Dean, people research in libraries, not by picking up prostitutes (Jeffrey Archer) or accessing and downloading (distributing? that's part of the charge) chld pornography (Townsend).

I do a lot of research, 95% of it on the internet and virtually none in libraries.

If I were to research child porn, the internet would be the only place I'd bother looking.

On the other hand, if I were to do it, I wouldn't be an idiot. I'd be telling several people, having witnesses present, and doing several other things to make sure no one could mistake what I was doing.

The whole thing is a bit bizarre...Supposedly the press found out that Townshend's name was in a FBI list in a year-long investigation? So somebody tipped him off to make statements? Then the press reports his statements, then comes the arrest...and the latest I've seen is that he says he was investigating child pornography because he thinks he might have been molested. I'm not making any judgement calls, but it's a bit bizarre the way the whole thing has evolved.

You guys are all forgetting the pure fact that he is GUILTY! The law in England (and here as well) states clearly that merely looking at kiddie porn is illegal. Our Supremes have just (barely) made it legal to view kiddie porn CARTOONS!

As long as the fools in power believe that they can harvest votes and power by making unpopular thoughts punishable by prison terms, people who have unpopular thoughts will go to prison.

Open and shut case, really. Sorry Pete.

Yes, that is something that I've read, of cases where supposedly somebody unknowingly opens an email and there is child pornography. Under current US laws, that person has just broken the law.

Meaning, Pete was stupid?

Dean, fair enough...but would you research at news and information sites, or porn sites?

Jane: It would depend on what I was doing and why. If I was writing a book, and depending on what I was writing about and what I was trying to establish. Doing such a risky thing, however, I would do several things to cover my butt.

The question also comes to mind: what kind of stuff are we talking about? 17 year olds or 7 year olds?

The man is 57 years old and has been surrounded by groupies his whole life. If he had proclivities toward underaged kids it should have shown up much, much sooner.

Michael: The law recognizes degrees of behavior, or it should. Of course it's Britain. But I doubt American courts would be as unyielding as you suggest. There are still recognized Constitutional issues. The law generally recognizes things like intent.

We'll know a lot more if it turns out he's got a hard drive full of the stuff, or if they find more. But if all they've got is that he one time paid one fee to enter one site, with no evidence of storing or forwarding or any pattern of behavior, else, I doubt he's going to get much more than a slap on the wrist. Although, being a celebrity, it's possible they'll try to make an example of him.

Isn't anyone here concerned about his basic right to read or view whatever the hell he chooses, even if his selection of child pornography for entertainment, enlightenment or just plain titillation should render him despicable? Since when did we all acquiesce in a government monitoring its citizens for goodthink?

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

> Since when did we all acquiesce in a
> government monitoring its citizens for
> goodthink?

Hey, if I want to sell myself into slavery, do I have a right to do so?

Child pornography involves the abuse of children. It is at least as abhorrent as human slavery.

You do not have a right to purchase or possess child pornography. This is material that would, rightly, belong solely and completely to the victims of the enslavement--and in some cases murder--that went into its creation.

Ineed, I wouldn't have the least problem with executing anyone involved in the production or distribution of such materials. I would also happily see those who collect the stuff face a choice between a few years in prison or simple castration. The criminal can choose which he prefers.

Does that makes me a table-pounding moralist bent on ramming his personal values down other people's throats?

Yep.

I find the only people confused over this Pete Townsend thing, are those who have not either thought this through or have not read anything on law or freedoms. Its simple, recall the recent USA Supreme Court ruling, they now allow “fake” or “morphed” (created) images of children involving sex acts. Why? READ.. they gave their reason. If you can’t allow even that, then how can you have even discussion of the law in a so-called free state. In Canada, 2002, just the opposite, they have now banned fictional literature describing sex acts between adults and minors, however at the same time the age of consent in Canada is 14. The Canadian government responded to clarify this nonsense: Its OK for adults and minors to have sex, so long as there is no inappropriate use of position or power, or some such baloney. So who decides? It comes down to this, Pete Townsend is a brave man, he wanted to just see what’s happening so he could write about it. Now look at him. People, you live in a police state, you Britons, you Canadians, and yes even you Americans. At least the Americans have a bill of rights (that’s rights for PEOPLE, not governments).

Look at this LEGAL website idiots and learn a little. www.danpedo.dk its informational, and no images.

Read this excerpt:
http://www.onlineinc.com/cilmag/nov99/schuyler.htm (scroll down) Drawing a Line in the Sand: As we all must feel sometimes, there is legality, and then there is truth. They don’t always match. There have been attempts to figure out the “truth” in this matter, but it has proven to be a slippery fellow to pin down. In 1970 the President’s Commission on Pornography issued a voluminous report, labeled pornographic itself for all its lurid detail, urging in conclusion that nearly all obscenity laws be repealed. The Commission had been given $2 million by President Johnson and it took 2 years to study the issue. The group commissioned 30 academic studies of pornography, most of which found no connection between pornography and crime. In other words, people don’t look at pornography, then go out and commit child molestation. However, Richard Nixon was in office by the time the report was issued. He and his administration flatly rejected the Commission’s findings. Interestingly, both Canada and Great Britain embarked on similar studies at about the same time, and both of these studies came to the same conclusions. But this was small stuff compared to Denmark. In the mid-’60s Denmark actually did what all the studies had been suggesting: It eliminated obscenity laws. What happened was interesting. Crimes of child molestation went down by over 60 percent. This seems an incredible figure, one you should not trust on hearing. It’s been cited in several sources, but without attribution, so I went after it and found it in a study called “The Effect of Easy Availability of Pornography on the Incidence of Sex Crimes: The Danish Experience” (Journal of Social Science, Vol. 29:3 (1973), pp. 163-181).

to Dean Esmay (above) Alcohol was illegal in the USA in the 1920's and 1930's. Alchohol makes people do terrible things, and even hurt kids. I'd like to lock your ass up in jail for a year for every drink of booze you have ever had.

Ohh, you thought that was just inocent, those few drinks. You were just thinking of your own sick pleasure.

It should not be your choice to put kids at risk. You filthy drunk. Your choice, lets cut that booze drinking toung of yours out, or go to jail. So whats your choice asshole ?

An anonymous coward using a fake name and fake email address sees fit to call me an asshole on my own weblog. How nice. That gets him the honor of being the first person whose IP address I've banned.

---

Now, as it happens, know a lot about the laws on free expression, and on child pornography, including everything this rude person mentioned and a great deal more.

Whatever the merits of some of his arguments, they are lost in the shallow ignorance much of it is steeped in. (The comparison to drinking is simply priceless--as if we grind up children to make beer.)

Dean

Dean, I simply cannot agree with -- and I can hardly believe -- that in an English-speaking country, people should be threatened with jail on account of the salacious nature of materials they read, view or listen to. Even if their purposes are disgusting, and even if they lie about why they are doing it.

When my wife and I were graduate students at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1974-1975, the campus theater regularly ran then-current porno epics to huge audiences comprising both faculty and students. We never had the time to see "Behind the Green Door", Marilyn Chambers' epic, but most of the rest of the campus apparently did, and helped make her both rich and slightly immortal. Along with a few thousand others, and, I understand, much of the rest of America, we did see "Deep Throat". We thought Linda Lovelace was insipid, but Harry Reems turned out to be hilarious and he deserved better than the porn flicks he was consigned to for low pay.

In any case, Playboy Magazine (generally a waste of money and reading time) has been exploiting womens' bare asses on their centerfold for about 50 years. Even so, nobody refers to Hugh Hefner, his bunnies, his advertising agencies, marketing staffs, etc, as morally corrupt monsters, even though they have been exploiting sex for money all this time.

The same pious and hypocritical government of the United Kingdom that has destroyed Townsend's reputation regularly issues visas to apparently sexually repressed/misguided Englishmen to travel to Thailand, the Philipines or numerous other poor countries where they can get it off with children whose parents apparently sell them for just this purpose.

Then there is the question of the scores of thousands of big and little websites that specialize in little more than pornography of every type imaginable. What should we do with them? Ban them from the Internet? Should governments determine what materials get published, broadcast, viewed or otherwise made available? If they can do that, they can also begin banning weblogs, opinion sites and much else.

Either liberty is indivisible, or liberty is nothing.

Does this mean we should condone child pornography? No. But most people are not so disgusting as to traffic in that stuff. In matters of morality, the only thing that works is for people to develop a personal philosophy sufficient to draw fine lines between sexual arousal and moral squalor.

As for the loudmouth with the fake name who personally insulted you, I would have just shut him off without bothering to respond.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

A Different Bomb
By
Pete Townshend
January 2002
For 'Cloud'
This past week a friend of mine committed suicide. She was a forty-something actress,
recovering from alcoholism. Although I am a recovering alcoholic myself I knew her best
through my work as a fund-raiser for treatment for those needing alcohol and drug
rehabilitation. We first met about seven years ago. One day, in an open counselling
session at which adult men and women of all ages were present, she suddenly revealed
her central issue. From as early as she could remember, as an infant girl she had been
sexually abused on a regular basis by her father, and in his presence by several of his
friends. At first, she referred to her father as a 'priest'. Later she revealed that these were
members of some kind of religious cult. A charity with which I am involved paid for her
to go for treatment for depression at The Priory last year. She was greatly improved when
she came out. Partly I think because her story was believed. She had felt safe, and various
innovative new therapeutic techniques promised to help her further. She became a day
patient.
Within a few weeks she started to slide again, pleading to be allowed to go back in
for further live-in treatment. There were no further funds available to pay for this. After a
month or two, emotionally speaking she was back where she had started: at a rockbottom.
Her friends endured an oscillating love-loss relationship with her. She was funny,
honest, energetic and smart. But she was often desperate for affection, attention and help.
As a result she could be exhausting. For all of us who helped her, including several
women who themselves experienced similar sexual abuse as children, her suicide was
both a tragedy and an act of brutal insanity. What pushed this woman to the brink was not
self-obsession - though God knows she enjoyed her share, like any individual ensnared in
alcohol or drug addiction - it was the fact that she discovered her father was in a new
relationship and had access to some young children.
It seems then that the greatest terror for an adult who remembers sexual abuse is the
thought that other children might suffer as they did.
In my writing in the past - especially Tommy - I have created unusually unmerciful
worlds for any infant characters. I am often disturbed by what I see on the page when I
write - never more so than when I draw on my own childhood. Some people who were
abused in their childhood have written to me to say how much they identify with the
character of Tommy. But what is powerful in my own writing, and sometimes most
difficult to control and model, is the unconscious material I draw on. It is what is
unconscious in me that makes me scream for vengeance against my friend's abusers,
rather than an adult understanding of what went wrong.
I remember no specific sexual abuse, though when I was young I was treated in an
extremely controlling and aggressive way by my maternal grandmother. This is not
unusual. It might be described by some as insignificant. Almost everyone I know
experienced similar stuff at some time or other - many friends experienced more extreme
'abuses' and have no obvious adult vices as a result.
On the issue of child-abuse, the climate in the press, the police, and in Government
in the UK at the moment is one of a witch-hunt. This may well be the natural response
triggered by cases like that of my friend who committed suicide. But I believe it is rather
more a reaction to the 'freedoms' that are now available to us all to enter into the reality of
a world that most of us would have to admit has hitherto been kept secret. The world of
which I speak is that of the abusive paedophile. The window of 'freedom' of entry to that
world is of course the internet.
There is hardly a man I know who uses computers who will not admit to surfing
casually sometimes to find pornography. I have done it. Certainly, one expects only to
find what is available on the top shelf at the newsagents. I make no argument here for or
against 'hard' or 'soft' pornography. What is certain is that providers of porn feel the need
to constantly 'refresh' their supply. So new victims are drawn in every day. This is just as
true on the internet as it is in the world of magazines and video. However, what many
people fail to realise is how - by visiting their websites - we directly and effectively
subsidise pornographers. This is true whether we do so unwittingly or deliberately, out of
curiosity or a vigilante spirit. Vigilante campaigners I have contacted on the internet tell
me that many porn sites that claim to feature underage subjects do not - in fact - do so.
Many that are 'genuine' do feature much the same content on the inside as they do on
their free pop-up pages that litter search engines. So why do these pornographers bother
with us at all? They can't be getting rich. Why can't they remain secret?
As someone who runs a 'commercial' website of my own I am fully aware of how
direct the avenue is between the provider and the user of any internet site. I am also
aware - as are most people today I think - of how easy it is to trigger the attention of an
internet service provider (ISP) when certain 'buzz-words' are used in a search. These are,
in effect, words - or combinations of words - that alert attention at the ISP.
This first came to my attention when in 1997 a man who had briefly worked for me
was arrested in the UK for downloading paedophilic pornography. I was cautious of
openly condemning him. He had performed in one of my musicals and was a popular
figure in the soft-pop pantomime of the UK music scene. When he went to trial, the buzzword
that the newspapers kept reprinting - that he had allegedly used in his regular
internet searches - was 'lolita'. A few weeks into the trial The Guardian newspaper
revealed that www.uksearchterms.com listed 'lolita' high on the list of the most searched
words in the UK ('sex' is often No.1). It seemed to me that there was some hypocrisy
going on. Who were all these people typing 'lolita' into their browsers? They were surely
not all paedophiles. They may have been vigilantes. I'm fairly certain that in most cases
they were simply curious of what they might find.
The terrible part is that what they found on the internet will almost have certainly
found them by return. It is not to suggest that every one of them was 'hooked' as soon as
they found a porn site professing to display underage subjects, it is to say that because
their visit was undoubtedly recorded by the site or sites in question, the pornographers
who run those sites would have found validation and commercial promise for their
activity. They would then have redoubled their efforts in that area.
Many porn sites use software triggers so that when you try to leave a site upon
which you may have unwittingly stumbled, another similar - or worse - site immediately
pops up. When you try to shut that site, another pops up, then another, then another, the
content getting more and more extreme until your browser is solid with pornography and
eventually will seize up as though choking on some vapid manifestation of evil itself.
Thus it is that the pornographer's validation is spawned at the same time. One site opened
triggers another dozen or more - all of which you have unwillingly 'visited'. All of which
will have a record of your computer's unique address.
It was obvious to me (though obviously not to the rest of the country) while the
man I knew was on trial, that 'lolita' is not a word to use carelessly when searching the
internet - even if one happened to be studying Nabokov for a literature degree. So I had
my first encounter with internet paedophilia by accident.
Ethan Silverman, a film director friend, had made an extremely moving
documentary about an American couple who adopted a Russian boy. As a charity fundraiser
(and, I suppose, philanthropist to boot) I wanted to support the work of such
orphanages and decided to see if I could - via the internet - find legitimate contacts to
help. (I had tried many other methods and failed). The various words I used included
'Russia' and 'orphanages'. I used no words that could usually be taken to be sexual or
lascivious, except - perhaps ill-advisedly - the word 'boys'.
Within about ten minutes of entering my search words I was confronted with a 'free'
image of a male infant of about two years old being buggered by an unseen man. The
blazer on the page claimed that sex with children is 'not illegal in Russia'. This was not
smut. It was a depiction of a real rape. The victim, if the infant boy survived and my
experience was anything to go by, would probably one day take his own life. The awful
reality hit me of the self-propelling, self-spawning mechanism of the internet. I reached
for the phone, I intended to call the police and take them through the process I had
stumbled upon - and bring the pornographers involved to book.
Then I thought twice about it. With someone on trial who had once been connected
with me - however loosely - I spoke off-the-record to a lawyer instead. He advised me to
do nothing. He advised me that I most certainly should not download the image as
'evidence'. So I did as he advised. Nothing.
I mentioned my own internet experience to a few people close to me. The trial of
the man who had been in my musical was on everyone's agenda. It became clear very
quickly that some people I spoke to were sceptical of me. I think they thought that if I
had searched using the right words, my exposure to that terrible image would not have
occurred.
It might be strange to hear that I was glad I found it. Until then, like my ostrich-like
friends, I imagined that only those who communicated on the internet using secret codes,
private chat-rooms and encrypted files would ever be exposed to this kind of porn. But I
learned through this accident that such images were 'freely' available through the
machinery of common search engines and User-Groups, and openly available for sale
through subscription via credit card. I was then concerned that there would be those
'providers' of paedophilic porn who felt the need to regularly 'refresh' their supply of
images. It is a chilling thought isn't it? Even so, I found myself wondering whether that
thought brought fears for me that were, perhaps, quite out of proportion with reality:
maybe I was stirring my own subconscious memories; maybe I was just being pompous.
Now my friend has joined a long line of suicides who were sexually abused as
children, and I feel I must speak up.
Since 1997 I have been attempting to prepare some kind of document with respect to all
this for wider publication. My feeling is that if internet service providers (ISPs) can be
enlisted by the police and other authorities to 'snoop' and provide information about
customers downloading illegal pornography, they could just as easily filter search terms -
or better yet, practice combinations of such search terms on a regular basis and then block
specific site names. Many ISPs do such work. It is part of their regular housekeeping. But
the pornographers are rich, determined, and - in the area of under-age pornography -
criminal. Banned sites are replicated, renamed and replaced in days.
Why am I suddenly writing this today? My friend who committed suicide was the
victim of an active but secret ring of paedophiles. They are still at large today. Only those
who knew my friend, and believed her story, feel any urge to speak up against her
abusers. But we have no proof. It is frustrating, but for her, at least, the pain is over.
Meanwhile, on the internet, vigilante groups and individuals work tirelessly and
obsessively both to trace and block certain porn sites and to offer - through 12 Step
programmes for sex-addiction - probably the only way out for some ensnared by
addiction to what the internet has to offer.
It has all gone public now. The ISP I use allows access to User Groups by using the
term 'alt' as a prefix. In 'Google' (a popular search engine) it is possible to reach a
questionable array of offered sex sites with very few key-strokes, and without actually
typing a single word. The pathway to 'free' paedophilic imagery is - as it were - laid out
like a free line of cocaine at a decadent cocktail party: only the strong willed or
terminally uncurious can resist. Those vigilantes who research these pathways open
themselves up to internet 'snoops'. Many are willing to take the risk. They believe the
pathways themselves must be closed. They must be totally and completely eradicated
from the internet. If that is not possible they must be openly policed by active and
obstructive vigilantes - not just 'snooped' by government agencies and police.
I understand the police believe that snooping on the internet might lead them to
active paedophiles - their philosophy being that it is the ones who are secret who do the
damage. In the case of my suicide friend I would have to agree. However, in other
countries children are not so precious. Brazil, Russia and Thailand all have well-known
and tragic orphanages and street-children problems, and these countries probably provide
source material for many sites.
In my work fund-raising in the field of drug and alcohol rehabilitation I have come
across hundreds of individuals from the UK and Europe whose problems have been
triggered by childhood abuse. Not always, but often, the abuse is sexual. Sometimes it is
quite minor, but even in those cases - for some reason - spectacularly damaging. Not all
addicts and alcoholics are victims. They are, perhaps, a minority. But among those
afflicted by addiction abuse is terribly common. In some cases, what is so distressing is
how little it takes. For me, a few minor incidents seem to have created a dark side to my
nature which thankfully emerges only in creative work like Tommy. It is not statistically
true that all abusers of children were once themselves abused. That can happen, but often
- as in the case of my suicide friend - abuse is part of a reward system of power conferred
from one adult person to another. But among pornographers only validation and cash
matter. What is certain is that the internet has brought the sexual abuse of children into
the open. It is not 'respectable' or 'acceptable' at any level of society. It is simply in the
open.
Many returning from my friend's funeral had wanted to punch her father who was
present. But they restrained themselves. Many present were recovering alcoholics. They
are not given to witch-hunts. They are wary of hypocrisy. But given the chance, many of
them would have told their own stories about what was done to them by abusers sodden
with drink or numb with drugs, and possibly what they themselves did 'under the
influence' that was equally reprehensible. But if abusers and their accomplices are not
necessarily victims of abuse, and not necessarily men, then they are also not necessarily
drunk or drugged. Booze and drugs are here to stay. But it must be time to do something
more concrete to stop the proliferation of questionable pornography that seems so readily
and openly facilitated by the internet.
Another danger is this: I think it must be obvious that many children are becoming
inured to pornography much too early and - as I have demonstrated - the internet provides
a very short route indeed to some of the most evil and shocking images of rape and
abuse1.
The subconscious mind is deeply damaged and indelibly scarred by the sight of such
images. I can assure everyone reading this that if they go off in pursuit of images of
paedophilic rape they will find them. I urge them not to try. I pray too that they don't
happen upon such images as did I, by accident. If they do they may like me become so
enraged and disturbed that their dreams are forever haunted.
1 Software to filter out and block porn at home is often too complex and sweeping to do the job, or too
feeble. At the moment, it's all we have. I recommend CyberPatrol - www.cyberpatrol.com - it isn't easy to
set up, but it is powerful. Once it is running it begins to make the internet feel a much friendlier and safer
place for our children.

Arnold: I see where you are trying to go, but that reasoning does not work with child pornography. The logic behind that ban is that buying the stuff encourages or financially supports the scum that go out & prey on children and sexually abuse them.

Any other deviation you might mention, no matter how disgusting (bestiality, say, or the scatological stuff) involves consenting adults. This not the case with child pornography. Children are mentally and emotionally incapable of granting that consent, and using them for pornography scars them for life. This is why child pornography has no 1st Amendment protection, and why "virtual" child pornography was ruled as different from "regular" child porn recently. By definition, no children were abused in creating that material.

A note about your comment about the indivisibility of Liberty: no liberty or right is absolute. There is a difference -as our forefathers well knew- between Liberty and License.

BTW, at least one item in the quoted Townshend article is misleading. Pete says "The ISP I use allows access to User Groups by using the
term 'alt' as a prefix." This seems to imply that the ISP is negligent in providing access to "kiddie porn". Currently the alt. branch of Usenet is carrying over thirteen thousand topics, and I'm sure that 99.99% of them are not involved with child porn.

[A side note for those who don't know: topics on Usenet use a naming system similar to that of Domain/Kingdom/Genus/Species for animals. So the root for all topics on computers is comp. Those on programming would be comp.programming. This leads into different languages such as comp.programming.basic, comp.programming.C++, and so on. Similar patterns exist for science (sci.) and recreation (rec.)]

So all alt. denotes is alternate, or alternative. In other words, we don't know where else we would put these topics. alt. includes things like alt.autos (down to .ferrari, .fiat, .ford, .gm....), alt.binaries, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 (one of my favorites; who needs Napster!), and my favorite: alt.barney.die.die.die. Heh.

Dean: what with all the hoorah about Townsend (not just here) I've noticed that the vast majority of people spout opinions without taking the time to discover the facts. Here are a few:

-Townsend did in fact use a credit card to access some sort child pornography site.

-Townsend posted the original article about his investigations a long time ago. If you check the time stamp of the article reposted by Tim, you'll see it was published a year ago. And just now they're going after him? :)

-Townsend (from what I've been able to determine) had not one single piece of child pornography on his computer. Not one.

End of friggin' story, as Dennis Leary would say. Yes, I believe him.

Other thoughts on this topic:
Given the moronic "no tolerance" fashion popular in law enforcement these days, the context of his credit card use may not count for anything. Pete may be truly screwed. Maybe he should move in with the film director (Polanski?) that skipped the country after boffing a 14-year old girl. :)

Dean raised what I thought was an interesting distinction: that between legitimately-termed child porn, wherein pre-adolescent children are placed in sexual situations they aren't equipped to deal with, and what might termed "ado-porn" (from adolescent) wherein teenagers are placed in sexual situations wherein many, if not all of them, are capable of handling.

Is photographing a 16-year old girl nude in a sensual or suggestive context "kiddie porn"? By many standards in the US, yes. No matter that at least some states put the age of consent at 16.

I believe the extremist position that equates a nude 16-year old girl with a nude 8-year old girl distorts the situation, and prevents adult discussion.

Hallo,

I'm a person that was a child when Pete Townshend and The Who were making the music album Tommy in London.
The place they used to practice in was called The Hanwell Community Centre. They practiced there at the same time as Deep Purple. Other groups that used the place, were Procul Harum, and The Gino Washington Ram Jam Band.
The caretaker of the building was called Mr Ernie Green. (the surname Green I may have wrong, but I think I remember that his last name was Green)
Ernie was the caretaker and a boxing trainer. The gym was up in the big attic. Professionals boxers were trained there.
The Director of the centre was called Mr Scott.

I'm telling all of this because anyone who wants to can check it out, and you can find out then that what I'm saying is true.
For pictures of the building you can go to Deep Purples website, in "Deep Purple History" a guy called Tony describes how he discovered that this was the place where Deep Purple created "In Rock', and as he was in London he thought he'd check it out. It was also the same place that had been an orphanage where Charle Chaplin had lived.
So Tony went there looked around, took some photos and got stones thrown at him by the rough kids around there (the area). (rough=when he visited and it was that way too when I was growing up there).

I grew up listening to The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks.
I remember dancing with my brother and sister in front of the television and singing along with the Beatles, "She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah", "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".
My parents divorced and we went to live with our grandparents. it was 3 minutes walking distance from where The Who were practicing.
They were to me the same as The Beatles, and to be able to see them, I couldn't believe it. To see a famous person, I'd never seen a famous person. And they were already famous.
They practiced in the gym, which was used as a five-a-side indoor football pitch too.
Deep Purple and the other bands used the smaller rooms. None of the rooms had anything done to them to fit the requirements of a band. They were just rooms, but they weren't too expensive and they were allowed to make a lot of noise.
The Who practiced for weeks and I watched them alone.
They didn't throw me out until after a couple of weeks, and that was because more kids came in disturbing them. They didn't talk to me, there was a spectators row of seats in step fashion going higher and higher, about 5 or 6 rows up to the back wall and I sat quietly there, just glad they didn't throw me out, I didn't really understand why they didn't. I mean they were famous and here I was a kid being allowed to watch.
They went threw songs, Pete would be endlessly busy working the songs out, gradually they'd get further, each time he was ready they'd start again everyone joining in, they weren't drinking or even speaking much, they worked just like any other job, seriously.

Ernie the caretaker took care of me too, he told me that my father was no good. He actually was angry and said if he saw my father he'd like to punch him on the nose because he neglected me. I didn't understand Ernie, I didn't know what he meant. But he was right. My father was a politician and had little time for anything else.
As kids we were just sent out to play, to be out of the way, so Ernie thought that was wrong, my father didn't do anything with me at all like play football or go anywhere. The only place we went together was to demonstrations in London, walking miles and miles through the streets, against certain things like nuclear bombs and whatever but we were made by my father to take part. All well and good these ideals but that's another story.

I learnt to box and Ernie was as a father to me, up until he said those things about my father, I loved my father and didn't like Ernie saying he would knock him out (hahahah, sounds funny now)
so I stopped hanging around there.

The reason I'm writing this is because I feel the life of a good man is being ruined even if it's nothing and it blows over Pete will have it following him. This isn't fair. Not if I explain the truth of Pete Townshend, The Who, and his songs, some of them anyhow. I feel I must.

To start with anyone who knows anything about Pete Townshend will know that he is a cynical person.
A person that worked with him said he was the most cynical person he had ever met in his whole life.
This is Pete Townshend. Take a look at his face and eyes, he doesn't look like a man that has anything to hide to me, rather he looks right through you, an intelligent man with charisma, a person that I would personally be shy to talk to man to man because of his character, I have the idea that he could say a few words and demolish a person with his biting cynicism. This is not a bad thing.
Frank Zappa was the same. Exposing lies.
And now this poor man has to hide like a frightened animal in the back of a car, not frightened because of anything he has done that is bad but frightened just like a defenceless hunted animal because he is clever and aware enough to know instantly what a mix up like this does to a person even if he has done nothing.

Let me tell the truth about Tommy then.
And a few songs from Tommy. And what I think they were influenced by, in fact what I know beyond a doubt were influenced by and why.

When a band came, Ernie or George (the other caretaker) would check them in the book.
I didn't really know whio Deep Purple were, they weren't on Top Of The Pops, the famous pop music programme on British TV since the 60s.
But The Who were. And on it up amongst the top artists.
Ernie was a boxing trainer, an upright citizen,
a man like the army would be proud of. He wasn't an active boxer himself anymore only a trainer but Ernie was a tough guy.
He came in at a certain moment to the room near the entrance of the building, which was their caretakers office, ranting on about "that c--- Blackmore, I'm going to chin him". (knock him out in London slang) "I aint aving it".
I didn't know what he was on about because I liked all the bands, it was intriguing for a child.
I said, 'What's the matter?'
Ernie said "They're using drugs, I'm not aving it".
I said, 'Drugs?' 'What?'
He said, "Pot, they're all smoking pot in there". 'I said, 'What's pot'? (only pot I knew was for putting plants in)
Ernie said, "Pot, they smoke it, I aint aving it"
I said, 'What now, where?'. (the bands were in, Deep Purple was I knew anyhow)
He said, "No last night, in there, all of em".
he refused to tell me much more, Ernie was just a decent man, but old fashoioned, not of the generation of the young in the sixties as was these band members.
Ernie didn't care who they were supposed to be, these rock and pop stars.
He especially didn't like Blackmore but now I know that Blackmore is well known for being a difficult person I can understand what had probably happened back then, Blackmore probably just told Ernie to mind his own business or something like that and Ernie got mad. Ernie didn't say that The Who were using drugs, he said that in the room where Deep Purple were practicing they'd been smoking the night before.
Ernie didn't like the music the loud music, he was alright with The Who, but wasn't keen on their loud music either, which wasn't as loud as Deep Purples though.

Anyhow The Who wrote some songs for Tommy, which are influenced by people and by the place they were, which was there in that big old spooky looking building which was originally an enormous Victorian orphanage. In actual fact it is a sign of brilliance how Pete Townshend could express in words things he picked up around him in the air, in the moment.

One day Ernie freaked out at a man that he knew that was a scout master, a man that helped out at the scouting group who was also called Ernie. The reason was Ernie number 1 found out that this man Ernie number 2, had been abusing children from that scouting group. This was at the time that The Who were busy using this place to create Tommy.
Ernie threw the scout leader guy out of the building and banned him and I don't know what else he did but it may be that he reported him.
He wanted to hit him anyhow.

The Who must have heard about this.
They wrote a song called Uncle Ernie.
If I'm not wrong it exposes child abuse.
If I'm not mistaken, it goes, "Down with the bedclothes up with the nightclothes".

In a completely cynical way.

Cynicism, what does it mean?
What does it imply?
I think it is a healthy way of making sense of an insane world. A way to pierce through lies to expose truth. Uncle Ernie is hardly a topic for a paedophile to write songs about. Illogical to say the least.
Pete Townshend has alway been seen as a person, within The Who with the other members, that could reflect what is actual amongst the general public and relevant and prevelant in society, his whole stage act encompasses exactly that.
His life shows that and I'm a witness to it even though he has never ever really explained exactly how he hit on certain themes or ideas, still he would have had his reasons, and there aren't many song writers that go into explaining exactly what they mean in their songs, they will tell you to listen and try to think and feel what it means to you.
But I know for sure how some of the songs came to be, the influences, I know, can see, but I don't know Pete Townshend as a friend, he hasn't told me. It is just obvious to me in a couple of songs, I can just imagine how their state of mind must have been and how people influenced their songs,
but the brilliance was and is theirs otherwise they would never have been so popular in the first place.

One day I had just arrived back from our first ever family vacation to a holiday camp, it was a Butlins holiday camp. These camps were in the 60s something like a prison for kids because it was fenced and so they controlled your going in and out. It wasn't that fine. every day and every morning there'd be this mad intercom going with somebody saying all so-called bright and sunny things, cheerful, cheerful, cheerful, "Good morning campers, get your breakfast, hi di hi hi di ho,"
Honestly this is how it was. It was in fact quite mad.
I was back and went to the centre. There was another kid a bit older than me that was a wizard at fixing things. He had set up an intercom system for them, for the centre, I didn't know that, I thought he'd just made a microphone with speaker and I asked him if I could have a go.
He said I could
I started going on as if we were at the holiday camp, generally talking a complete lot of nonsense, as children might playing around.
Within minutes Ernie came running cursing at us and especially me because what I'd said had gone all over and round the building, the director heard it, and The Who must have heard it, listen to the music, the song, Tommy's Holiday Camp,
I'm your uncle Ernie, I welcome you to Tommy's holiday campa.

Notice the camp,,a, like a Sergeant Major, and if you listen the music is just like a Victorian funfai-merry-go-round thing, amazingly comical, because I can see Ernie number one in this.
All ship shape, right let's be aving ya!!!

But Ernie number 2 has to be the scout helper.

Ernie nr 1 thought that I was a neglected child.

Tommy is about a deaf, dumb and blind boy.
He is like an autistic child. He lives in his own world, seemingly unaware of anything around him, though he is not deaf, dumb or blind he acts as if he is.

I was a traumatised child. I missed my mother. I was upset. I grew up in a tough, poor neighborhood, in inner London.

I believe that Pete Townsend is a sensitive, receptive individual. This ability enabled him to write songs that millions of people could and can (Pete and The Who are very popular=up til now=in America) relate to, because they touch on real things that everyone can relate to and feel to be true, the songs wer percieved through and by the eyes and senses of a person with integrity and insight.
The insight coming through this person's strength of character and sense of justice and truth and belief in those things.

Well, one afternoon I was sitting in again watching The Who practice and my sister and her pop groupy looking friends in floppy hats came in watching, they were allowed about a half an hour or less then they all got thrown out. I wasn't sitting with my sister and all the rest because I was just quiet, as I had always been, glad to watch. But these kids were all noisy, Pete asked them to leave and he asked my sister if she would ask little Tommy to leave too. She came and told me that we all had to go. I asked why, she said they can't practice with all of our noise, but I said I didn't want to leave, I told her, I don't have to leave they always let me watch, but then my sister told me well he asked me if I would ask Tommy to leave too. I said, Who's Tommy, she said, "That's you", i said why'd he call me that? Well that's what he just called you, he thought that's what you are called, my sister said. It was so weird because the guy our mother went away with was called Tommy too.
We went out, I wasn't pleased we stood laughing screaming and shouting Tommy, in the hall, then Pete came out and asked us please, can you go.

He is alright too. I hope this helps restore what is a musical hero, one of our legends. Living one.

Tommy

Pete Townsend is a hero of mine,but I find his
idea that men's minds are so weak as to be warped
by child pornography insulting, along with the
idea that men must be arrested for no more then
fantasy.Also even non-abusive images of child
nudity have potential to criminalise viewers.
I am also unconcerned about Pete's motives.Even
a genuine paedophile should not be subject to
such legislation,except as evidence of real
sex crimes.
This legislation belongs in primitive Islamic
societies,not secular Western democracies.Its
potential to incriminate the innocent is quite
terrible and it must be abolished.