• Somebody Saved Me

  • Words + Music | Vol. 27
  • By: Pete Townshend
  • Narrated by: Pete Townshend
  • Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,482 ratings)
Somebody Saved Me  By  cover art

Somebody Saved Me

By: Pete Townshend
Narrated by: Pete Townshend

Publisher's summary

Pete Townshend is one of the great figures in rock ‘n’ roll history. For almost 60 years, The Who have balanced the physical and the spiritual with introspective lyrics and inspirational music. But there is a part of Townshend’s story—and The Who’s—that has not been examined.

These are his Words + Music.

In the Audible Original Pete Townshend: Somebody Saved Me, the songwriter takes us through the period between the 1978 death of Who drummer Keith Moon and the 2002 loss of bassist John Entwistle. During these 24 years, The Who enjoyed their greatest popularity—and broke up. But no matter how much he tried to deny it, The Who had a hold on Pete he could not ignore. Every time he thought he was out, rock ‘n’ roll pulled him back in. 

Townshend is honest about his victories and his failures in years spiked with conflict and resolution, the sacred and the profane, love and loss. Townshend punctuates his memories with the songs that came out of his life in that time—“Let My Love Open the Door”, “Slit Skirts”, “You Better You Bet", “Eminence Front”, and more as you’ve never heard them before. 

In Somebody Saved Me, Pete Townshend bares his soul, bares his teeth, and bares his heart. 

Cover art photo © Pennie Smith

©2022 Salsina LLC (P)2022 Audible Originals, LLC.

About the Creator and Performer

Pete Townshend is known principally as the lead guitarist and composer for The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans over fifty years, during which time Townshend was the driving force behind one of the most powerful, inventive, and articulate bodies of work in rock and roll. He has always been at the forefront of his profession.
He has written several hundred songs for his solo albums and rarities compilations. Though known mainly as a guitarist, he is an accomplished singer and keyboard player and has played many other instruments on his solo albums and on various Who albums.
Townshend joined Faber & Faber as an Editor in 1983 where he continued to work until the 1990s. His first ventures into musical theatre were the award-winning original productions of The Who’s Tommy, followed by his musical adaptation of Ted Hughes’s The Iron Man. In September 2017, Townshend took Classic Quadrophenia (orchestrated by his wife Rachel Fuller and featuring Alfie Boe and Billy Idol) for a short tour of the USA before touring South America with The Who later that month.
His latest artistic project, The Age of Anxiety, is simultaneously a novel and a rock opera about passion and ambition, good drugs and bad drugs, and loves lost and found. The novel was published by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK and Hachette Books in November of 2019.

What listeners say about Somebody Saved Me

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A Glimpse Into the Life of Pete Townshend

I started listening to The Who back in the seventh or eighth grade because the cool older brother of one of my best friends loved their music. Decades later, I’m still listening to their music. Along the way, I saw their movies, and generally put them in the category of top bands of all time. I do not, as it turns out, know just about anything about the people who made up the band. So when I stumbled across this short work by Pete Townshend, I was happy to give it two hours. It’s a good mixture of Townshend playing some of his songs (the best in the audiobook is his new interpretation of Eminence Front) and talking about his life—the good and the bad—roughly from the time that Keith Moon died to the time that John Entwistle died. It’s interesting for any fan of the band. Townshend had a good life that he periodically messed up but always put back together. He struck me as being quite honest about his blunders and actually fairly humble about his successes—all while pointing out that it was a lack of humility at the time that helped fuel his screwups. In the final analysis, his screwups are fairly tame by rock star standards and I suppose that makes the book less exciting, but no less interesting. If you liked the band or Pete Townshend’s solo music, you’ll enjoy this book.

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A must-listen for Pete Townshend fans and all rock fans

I became a Who/Pete Townshend fan in 1982 after watching the Toronto concert literally hundreds of times. I wore out the VHS tape of that show and I have never stopped listening. The period covered by “Somebody Saved Me”, late ‘70s to early 2000s, is some my favorite Townshend music and also a period I knew the least about. This candid conversation really helped connect the dots between what we heard then and what was happening.

The newly recorded music is really great to hear and has new life 30-40 years after being written.

We are lucky to have grown up with such great artists and to have been able to experience them in-person. Pete is one of the most innovative and important. “Somebody Saved Me” helps us to see the person within the greatness.

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Two of the best hours I've ever spent!

First of all let me say...I LOVE THE WHO! My favorite band ever by far. Had a beautiful dog named Townshend who passed away in 2020. He did windmills with his tail and he was just the best friend ever. Have a new dog (named Daltrey)...no offense to Townshend but he's the smartest dog ever! Both are English Shepherds. I have two tortoises named Moon and Ox (they will outlive us all)! So now...Pete. A genius, a poet, and a great all-around musician. As I stated in the "headline"...two of the best hours ever spent. This was a great retrospect of those years...much I already had known, but some new stuff thrown in there as well. I found it fascinating. towards the end...really hit home when he got to the John Entwistle death. I am a stagehand (a failed musician I suppose). The Who were to play their next show after Las Vegas at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater (where I worked at until the venue closed in 2015). It was a big tour and the band was doing what we refer to as "leap frogging" (so we were already setting up the show in Irvine before they had even played in Las Vegas). My boss came out on stage in the middle of us setting up the show and gathered everyone together and announced John Entwistle had died. We were all really bummed out (especially me, being a HUGE Who fan). We took apart everything that we had built and loaded it all back in the trucks. They went on to do the Hollywood Bowl show and thankfully rescheduled the Irvine show at the end of the tour. I chose not to work that show, I bought tickets instead. It was a great show. John was very much missed but the band went on and it was a great tribute to all involved as well as to John. So that's my personal story. As for Pete's overall story here....it's 5 stars for sure! God Bless Pete, God Bless The Who...the GREATEST ROCK BAND EVER <3

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Great for a Who fan like me.

Loved this. Pete made some good and bad decisions in his life. He owns up to the bad. He can certainly say he lived a full life. I just can’t understand why he kept blowing through his money. I would think you would learn your lesson the first time you did this.

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The Empty Glass is Finally Filled

Interesting, new, honest, real. More approachable, more down for earth then his autobiography, whether a fan of Townshend or not, the listener can’t help but like the 78 year old narrator as he shares a 20 years period of his life that shaped who is today as much as the 20 years previous in the spot light. For the fan his reinterpretation of some of the songs written almost 40 years go is worth listening by themselves.

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very interesting

worth it just for the demo recordings. really great to hear this music legend tell it in his own words.

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Wow!

Can’t express how much I enjoyed hearing from Pete about such difficult times and how they impacted his music and his life.

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Thank you Pete, more please!

A must for Pete Townshend fans, and he leaves you wanting more.
(like maybe a deep dive into "Psychoderelict")

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  • mg
  • 06-01-22

shallow twit, rubbish of a story.

Shallow twit, rubbish, Pete is bore, loser,
songs stink, whatever talent he had is long gone...$$$$$

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More

Only two hours? Coulda listened to two days of Pete talking. And he coulda talked for that long. Easy.

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