Name: Pete Townshend. Age: 75. Occupation: Guitar repairman. Oh, for a minute, I thought you were talking about Pete Townshend of the Who. I am talking about Pete Townshend of the Who. But he doesn’t repair guitars – he destroys them. Well, that’s partly true. For years, Townshend developed a reputation as the wild man of rock, often finishing concerts by smashing his guitars into smithereens. But that’s only half the story. What’s the other half? That’s the bit after the concerts, where Townshend would creep around the stage collecting up all the bits of smashed guitars so he could glue them back together again. That isn’t very rock’n’roll. It gets worse. To make it easier to repair his broken guitars, he went to great lengths to smash them up as carefully as possible. Yikes. This is all according to his bandmate Roger Daltrey, at least. On the How to Wow podcast, he revealed the careful process behind Townshend’s destruction. “They were real guitars, but we worked out very cleverly that very rarely did the neck break. As long as the neck didn’t break, you could glue the body back,” he said. What a cheapskate. Hardly. As Daltrey also pointed out: “It was costly in glue.” I’m so disappointed. If it helps, there is a chance that this is just Daltrey deliberately trying to sabotage Townshend’s reputation. The pair interact as little as possible these days, doing separate interviews, having separate backstage areas at concerts and even recording entire albums without seeing each other. You’ll be telling me next that Gene Simmons never had a cow’s tongue surgically grafted on to his own tongue. What? Of course, he didn’t. That’s berserk. Or that Keith Richards could only get off drugs by having his blood replaced at an expensive Swiss clinic. Also false, I’m afraid. He has since admitted that he made that story up. I’m heartbroken. Please, at least tell me that Alice Cooper really once bit the head off a bat. I hate to break this to you, but Alice Cooper did not bite the head off a bat. But Ozzy Osbourne did, if that’s any consolation. I suppose that’s better than nothing. Listen, it’s important to remember that even rock stars are people, and they have to deal with the same mundanities as the rest of us. Do you know why Townshend had to glue all his guitars back together? Why? Because the Who didn’t have any money. It was a simple case of frugality. Hey, I don’t have any money either. And that’s what makes you a rock star. Do say: “The Who’s reputation is in tatters.” Don’t say: “Someone get me a Pritt Stick.”