5 5BQ

Rock’n’Roll legend Pete Townshend will be discussing his musical career with The Who, his ties to Ealing, where The Who played at the Ealing Club, and his autobiography ‘Who I Am’.

The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter, was born into a musical family in Chiswick. His father, Cliff, played the alto saxophone with the Squadronaires, the RAF dance band, and his mother, Betty Dennis, was a professional singer. An aunt encouraged him to learn the piano, but after seeing the movie Rock Around The Clock in 1956 he became drawn to rock’n'roll, an interest his parents actively encouraged.

Having dallied briefly with the guitar, Pete’s first real instrument was the banjo which he played in a schoolboy trad jazz band, the Confederates. The group featured John Entwistle on trumpet but after John took up the bass guitar the two friends joined another schoolboy band, the Scorpions, with Pete on guitar. Pete and John both attended Acton County School where another, slightly older, pupil Roger Daltrey had a group called the Detours. Roger invited John to join him and around six months later the nucleus of The Who was in place when John persuaded Roger that Pete should join too ...

Long acknowledged as one of the most intelligent and articulate of rock performers, Pete has run his own book publishing company and worked as an editor at the literary house of Faber & Faber which in 1985 published ‘Horse’s Neck’, a collection of his short stories. Wind the clock forward and his memoir "Who I am" was published in 2012.