Pete Townshend: “Rick Rubin should be slapped every now and then”

In a new conversation on the Rockonteurs podcast hosted by Gary Kemp And Guy Pratt, Pete Townshend the producer teased Rick Rubin. “You see a lot of stuff on YouTube and Instagram, people nagging you about how to be creative. Somebody should slap Rick Rubin every now and then, because one minute he’s telling us to do what we want and then on the other hand, tells us we shouldn’t do this and we shouldn’t do that.”

The guitarist of Who but he agrees with Rubin on one thing: “As Rick Rubin and many other experts rightly say about creativity, it has to be fun.

It must be pleasant. It has to be something you love to do, it has to be something you enjoy doing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone else will like it.”

So long as Pete Townshend the music journalist also published novels on one occasion Chris Charlesworth asked him about his creative process and how writing a novel is different from writing a rock song. Townshend responded: “In pop and rock music it’s really important that the narrator leaves the ending open because the function of the music is to feed into what’s happening in your world. I’m sure there are people who will have made up their own endings or of the subsequent stories for “Quadrophenia”. But this isn’t rock and roll.”

And speaking of creativity he stated: “I think it’s a dark art because you don’t know how it works. You are here tonight to hear me talk about something because I am able to create something that connects with you. It may comfort or disturb you or allow you to connect with other people. I often ask myself: how do I do it? It’s what I would call a profession. You have to sit and wait until the idea comes.”