Like all Pete Townshend’s best songs, The Who's My Generation was a thrilling collision of body and brain. The title had highbrow roots, the guitarist inspired by the Generations collection by socialist playwright David Mercer. But the song’s visceral clatter was fuelled by Townshend’s disgust at his well-heeled neighbours in London. Despite the iconic ‘hope I die before I get old’ line, the songwriter later noted, it was wealth and class, more than age, that he despised.
"The line actually came from a time when I was living in a really wealthy district of London, just by accident," Townshend said in 1983. "I didn't really understand quite where I was living at the time. And I was treated very strangely on the street, in an imperious way by a lot of people, and it was that that I didn't like. I didn't like being confronted with money and the class system and power. I didn't like being in a corner shop in Belgravia and some woman in a fur coat pushing me out of the way because she was richer.
