All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes

All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes is the third official solo album by English rock musician and songwriter Pete Townshend. It was produced by Chris Thomas and recorded by Bill Price at Eel Pie, A.I.R. and Wessex studios in London. It contains compositions salvaged from later albums by The Who, although being clearly similar to all Townshend solo efforts (just like the late Who albums).

Recording and production

Along with the eleven songs on the album, further songs were also recorded, including "Body Language" (subsequently released in 1983 on Scoop), a track called "Man Watching" (released as the B-side of "Face Dances, Pt. 2"), and "Dance It Away" (which was also performed in various forms live by the band between 1979 and 1981, usually as a coda to "Dancing in the Street"), and which was released as the B-side of "Uniforms". One further song was listed on the initial LP release; called "Vivienne", this, along with "Man Watching" and "Dance It Away", were released as bonus tracks on the 2006 reissue.

Album title

Townshend explained the meaning of the strange album title at length in an interview with Rolling Stone:

Basically, it's about the fact that you can't hide what you're really like. I just had this image of the average American hero - somebody like a Clint Eastwood or a John Wayne. Somebody with eyes like slits, who was basically capable of anything - you know, any kind of murderous act or whatever to get what was required - to get, let's say, his people to safety. And yet, to those people he's saving, he's a great hero, a knight in shining armor - forget the fact that he cut off fifty people's heads to get them home safely. Then I thought about the Russians and the Chinese and the Arab communities and the South Americans; you've got these different ethnic groups, and each has this central image of every other political or national faction as being, in some way, the evil ones. And I've taken this a little bit further - because I spent so much of my time in society, high society, last year - to comment on stardom and power and drug use and decadence, and how there's a strange parallel, in a way, between the misuse of power and responsibility by inept politicians and the misuse of power and responsibility by people who are heroes. If you're really a good person, you can't hide it by acting bad; and if you're a bad person, you can't hide it by acting good. Also - more to the point, really - that there's no outward, identifiable evil, you know? People spend most of their time looking for evil and identifying evil outside themselves. But the potential for evil is inside you.

—Pete Townshend, Rolling Stone interview, 1982^[1]

On the Listening Time promotional LP, Townshend said he should win a "Stupid Title of the Year" award for the unusual moniker.^[2]

Video Release

A companion video was also released, featuring concept videos set to the musical backings of "Prelude", "Face Dances, Pt. 2", "Communication", "Uniforms", "Stardom In Acton", "Exquisitely Bored", and a re-recorded version of "Slit Skirts", with a harmonica performance on the last song, not used on the studio cut. This video has been out of print for years, though Pete Townshend put the videos up on his website in 2000, which were then subsequently uploaded to other video websites on the Internet.

Reception

Rolling Stone positively reviewed the album, giving it four stars (out of five), and calling it "a mess of contradictions", but "a listenable mess, to be sure. In fact, there's hardly a misplaced note on this album. Townshend's arrangements surge and subside as gracefully as anything in rock; they're neither static nor jolting."^[5] However, many other critics at the time panned the album that was more artsy and New Wave-influenced than Townshend's previous work.^[6] Some of the more traditional songs - "The Sea Refuses No River", "Somebody Saved Me", and "Slit Skirts" - were received better than the experimentations - notably, "Stop Hurting People", "Uniforms", and "Communication".

Track listing

All songs written by Pete Townshend, except where noted.

1. "Stop Hurting People" - 3:55
2. "The Sea Refuses No River" (Pete Townshend, Alan Rogan) - 5:53
3. "Prelude" (Pete Townshend, Andy Newman) - 1:31
4. "Face Dances, Pt. 2" - 3:24
5. "Exquisitely Bored" - 3:41
6. "Communication" - 3:19
7. "Stardom in Acton" - 3:42
8. "Uniforms (Corp d'Esprit)" - 3:42
9. "North Country Girl" (Traditional) - 2:27
10. "Somebody Saved Me" - 4:51
11. "Slit Skirts" - 4:54

Bonus Tracks (2006 Reissue)

12. "Vivienne" - 3:37
13. "Man Watching" - 2:32
14. "Dance It Away" - 3:38

Personnel

• Pete Townshend: vocals, guitars and keyboards
• Virginia Astley: Piano
• Tony Butler: Bass
• Peter Hope-Evans: Harmonica
• Mark Brzezicki, Simon Phillips: drums
• Jody Linscott: Percussion
• Chris Stainton: Additional keyboards
• Poli Palmer: Tuned percussion
• John Lewis: Fairlight CMI synthesizer programmes

Charts

Album

Notes

1. ^ Loder, Kurt (June 24, 1982). "The Rolling Stone Interview: Pete Townshend". Rolling Stone (Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc.) (372): 18. 
2. ^ Listening Time Promotional LP ATCO SAM150, 1982.
3. ^ Stephen Thomas Erlewine. "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes". Allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/album/r20358. Retrieved 15 August 2011. 
4. ^ Robert Christgau. "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes". robertchristgau.com. http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=8519. Retrieved 15 August 2011. 
5. ^ ^{a b} Pareles, John (August 5, 1982). "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes". Rolling Stone (Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc.) (375): 48. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/all-the-best-cowboys-have-chinese-eyes-19820805. 
6. ^ "Pete Townshend - Biography". rollingstone.com. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/pete-townshend/biography. Retrieved 15 August 2011.