The Who legend Pete Townshend recently told Spain’s RockFM, “Most musicians are not like me. Most musicians do two things that I don’t really do or don’t enjoy doing. One is that they love performing. I don’t love performing. I don’t like being on a stage. I don’t mind being on a stage. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t fill my soul in the way that you see some performers, [where] just their soul is filled through being on the stage. That’s not me. The other thing is they love to collaborate with other musicians.”
“You imagine, for example, in a flamenco group, without the guitar, without the dancing, without the hand claps, the miracles, the accidents that happen when that is going on, you wouldn’t have and the dancing that are surrounds it in the way that we do in the classic Spanish tradition. On the other hand, you do have musicians, Paco De Lucía, for example, who will pick up the guitar and play it. And I’m quite comfortable listening to them play that on their own because he’s a genius. But I think that, for me, collaboration is something that I find very difficult.”
“If I was in a studio, like with a really, really great musician, or with a group of really great musicians, I think I would find it very hard. I often do find it very hard. I find it difficult to collaborate. I find it very difficult looking in the eyes of another musician. I find myself looking to my own energy to express myself. So I’m very different to most musicians in that respect. On the other hand, of course, I really, really admire the process of collaboration.”
