Fact #163890

Pete Townshend (guitarist, The Who) : I'm A Man was the song we were playing when I speared myself on my Stratocaster, going, "I'm a maa-aan! Wham wham! Whop!" and the fucking whammy bar went right through my finger and out the other side. I went into deep shock and immediately became a little baby, going, "Ooh mummy mummy!" But it was particularly wonderful playing that song on that tour. It wasn't a Who song but we'd played it from the very beginning. It was probably one of the first RAndB songs that Roger allowed us to perform, because of its machismo. He was at that time so insecure about his masculinity that he needed to be macho macho macho. He used to love the songs of Howlin' Wolf 'cos Howlin' Wolf used to sing in this deep, deep voice. Johnny Cash's voice too he used to like. I'm A Man was not a song I ever could have written, because I would never have been certain enough sitting on my own, but together we represented this extraordinarily powerful presence, and it was the pinnacle really, especially the version from Radio City, New York, a fucking great version.

I just love the fact that we were able to say it, and somehow it felt right. It really was suddenly just a simple statement of fact. Roger and I would go to the front of the stage and we'd arrived, we were mature now, we could look after ourselves, we were men, and nobody out there would ever argue. It was tremendously dignifying.
(Source : not known)