Pete Townshend is getting old. The Who guitarist, famous for smashing his guitars at the end of ear-splitting live shows, has announced that a lifetime of loud music has left him partially deaf. He warns young people of the dangers of listening to rock, admitting: “I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.”

Townshend, 60, has had a varied and often brilliant 40-year career as a guitarist, songwriter, novelist, producer and biographer. His darkest moment came in January 2003 when he was arrested on internet child pornography charges. Townshend admitted to viewing images, but claimed to be researching for a campaign against “damage done by all kinds of pornography on the internet”. The charges were dropped, but his name is on the sex offenders register.

Born in London in 1945 to musical parents, Townshend met his future bandmates Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle at Acton County Grammar School. They started playing R&B covers, then recruited drummer Keith Moon, and released a single, I Can’t Explain, in 1965. Their most famous single, My Generation, was also released that year, and Townshend was labelled “spokesman for his generation”.

Global fame came in 1969 with the concept album Tommy, about a sexually abused disabled boy. This was followed by Quadrophenia, a story of mods and rockers in 1973. Both were made into successful films, and Townshend gained an Oscar nomination in 1975. Alcohol and drugs took their traditional toll, leading to Keith Moon’s death in 1978. The band split, Townshend gave up drink, became an author and, surprisingly, an associate editor at Faber & Faber. In 1992, the record-breaking stage musical of Tommy reportedly earned Townshend £45,000 a week. He celebrated with a drink, and ended up spending the night in a skip. He hasn’t touched alcohol since. In 1999, after divorcing from Karen, his wife of 31 years, he launched his own record label, Eel Pie. The Who have continued to tour, despite the death of John Entwistle in 2002.

Townshend lives in a £3 million Richmond townhouse, near to Mick Jagger, and dates the musician Rachel Fuller, 28 years his junior. He feels his age: “When I look in the mirror I don’t see a rock star, I see a little balding old guy who looks a bit like someone’s uncle.” He plans to tour a new album this year, and says he is looking forward to “looking gorgeous and playing show-off guitar like a kid in a music shop”.