Pete Townshend Unveils Studio at the University of West London
Will house the synthesiser collection of The Who guitarist
Pete Townshend with his iconic synths. Picture: UWL
October 11, 2024
This week has seen the launch of a new teaching and creative installation at the University of West London (UWL), featuring iconic synthesisers and instruments provided by British rock legend and UWL Alumnus Pete Townshend
The Townshend Studio was unveiled on Thursday 10 October, and is part of UWL’s London College of Music at the University’s Ealing campus. The new studio arose from Chiswick-born Pete Townshend looking for a home for his synthesisers to leave a legacy for the next generation.
The collection includes some of the most influential instruments in the development of electronic music. It comprises 12 principal synthesisers including the ARP Model 2500 (1970), used on Quadrophenia, and the rare and sought-after Yamaha GX-1 (1975), one of only 10 made with a retail price of over 60,000 USD on release, plus many other instruments played by Townshend throughout his career.
The studio was officially launched at an event attended by over 300 guests who heard the British rock legend reflect on his life, music career and his pioneering use of technology in the creative process. Journalist and author, Will Hodgkinson, interviewed Pete Townshend about his transformational time at the Ealing School of Art, the lifelong impact of his art teacher, Roy Ascott, the role technology and synthesisers played in his music and why he hopes The Townshend Studio will inspire a new generation of musical creatives. The evening was introduced by Sarah Raybould, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and former Director of London College of Music.
Pete Townshend said, “It’s my hope that the studio will be a creative space for learning, collaboration, experimentation and play, inspired by the musical and artistic legacy of Ealing, an area integral to the development of British music in the 1960s,”
Like many other musicians of his generation, including fellow UWL alumni, Queen’s Freddie Mercury and the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood, Townshend attended art school. During his time at the Ealing School of Art, now part of the University of West London, Townshend studied under radical teacher, artist, and pioneer of new media, Roy Ascott, who led the ‘Groundcourse’ at the School in the 1960s.
The programme encouraged students to re-think their relationship to their work, audiences, and environment, with Ascott instructing students to “...stop thinking about artworks as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.”
Townshend describes his time there as “a revelation” and has credited Ascott’s teaching with informing his vision for The Who. He says “I was at an art school where the course was dedicated to breaking the rules and I just drafted that into my work as a guitar player.”
Townshend’s experience on the graphic design course also gave him the tools to develop an identity for the iconic band: “I came up with target t-shirts, Union Jack jackets, the arrow over the ‘O’ in the name The Who... it taught me about presentation and the importance of the client, or in my case, the audience.”
Pete Townshend has worked closely with the University’s academic and technical staff to design and build the studio, which aims to enable students, artists and researchers to fully explore the cybernetics-inspired vision of Roy Ascott through the connection of hardware, software, people and space.
“This is a unique resource for students and the wider public, uniting legacy and contemporary technologies. The studio will explore the potential for creative practice to inform and inspire beyond the arts and into the fields of science, technology, health, humanities and social science. Crucially, it will be an ideas hub for creative connections and collaborations locally, nationally and worldwide,” said Vice-Chancellor of UWL Professor, Peter John CBE.
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