Pete Townshend revealed why he passed up the chance to write the movie soundtrack for the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner.

Electronic musician Vangelis was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for his score, after the Who guitarist’s experience of making the Tommy movie in 1975 turned him against the idea of attaching himself to another film.

“I worked on the music with Ken Russell for his adaptation of Tommy,” Townshend said in a recent interview (via Music-News.com). “And when I finished, after sort of six months of working with him, I took him aside and I said I would never ever work on a movie ever again, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me and I don't even really like the film!”

Townshend recalled that afterward, the movie's  editor, Terry Rawlings, gave him a script to look at. "I said, ‘No, I'm not doing any more movies,'" he explained. "And he said, ‘You must read this, mate, you must read this, it's fantastic. … It’s by a guy called Ridley Scott.’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing any more films!’ I read the script, and I thought, ‘This is rubbish,’ and I said to him, ’It’s rubbish, and I’m not doing any more films for you.’ … It was Blade Runner.”

In 2017, Townshend said he wrote a new song called “Acid Queen 2” for an updated stage production of Tommy, noting he was inspired by the fact that the show would include “actors with disabilities of various kinds.” “This is a totally new adventure," he said, "and really does refer back to my original story in which a young man, disabled by extreme trauma, finds his way to some kind of spiritual place because he can feel music. I can’t wait to see it.”

 

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