Klarinet Archive - Posting 000006.txt from 1993/06

From: James Langdell <James.Langdell@-----.COM>
Subj: Pete Townsend and the clarinet
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 19:33:55 -0400

Last week, Pete Townsend was on "Late Night
with David Letterman." He played the Who's song
"Pinball Wizard" and, at the end, smashed his
acoustic guitar. He explained that the smashed
guitar would be auctioned off for a children's
charity.

Letterman asked him how the whole business
of him smashing guitars got started. Townsend
explained that when he was young, he really wanted
to play the clarinet. His father was a fine player,
but Pete couldn't get a sound out of the instrument.
His father suggested that Pete instead try the
guitar, the instrument he had started out on.

On Pete's next birthday, he received a guitar from
his grandmother. Unfortunately, she had picked out
the sort of virtually unplayable guitar intended for
decorating walls in Spanish restaurants. Pete's father
told him that, if he learned to play some pieces on that
horrible instument, he'd eventually get a better guitar.
Pete then figured that he might receive the better
instrument faster if an "accident" happened to that
decorator guitar. And so the tradition began.

Later in the interview, Townsend described a recent
injury where his right hand was punctured by the
whammy bar of a borrowed guitar that he played with
his usual wild windmill strokes. Letterman said
he would have been in better shape if he had played
the clarinet instead. Townsend replied that it could
have been worse, poking his finger inside his cheek
to illustrate.

I could only imagine how all of our employability would
have been enhanced for the past few decades if The Who
had been as popular with a clarinet as the lead instrument.

By the way, does anyone know more about Townsend's father's
clarinet career?

--James Langdell jamesc@-----.com
Sun Microsystems Mountain View, Calif.