Empty Glass

'Empty Glass' provides Townshend's condensed rock'n'roll adaptation of the Book of Ecclesiastes. "The spark-off for the song was when I read Ecclesiastes again, and it was so powerful," Pete told Trouser Press. "You've got King Solomon talking about how after he's fucked everybody and had everything and gone through everything, the only piece of advice he's got is that life is useless. But it also contains some great inspirational poetry: 'There is a time', and all that. It really reminded me of a lot of Persian Sufi poetry - that it's only in desperation that you become spiritually open..."

"Empty Glass is a direct jump from Persian Sufi poetry," Townshend told Greil Marcus in explaining the album's title. "Hafiz - he was a poet in the 14th century - used to talk about God's love being wine, and that we yearn to be intoxicated, and that the heart is like an empty cup. You hold up the heart, and hope that God's grace will fill your cup with his wine. You stand in the tavern, a useless soul waiting for the barman to give you a drink - the barman being God. It's also Meher Baba talking about the fact that the heart is like a glass, and that God can't fill it up with his love - if it's already filled with love for yourself."

"Spirituality to me is about the asking, not the answers," he elaborated to Trouser Press. "I still find it a very romantic proposition, that you hold up an empty glass and say, 'Right. If you're there, fill it.' The glass is empty because you have emptied it. You were in it originally. That's why it's only when you're at your lowest ebb, when you believe yourself to be nothing, when you believe yourself to be worthless, when you're in a state of futility, that you produce an empty glass. Normally, you occupy the glass. By emptying or vacating the glass, you give God a chance to enter it. You get yourself out of the way...you ask for help.

-quoted from Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend by Mark Wilkerson

Prehaps the best song on this album. It continues to grow on me a little more every time I hear it. Pete Townsend seems to write from a composite of his own life and the generic sort of bleakness of blue-collar life.

I love this song...though the version I always listen to is from the "Who Are You" album (not on the original release, I believe), you can still tell it's Pete singing. Great song, I could listen to it over and over!

The Demo version on the CD of "Who are you" with the Who providing extra instrumentation is far better than the version on Pete's Solo album for a few reasons: 1. John Entwistle on Bass

2. Keith Moon on drums and 3. unchanged lyrics.

there is a line in the original demo version that goes:

Someone has used us to shoot with the same gun Killing each other as we jump off the ledge.

this was changed to what is documented above, but it seems more in touch with that feeling of depression and alchoholism.