Title: Pete Townshend
First published: 1999
Description: In Pete Townshend: The Minstrel's Dilemma, Smith explores the legendary rock auteur's struggle between his own creative impulses and those of the commercial public. Faced with a modern version of the minstrel's dilemma, Townshend is shown as a musician confronting the same battles begun by early minstrels and later fought by composers such as Beethoven and Mozart.

Early in his career, Townshend ignored his creative instincts to satisfy commercial agendas, but after his success, he slowly withdrew to resolve his conflict between creativity and commercialism. At the end of his thirty-year struggle he has emerged as a true artist, able to live up to audience expectation while attending to his own artistic impulses.
Subjects: Rock musicians, Criticism and interpretation, Biography, Rock musicians, great britain
Places: England
People: Pete Townshend
LC classification: ML410.T69 S65 1999