London (AFP)
The guitarist and composer of the British rock band The Who, Pete Townshend, presented his first novel, "The Age of Anxiety", in London, which he has also designed for the opera.
The Who, at the origin of songs become true hymns of their time as "My Generation", will release a new album December 6, entitled "WHO".
"I did not go into writing novels before, because I thought I was not competent enough for that," said the composer, who has already taken the pen for many songs.
The first novel of this legendary guitarist, 74 years old, takes place on a background of sex, drugs and rock and roll, just like his career. He proposes a gallery of characters all more or less subject to experiments on the frontier of imagination and hallucination.
Here an old rock star turned hermit painting apocalyptic visions, there a young composer subject to hallucinations that would find their source in the anxiety of Londoners. Or an art dealer to whom the drug has demonic visions and whose wife mysteriously disappears.
"I would say that the novel is 80% from reality.I have observed a lot of what surrounds me and there are also a lot of autobiographical facts," said the rock star, referring to his relationship to drugs, but also to the abandonment of his parents being a child, one of the themes that crosses the book.
In parallel with the writing of the novel, Pete Townshend has designed a version for the opera, which he hopes to bring to the stage in 2021.
"I wrote a book just to be able to write the opera that goes with it!" Joked the artist, confident that his "dream of a former art student was to be able to create something that would combine all the fantastic materials" that he had been able to study.
Pete Townshend has confirmed that he has already composed "to a great extent" the music of this new opera and must now work on "reworking it for publication and future staging".
© 2019 AFP