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Pete Townsend

Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend (19 May 1945-) was an English guitarist and singer-songwriter who served as the secondary lead vocalist and chief songwriter of "the Who", one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Chiswick, London, England in 1945, Townshend was childhood friends with Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle, and, in 1964, they formed "the Who", a rock and roll band which achieved great success amid the Swinging Sixties. Townshend also had a successful solo career, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Townshend was a member of the CPGB's Young Communist League youth wing during his years at art school, joining in 1961 and taking part in their 1966 "Trend" recruitment campaign. In 1974, he admitted that, while in practice he was a capitalist who was rewarded well for his work, he held communist ideals. In 1998, he was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party. In a 2019 interview with The Times, he stated his support for the European Union, acknowledging his political differences with his bandmate Roger Daltrey, a Brexiteer.

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