Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 18, 2022

Who's Jewish? Pete Townshend, circa 2000. Image by Getty Images

By Seth RogovoyMay 18, 2022

Editors Note: In honor of Pete Townshends 77th birthday, we revisit his bands Jewish history that we first looked into in 2015.

The Who, the English rock group, is in the midst of yet another tour, one that they say may be their last a claim they have been making since at least 1982. On this tour, the Who are mostly performing their best-known hits and fan favorites, including songs like Pinball Wizard from their rock opera, Tommy.

If the groups visionary songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had had his way, Tommy an allegory about a traumatized messiah would not have been the bands first rock opera. Following a visit to Caesarea, Israel in 1966 with his first wife, Karen Astley, and the subsequent outbreak of the Six-Day War, Townshend began work on Rael, a song cycle loosely based on Israels struggle to survive despite being massively outnumbered by its enemies. Rael short for Israel got sidetracked, partly due to the demands of the Whos record company for faster delivery of more hit singles, and Rael was consigned to the shelf. The only song that has surfaced from that project is called Rael and appears on the late 1967 album, The Who Sell Out.

A deeper examination of who Pete Townshend is, which he provides in his aptly titled autobiography, Who I Am, reveals a man who, while not Jewish himself, has great empathy for the Jewish people and who sees the world very much through the eyes of a Jewish-influenced character.

The son of musicians with a tempestuous marriage, Townshend in his early years was shuffled around among relatives, friends and neighbors while his parents came and went, carrying on relationships outside of their marriage. In his autobiography, Townshend waxes nostalgic not for the comfort of his family, but for the Jewish world that protected him: We shared our house with the Cass family, who lived upstairs and, like many of my parents closest friends, were Jewish. I remember noisy, joyous Passovers with a lot of Gefilte fish, chopped liver and the aroma of slow-roasting brisket.

After a stint being raised by his grandmother, a period during which he was abused by her and the parade of boyfriends tramping in and out of her flat, he returned home to his parents. Again, his surroundings gave him the most security and happiness: I was seven, and happy to be home again, back in the noisy flat with a toilet in the back yard and the delicious aroma of Jewish cooking from upstairs. It was all very reassuring.

The Who evolved from a band called the Detours originally led by vocalist Roger Daltrey, who played guitar at the time. The band included bassist John Entwistle, a high school chum of Townshends. When the groups lead guitarist quit the band, Entwistle recommended his friend. As Townshend tells it, the audition went something like this:

Daltrey: Can you play Hava Nagilah?

Townshend: Yes.

Daltrey: Youre in. See you next Tuesday night.

And so began The Who, a unique group of misfit musicians, none of whom played their instruments in conventional fashion. Drummer Keith Moon was no mere timekeeper; his was more of a textural, orchestral approach, and if you listen to the groups early singles youll be surprised to hear drum solos where there would typically be guitar solos, which Townshend rarely played. Bassist John Entwistle filled the musical mid-range with soaring arpeggios and riffs, more like the work of a keyboardist than a bassist. And Townshend approached the guitar purely as a vehicle for sound and impact. In rock n roll the electric guitar was becoming the primary melodic instrument, performing the role of the saxophone in jazz and dance music, and the violin in Klezmer, Townshend wrote.

In recent years, Townshends thoughts have once again turned back toward the concerns he expressed Rael. As he told an interviewer for Rolling Stone in 2006:

Last week, I was reading about this book thats just come out. Its about the Polish Jews who got out of concentration camps and went back to their homes, which had been taken over by Christians who assumed the Jews werent coming back. What happened was another wave of anti-Semitism in which dozens were slaughtered by Christians in Warsaw. The premise for it was that there was witchcraft going on. The Jews, of course, drank the blood of children. Been there, done that. Fking hell. And I asked myself, Why am I so heated up about this f-king story? But its because, as a kid, my best friend, Mick Leiber, was a Jew. We grew up in a community that was about a third Polish. We lived in a house that divided in two, and in the top part lived a Jewish family who were quite devout. Polish Jews were the kids I played with. They were my people. I remember saying to my mother, Arent Polish people from Poland? And she said, Yes, they were Britains first ally in the war. Id say, But theyre not like foreigners. Theyre just like we are. And she said, Yes, theyre just like we are.

Unlike other fellow British rockers, most notably Roger Waters and Elvis Costello, who are vocal supporters of a cultural boycott of Israel, Townshend holds a pro-Israel stance, as he told the same Rolling Stone interviewer regarding the Whos album, Endless Wire, a 10-song mini-opera about kids forming a rock band in the post-9/11 world.

And where are we today? Were in the same anti-Semitic apologetic denial its a dishrag of a policy. Trying to blame Israel for defending a country we created. And Im not even Jewish! Jesus fking Christ. And lets start with him! Sweet Jesus. This album absolutely had to have several songs about Jesus the man, Muhammad the man, but not modern Christianity or Islam. They are both potentially anti-Semitic today. And I think the fact is that, when I was working on this album I just thought, Its fking about time that I completed my story. At this time in my life, with nuclear threats coming from Iran and Korea, I am becoming so impatient with the ex-hippies all around me. I am suddenly thinking like an extreme reactionary, right-wing, warmongering Fking hell, come inside my brain! The incredible numbers of dead in the last war make it clear that we cant afford to wait to be hit again. Thats my opinion. Thats my story. Peace is something that has to be made. It doesnt come from passivity.

Incidentally, Endless Wire also includes a song called Trilbys Piano, a song about the hidden, forbidden love of a Jewish man named Hymie, sung by Townshend.

Apparently, Townshends immersion in all things Jewish has rubbed off on his longtime musical partner , Roger Daltrey, who, when asked a while back if the band would really stop touring, groaned like an old Jewish man, We will always do shows for charity, when we can, because its of enormous value to people and Pete [Townshend] and I love to play. But we wont do long, schlepping tours. Its killing us.

Seth Rogovoy frequently writes about the intersection of popular culture and Jewishness for the Forward. He has often been mistaken on the streets of major metropolitan areas for Pete Townshend.

Link:

The Secret Jewish history of The Who The Forward - Forward

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