Pete Townshend’s obsession with his physical appearance: “The reason I wrote songs was because of my nose”

Contemporaries of the Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds and the Kinks, The Who were arguably the loudest, wildest, most dysfunctional and haphazardly explosive of the bands that spearheaded the so-called ’British Invasion’ that shook the US to its core in the mid-to-late 60s. Some might argue they were also the best dressed, with their sharp Mod suits, made-to-measure by Carnaby Street’s top tailors.

Even when they started out (as the High Numbers) in 1964, songwriter, guitarist and founding member Pete Townshend was fully aware that the band’s striking image, for some of their fans, came before the music itself.

In a 1966 television interview, right at the peak of the band’s powers, the image-conscious guitarist “Our group’s probably one of the most unglamorous on the stage today, I mean, this was one our big problems - and probably still is. The group didn’t have enough glamor, it was all clothes and smashing things up...”

Townshend admits that he himself has always been self-conscious anyway. Depending on how you look at it, he was blessed (or burdened) by a very distinctive conk - so distinctive that frontman Roger Daltrey’s first impression on seeing Pete, then just a lanky teenager at Acton County Grammar School, was he looked like, “A nose on a stick”.

Hooter on a scooter

The guitarist has been open about his aquiline features in a number of interviews over the years: “I was very embarrassed and self-conscious about my nose for quite a while. I got obsessed with it. Music was my escape,” he told Playboy, “My mother was no help, she seemed to think that anybody who wasn’t beautiful couldn’t be any good. She was gorgeous, of course. My father was very good-looking, too. How they spawned me I’ll never know. Dad was kind to me about the nose, but in an unintentionally devastating manner. He used to say things like, ‘Don’t worry. Arthur Miller married Marilyn Monroe, didn’t he?’ I didn’t want to look like fucking Arthur Miller, I wanted to look like James Dean!

“But I knew down inside that the only way I was really gonna become confident was to become something everybody could respect. So I labored at the guitar, trying my best to be incredible within a few weeks. And when it didn’t happen, it destroyed me,” Townshend continued.

“It was only later on that I realized I actually did have a talent. As soon as I started to write, I really came together in one piece for the first time. Even in the early years of the Who, I suffered that frustration of searching for my niche. That’s why my first songs were so screwed-up and indecisive.”

Wearing disguises

Known for his perceptive songwriting skills, iconic, flamboyant windmill strumming technique, and every now and again reducing his expensive American guitars to splinters and flayed wires by smashing them to smithereens on stage, Townshend says it was producer Glyn Johns who first made him see the benefits of having a big nose.

As he recounted to Rolling Stone’s Jann S Wenner in September 1968: “[Glyn] told me: ‘You and the group came out of this rough tough area, were very restless and had this thing: you were going to show everybody, you were a kid with a big nose and you were going to make all these people love it, love your big nose‘.

“When I was in school the geezers that were snappy dressers and got chicks like years before I ever even thought they existed, would always like to talk about my nose. This seemed to be the biggest thing in my life: my fucking nose, man," Pete continued. “Whenever my dad got drunk, he’d come up to me and say, “Look son, you know looks aren’t everything” and shit like this. He’s getting drunk and he’s ashamed of me because I’ve got a huge nose and he’s trying to make me feel good. I know it’s huge and of course it became incredible and I became an enemy of society. I had to get over this thing. I’ve done it, and I never believe it to this day, but I do not think about my nose any more.

Young man’s blues

“And if I had said this when I was a kid, if I ever said to myself: ‘One of these days you’ll go through a whole day without once thinking that your nose is the biggest in the world, man’ – you know, I’d have laughed. It was huge. At that time, it was the reason I did everything. It’s the reason I played the guitar – because of my nose. The reason I wrote songs was because of my nose, everything, so much. I eventually admitted something in an article where I summed it up far more logically in terms of what I do today. I said that what I wanted to do was distract attention from my nose to my body and make people look at my body, instead of at my face – turn my body into a machine. But by the time I was into visual things like that anyway, I’d forgotten all about my nose and a big ego trip and I thought, well if I’ve got a big nose, it’s a groove and it’s the greatest thing that can happen because, I don’t know, it’s like a lighthouse or something. The whole trip had changed by then anyway.

“What is interesting is the fact that it was me versus society, until I could convince them that there was more to me than what they thought.

He concluded: “Now it’s incredible to think about it. But it’s a very funny story, and it always makes me laugh at my parents, my father particularly. He was in a band whose leader was much richer than him, and the leader had shows of his own and a lovely house and my dad still rents a house, never had a house of his own. The leader of my dad’s band was always a bit of a red herring to my dad: they both started together and went to the same school and all this and he used to say – and this guy, the leader of the band, happened to have a huge nose, absolutely huge, ‘Look at Ronny, look at Ronny; he’s the leader of a famous orchestra; he’s got a beautiful wife, a beautiful house, a lovely car. What more can you want? He makes music all his life, he’s a respected man. What more can you want in life? He’s got a huge nose, Peter.’ I mean, I used to be completely speechless, of course that’s what I’m gonna have: I’m gonna have a huge car, a beautiful wife and all these things."

Only Townshed and Daltrey remain of the original band but the Who are still gigging. The band have four dates lined up in Italy in July and one in Sweden in October.

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