The 1980 album that became Pete Townshend’s cry for help: “My most morally bereft period”
Going solo when you’re viewed as such an integral part of a band is a brave move that has all the potential to backfire, and just because Pete Townshend was so revered as the guitarist with The Who, it didn’t automatically put him in good stead for being able to impress audiences without the other three members of the band.
Townshend had been working on plenty of projects outside of his primary commitment, with two collaborative albums written as a tribute to guru Meher Baba being released at the start of the 1970s while The Who were still at the peak of their powers. They may not have been solo albums in the traditional sense, but they were a small indication of his interests outside of the iconic British rock band, opening the eyes of their small audience.
These two records were printed in a limited run, and there was little about the project that suggested Townshend had done it for commercial means, but it sparked a sense of curiosity about what else Townshend had to offer as a songwriter.
His next attempt, Who Came First, arrived in 1973 and was essentially an album of leftover material from his band’s abandoned Lifehouse concept album, the rest of which would be turned into Who’s Next or featured on later releases by the band.
The album, while not poorly received, was still not as revealing as many listeners might have hoped. Given how much of it had stemmed from stuff The Who had been working on, it wasn’t clear if it truly gave off an indication of who Townshend really was as a person, and didn’t explore any of the kind of pent-up feelings that artists are often desperate to get out on a solo album.
However, his first album of entirely original material, arriving much later in 1980, was Empty Glass, and while many listeners had probably demanded to hear something a little more personal from Townshend, they probably didn’t have an album of this nature in mind.
“It was wanting to not be a drunk,” Townshend revealed in a 1994 interview with Playboy when asked about the themes of Empty Glass. “Alcoholism produced my most morally bereft period – 1978 through 1980 – and Empty Glass, which most people think is my best solo work. That album is, in a sense, a cry for stability, a cry for an empty glass, for sobriety and for a return to values that I held above everything else.”
As tough a listen as it may have been, it was just as tough for Townshend himself to make. “The reason the cry was authentic was that I was in real trouble,” he confessed. “The album is like a war medal. I went through hell and I don’t undervalue it, but I don’t aspire to do it again. The 14 years since then, being sober, are far preferable, though a few months ago I decided to go on a bender.”
Empty Glass is an unusually frank and honest record from Townshend, unlike anything else he ever chose to release, and even if it isn’t up to scratch with some of his best work, it’s still an important one for him to have made in order to get a grip on where he was at the time, and where he knew he needed to be.
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