SHORT TAKES : Song a ‘Coming Out’: Townshend
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NEW YORK — Guitarist Pete Townshend of The Who says his 1980 song “Rough Boys” was a “coming out, an acknowledgment of the fact that I’d had a gay life.”
Townshend, who has been married to Karen Astley since 1966 and has three children, divulged his bisexuality in the book “Rock Lives: Profiles and Interviews.”
“I know how it feels to be a woman because I am a woman,” Townshend said in the book, a collection of interviews by music writer and radio host Timothy White. It was released Friday.
Townshend said in September, 1989, on White’s radio show that “Rough Boys” showed his aversion to the macho rock star ethos.
He said the song meant “I understood what gay sex was about.”
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