‘It was long thought that the early Who were powered by Pete’s sexual frustration…’

HiLowBrow:

but as more of his private life has come unraveled in public it seems like he was working out of darker shadows: Ivar the Engine Driver and Uncle Ernie prefigure revelations that Townshend was sexually abused as a child, and recast his work. The ironic distance in many of those songs collapses down, and we find that maelstrom in Townshend himself, gathering his band up in his widening gyre.