Pete Townshend: Making The Rounds [VIDEO]

Pete Townshend feels exhausted after finishing his new autobiography, Who I Am, which will be released on Monday (October 8th). The tome, which chronicles Townshend's early life, which included sexual abuse and a temporary abandonment by his parents, also goes into detail about his life both with and without the Who. When asked how he feels to have finally completed the memoir, Townshend told The Sun, "I feel sick. It's very strange. If you've run a marathon, you expect to feel 'Yay!' But I feel depleted and concerned. I don't want somebody to be hurt through what I've written but, on the other hand, I want it to be true. I'm a little bit harder on people if they're dead than alive but I feel as if I'm waiting for responses."

He went on to say: "I'm very aware that even if I write about Keith Moon -- the good, the bad and the indifferent -- he's got a troubled daughter and I don't want her to feel bad."

Pete Townshend told us that although the intellectual aspects of music are important, music's main purpose is to soothe and entertain: "Fashion, ideas, style and politics and all this stuff is okay, but what's the function of music in the modern world? It is to divide up time and give us a brief respite from the troubles of our day."

Townshend says that as an artist, both in the past and today, he depends as strongly on his audience as they do on him: "It's not that it's exalted. It's not that it's higher, it's not that I'm looking down at the world and I can observe from on high. It is that as an artist, you have a unique ability to stand away from society and trust that your audience will give you what you need to make your next piece of work."

Pete Townshend will be making the rounds in support of his memoir, Who I Am, which will be published Monday. That night he'll put in an appearance at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. On Tuesday it's a book signing and question-and-answer session with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. Wednesday it's down the New Jersey Turnpike for a stop at the Philadelphia Free Library. Thursday it's up to Ridgewood, New Jersey for a signing at Bookends. And on Friday he'll be in Boston at the Berklee Performance Center.

And for those not in the Northeast, Townshend will also be on the tube:

•Sun 10/7 – CBS – Sunday Morning
•Mon 10/8 – ABC – The View
•Mon 10/8 – Comedy Central – The Daily Show
•Mon 10/8 – NBC – Today
•Tue 10/9 – NBC – Late Night With Jimmy Fallon