Pete Townshend Says iPods WILL Make You Deaf
On the weighty topic of ear buds causing deafness, Pete Townshend has offered up his luminous thoughts.
It turns out that he blames studio headphones for his own partial deafness and darkly forecasts that those who use iPods will be joining him in the Cochlear Club soon enough. Why a professional musician would confuse an iPod with a set of headphones is a mystery - maybe he didn't hear the question right.
The article up on Philly Burbs ends with this excellent "What Have I Wrought?" quote:
"I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf," [Townshend] said.
Or, you know, depends upon it as a pre-existing condition.
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Comments:
...or getting wasted, putting on headphones, & jamming for hours, which he was also famous for doing regularly.
Also, I love Pete & everything, but 'principal *components*'? I want to be forgiving & say that he just meant "proponents" -- except that "proponents" doesn't really work that well either.
Unless he means that rock'n'roll has the power to make guitar, drums, bass, & vocals deaf. In which case, um, I think I may have just blown my own mind.
Yeah, well, Pete doesn't always engage his brain before he opens his mouth, as evidenced by his famous quote, "I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman."
I've heard Pete attribute much of his hearing loss to the time when The Who blew up the drum kit on TV at the end of "My Generation." Apparently, Keith Moon secretly doubled the amount of explosives in the drums and Pete was standing right next to it when it went off. That'll do it.
Must be the headphones. It couldn't possibly be, say, standing in front of a 20 foot stack of amps cranked to 11 for 25 years.