Pete Townshend says that he's affected daily by “chemical depression”, but that he has no interest in speaking to “fucking doctors” about it.
In a new [paywalled] interview with The Sunday Times newspaper, The Who's legendary leader admits “When I first wake up I’m suicidal, actually suicidal”, and that it takes him about 30 minutes to shake off his darkest thoughts, aided by some self-prescribed and commonly available mood enhancers.
“I have a couple of cups of tea, two digestive biscuits - apparently equal to 17 sugar lumps - and I feel happy,” he tells journalist Emily Prescott. “If I start my journals before I have my cup of tea, I’ll paint a very bleak picture of my life. Despite the fact that I have everything that I want and everything that I need... And I have had a really extraordinary life.”
Townshend goes on to reveal that he had therapy for three years in the 1980s, but ended up sacking his therapist.
“After the third year, I realised that the woman counselling me had only said about three words. I was just listening to myself,” he says of the experience. “So now I just write journals. Every morning I rebuild myself in a sense with tea and coffee, and a few vitamin pills.”
Away from The Who, Townshend recently helped stage a one-off musical performance of The Seeker, a collaboration with his wife Rachel Fuller based upon Hermann Hesse’s 1922 novel, Siddhartha, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London. Townshend first read Siddhartha in his twenties, during a period when he studied teachings about spiritual journeys.
“The Beatles found Maharishi and we all thought we’d do the same thing,” he says. “I think what actually is so elegant about The Seeker is that it doesn’t breach, it doesn’t set up. It doesn’t pretend to have an answer.”
The guitarist admits that he's not comfortable with anyone who claims that they have all the answers to mental wellness.
“I think because of social media in particular, the way that we carelessly share not only our anxieties but also perhaps our solutions,” he says. “We’re a bit careless about that because what works for me won’t necessarily work for you.”
Townshend recently started that he won't be attempting to persuade Roger Daltrey back into the studio to record another Who record.
"I’m not gonna try to bully Roger to do anything," he said.
