It used to hurt when Keith Richards said, "Pete, you think too much. Get down and play your guitar." (1987)

I'm still rather hard on the people who feel they can use words to change the world. We need defence, action and guitarists. (2012)

Everything I do is driven by the same mechanic:a desire to expiate childhood pain through music.I want this for myself and for my audience.

Pete Townshend - WHO I AM: A Memoir: youtube.com/watch?v=KRuN-3…

One of the reasons I went to Jim Marshall to say 'build me a big Marshall amp' was because I wanted to shut the fucking audience up. (1994)

I never thought about this, but if I was ever going to put my name to a line of guitars, they'd have to be indestructible. (1996)

The Who is now a brand, not a band; but it is a brand that is upheld by its audience, not an industry or a cynical moneymaking machine.

In Quadrophenia I turned our errors, and our glories, into a rock poem. It may have saved lives.

I am not proud of the fact that I'm an entertainer. I'm proud of the fact that I'm an artist. Any cunt can be an entertainer.

John Entwistle. It's ten years since his shocking death in Las Vegas. thewho.com/news/title/joh…

Summer Blog: thewho.com/story/summer-b…

The guitar to me is still an engine; it's a rhythm, it's a canvas.

If you want to change the world, you have to get out there and change it. Music is not going to change it

Music changes the way you live, in the world. It changes the way you see it. But it doesn't change the world itself.

Just when we learn how to live, we die, and I can’t change how I’m perceived.

I don't have romantic misconceptions about musical instruments – they're just wood, probably far more useful as pulp than anything else.

(...) And this is the inherent danger that the Who are so desperately trying to avoid. (1975)

Mick Jagger will eventually become the Chuck Berry of the Sixties, constantly parodying himself on stage. (...)

We, The Who, were never in any danger of getting obsessed with the mod image because we were not so much part of it as a mirror. (1971)

If there were too many Madonnas in this world we'd all want Johnny Rotten back. I want him back anyway. (2001)