Pete Townshend: Empty Glass

PETER DENNIS Blandford Townshend tells you everything you need to know about his first real solo album*, Empty Glass, with the (literally) iconic cover image: Pete as an angel, with his sacrament (brandy) in front of him, flanked by acolytes, two beautiful women offering their best come-hither looks. It is a record both casually and deathly spiritual, with Townshend engaged in the latest plane of the spiritual inquest he’d been engaged in since 1968’s Tommy. Production-wise, it was sonically modern, or at least more modern than its predecessor, the Who’s Who Are You, released in 1978 just weeks before Keith Moon died from misadventure.