SORRY, MR. DYLAN

Having slagged him in Mojo magazine, Pete Townshend has been unable to sleep for fear that Bob Dylan might have taken the slight badly. So, he did what anyone else might do: he broke out the Basildon Bond and wrote Dylan a letter of apology.

We're betting he gets back a reply along the lines of "Daer Peter, thanks for your letter. Bob has instructed me to thank you for your interest. I have great pleasure in enclosing a signed photograph of Bob, and a 50 cent coupon for whatever shit he's signed up to advertise at the moment."

Meanwhile, the BBC - ironically buoyed by the critical success amongst many university lecturers of their Dylan fest last year - are lining up an Arena special to celebrate the Who's um, 42nd anniversary (in case your wondering, that's Ruby + Cotton, so we'd recommend sending them a wine-stained tea-towel). Regular email correspondent Jim McCabe isn't clearing the space on his Sky+ just yet:

Given that the band's membership has halved over the years, it doesn't seem too much of an achievement for the BBC to announce they've got the band's permission for the project.
Only one snag: how are they going to handle Pete Townshend's brush with the law when he admitted to downloading child porn in the name of "research"?

That's actually an interesting question - you can imagine some bands allowing an official history on the strict understanding that unsavoury incidents are, at most, glossed over with an oblique scripted mention (not too many officially blessed Rolling Stones biographies make much of Bill Wyman not only shagging an underage girl, but then having a hit song about taking her abroad, for example). But The Who have been pretty upfront about Townshend's misadventure, and I suspect they wouldn't turn down another opportunity to push the official line on it again. We shall see in the autumn.

music bob dylan pete townshend the who