Give Blood (song)

"Give Blood"
Single by Pete Townshend
from the album White City: A Novel
Released	1986 (1986)
Recorded	1985 at Eel Pie Studio, Twickenham; Eel Pie Studio, Soho, London; A.I.R. Studios, London
Genre	Rock
Length	5:44
Label	Atco
Writer(s)	Pete Townshend
Producer(s)	Chris Thomas
Pete Townshend singles chronology
"Face the Face" (1985) "'Give Blood'" (1985) "Barefootin'" (US, 1986) --- "I Won't Run Anymore" (UK, 1989)

"Give Blood" is a song by Pete Townshend, the guitarist for The Who. The song is the opening track for Townshend's fourth solo album, a concept album titled White City: A Novel, and was released as a single.

When Townshend was asked about the song he said:^[1]

Give Blood was one of the tracks I didn't even play on. I brought in Simon Phillips, Pino Palladino and David Gilmour simply because I wanted to see my three favourite musicians of the time playing on something and, in fact, I didn't have a song for them to work on, and sat down very, very quickly and rifled threw [sic] a box of stuff, said to Dave, "Do one of those kind of ricky-ticky-ricky-ticky things, and I'll shout 'Give Blood!' in the microphone every five minutes and let's see what happens." And that's what happened. Then I constructed the song around what they did.

The single failed to chart in the US or UK but reached number 5 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Charts.^[2]

References