Pete Townshend
Empty Glass

THE REVIEW

"My life's a mess, I'm waiting for you to pass by... I'm sitting here at the bar with an empty glass in hand" This is a passage from the song that titles Pete Townshend's 1980 album. At that point in his life, things seemed to be exactly like that: the band he had thrilled the world with, The Who, the most fantastic bunch of rock hooligans, had become a flabby dinosaur made even older by the punk movement that had actually been inspired by them; his fragile drummer and friend Keith Moon had died two years earlier from too much "good life"; he himself was at 35 years old feeling like an old veteran caught between drugs and alcohol...

But what is genius, as Perozzi from "Amici miei" used to say? Imagination, intuition, decision, and realization—exactly what Townshend manages to do in this album, gathering ten formidable songs as he hadn't written in a long time (and unfortunately wouldn't write again...), so much so that his bandmates were quite miffed for keeping them for his solo work. Start listening with "Rough Boys", I was about to say lower the needle, because I’m re-listening to it on vinyl, an anthem and tribute to the punk movement, overwhelming with its choruses and its rhythm breaking into moments of sweetness; continue with "I Am an Animal," intense and autobiographical; float among the clouds with the keyboards in "And I Moved," and then rejoice dancing to the rhythm of "Let My Love Open the Door"!

What a great album! I tell myself again, as I savor the philosophical "A Little Is Enough," the title track, and the final rocker "Gonna Get Ya," concluding a work by a brilliant artist, tormented yet always sharp and bright, here assisted by excellent musicians and endowed with a splendid compositional vein, with an intelligent use of synthesizers reminiscent of "Who's Next," The Who's masterpiece. Even his subsequent "All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes," though less successful in sales, is a good work, but it’s here that one truly experiences the pleasure of hearing the "classic" Townshend sound.