Pete Townshend Will 'Moan' About Keith Moon Biopic If He Doesn't Like It

During a new interview with Rolling Stone, Pete Townshend opened up about the Who's 2022 tour, as well as the Keith Moon biopic. Though he says he won't "go to war" over the biopic, he is prepared to "moan" about it if he doesn't like the finished product.

“When you talk about it as a Keith Moon biopic, it’s going to be the first semi-fictionalized, dramatized Who story,” Townshend told the outlet. “It will be a Who biopic. Somebody is going to have to play Pete Townshend. I’ve read some very, very varied opinions about what my relationship was like with Keith. I view it one way, and other people view it another way. I certainly was never at war with Keith but neither was I his puppy.”

Townsend went on to describe his late bandmate as “a great manipulator" while simultaneously being "a great character, a great showman" who had the ability to bring "a lot of joy." Despite that, though, Moon "also brought a lot of hardship and difficulty," Townshend explained. "I’ve always been honest about that. It will be interesting to see how that evolves," he continued. "I certainly don’t see a position where if I didn’t like the way the story was being told, I’d block it. I don’t give a f—k, to be honest. I hope it happens because Roger [Daltry] has been working on it.”

"I think if I felt I was being cruelly misrepresented, I’d step in and say, ‘This is a bit much,'" he added. "But I trust the people that are putting the film together. … And Roger is somebody who would punch out somebody that said anything even slightly derogatory about me. I trust him.”

"But if I don’t like it, I will say so in the press," Townshend promised. "I might have a moan about it if there’s something I don’t like, but I will never go to war in the way that some bands have.”

Earlier this month, it was reported the long-awaited Moon biopic will start filming this summer. The project is being provisionally called The Real Me, inspired by ‘Quadrophenia.' No casting announcements have been made as of yet. The film has been in development for over a decade.