“I could spend eight months at a computer desk writing a book, lyrics, poems—that’s what I love to do,” Pete Townshend says. The famously literate rock star, who co-founded the Who in 1964, famously has always been ambivalent about performing, despite the theatrical, great-moments-in-rock flourishes—windmilling arms, power slides across the stage, guitar smashing, etc. Townshend would…