Who guitarist and composer Pete Townshend originally wanted to call his memoir, "Pete Townshend: Who He?" His publisher, HarperCollins, settled on the less cheeky, more digestible, "Who I Am" — though a better title might be: "Who I Was."

Townshend has long been rock music's most articulate interviewee, a multisyllabic spokesman for a style of music that thrives on immediacy and rhythmic simplicity. As a writer friend a few months ago in New York said, "Sometimes I enjoyed his interviews more than his music."

In interviews, Townshend could be both bombastic and eloquent, veering from the personal to the political to the literary in one or two comments.