Pete Townshend upset a 7-year-old Jenny Costello when he had an angry outburst to her and her father at a concert after recognizing her self-made ‘Smash Your Guitar, Pete!’ sign.
“Don’t wave that sign,” Townshend says onstage. “Just don’t wave it at me. Don’t bring your children “¦ use them. I want to tell you two words, but I can’t because you have a child on you.”
The father was offended by the vulgarity and left the show early with his daughter.
“I expect a 70-something-year-old man to respect the fact there’s a seven-year-old girl standing in front of him,”
“Whether it was directed to just me or both of us, you can’t tell — she was on my shoulders and he was looking directly at us. But nobody talks to my seven-year-old daughter like that. Nobody tells my kid to f— off.” Mr. Costello later told the Toronto Sun.
Pete Townshend, donning a white blazer with a red handkerchief, then mouthed the expression “F*** off!” at Mr. Costello.
“It all happened so quickly,” Costello said. “Some people have explained that (Townshend) had thought that I was using her (to get up to the front) and I want to make it perfectly clear that is not what happened at all and I support my daughter in what she wants to do.”
After being despised by Townshend, Costello and his daughter returned to their seats. She began weeping when she recognized her rock hero seemed angry at her.
“I’d like him to know in some small way he broke a little girl’s heart,” Costello said. “Both she and I were huge fans of the band and now I’m left trying to explain to her that heroes are not infallible. Instead of being this joyous, momentous occasion, it turned into a sad, regrettable kind of incident.”
Watch the full footage below: