The Who song about Pete Townshend’s anger about the music industry
The Who’s Pete Townshend has been in the music industry for almost the entirety of his adult life, and while it has helped him achieve his wildest dreams, the ride has also been packed with low points. On ‘Slip Kid’, Townshend addressed the dark side of the business, which acted as a word of warning to younger artists.
Townshend was a decade into his recording career when he penned the track, which appeared on The Who By Numbers, and he’d grown tired of the political aspect of the record business. It was a theme throughout the album as the guitarist suffered from writer’s block, which clouded his view of the industry. Despite being in one of the world’s most successful bands, the cons of his situation began to outweigh the positives, and he let his feelings known on ‘Slip Kid’.
Townshend suffered an identity crisis while recording the album after turning 30 in May 1975, and it left him in the dumps. The songwriter began to worry he was too old for rock ‘n’ roll, and The Who were no longer the relevant force they once were in the world. As a result, he slipped into a worrying pattern of behaviour and later confessed the album was “written with me stoned out of my brain in my living room, crying my eyes out… detached from my own work and from the whole project… I felt empty.”
‘Slip Kid’ acted as the opening track for the record and set the tone for the rest of The Who By Numbers. Townshend mined his music industry experience into the emotional song, which he used as a vehicle to advise younger artists against following their dreams.
Speaking about the track, Townshend explained: “‘Slip Kid’ came across as a warning to young kids getting into music that it would hurt them – it was almost parental in its assumed wisdom.” Meanwhile, the lyrics to the opening verse read: “I’ve got my clipboard, textbooks, Lead me to the station, Yeah, I’m off to the civil war, I’ve got my kit bag, my heavy boots, I’m runnin’ in the rain, Gonna run till my feet are raw.”
After decades of leaving the track out of their setlists, Townshend decided to bring ‘Slip Kid’ back into the fold in 2015 because he felt it had become relevant once more. The guitarist explained his decision to Rolling Stone: “It feels very new. You could put it into the voice of some young Islamic student who decides to go fight in Syria and ends up in ISIS being forced to chop people’s heads off, and it would fit.”
‘Slip Kid’ is filled with bitterness and epitomises where Townshend found himself in 1975 as he felt spat out by the music industry. However, over time the war-torn lyrics have taken on a much more literal meaning for The Who maestro as his resentment towards the business has softened with age, and he’s accepted his position as a veteran. His relationship with the music business may have calmed, but Townshend still believes modern artists should hang up their instruments, although his reasoning has changed.
