Pete Townshend Cares

The above video is of Pete Townshend performing “Can You Help the One You Really Love” which is from Lifehouse; the aborted project that was supposed to follow up Tommy. Many of the songs from Lifehouse were used for the 1971 Who’s Next album.

One of the quotes below the video on YouTube says it all:
"He says more in this song than almost all rock music has said all through the entire sixties and seventies."

How accurate that statement is.

As far as helping people goes, Pete actually has helped many people. As recently as 2008, The Who played a show in Detroit - which has an estimated 50% unemployment rate - and all profits went to Focus: HOPE (a non-profit civil and human rights organization) and Gleaners Community Food Bank.

Some detractors - and boy are there enough of those in this world - will say that all celebrities donate to charity because it is a tax writeoff. First off, I don't know that ALL celebs are philanthropic and secondly Townshend personally sold fund-raising anti-heroin T-shirts at a bunch of U.K. Bruce Springsteen concerts in 1984.