"IT'S ONLY (PRE)TEENAGE WASTELAND..."

Say it ain't so, Pete!

LONDON (Reuters) - British rock star Pete Townshend, guitarist with legendary band The Who, on Saturday admitted paying to view Internet child pornography but denied he was a pedophile and said it was for research purposes.

The guitarist took the unusual step of issuing a public statement after a newspaper said police were investigating an unnamed music star as part of Britain's largest-ever operation against Internet pedophilia.

In the lengthy statement, Townshend said he had paid to enter an Internet site advertising child pornography "purely to see what was there" as research to fight the crime.

"I am not a pedophile. I think pedophilia is appalling," he said in the statement which was distributed by a woman to reporters outside his home in Richmond, south London.

"On one occasion I used a credit card to enter a site advertising child porn. I did this purely to see what was there," he said.

Townshend, 57, said he felt "anger and vengeance" toward those who found child pornography attractive, and said he believed he was sexually abused as a child but could not remember clearly what happened.

"To fight against pedophilia, you have to know what's out there," he said, adding that he was involved in an anti-pedophilia campaign that had fizzled out.

I want to believe him. I desperately, completely want to believe him. Fuck. It's disturbing and painful for me to think that such one of the most universally revered figures in the history of rock music could really be a pedophile. I would have thought that Townshend would be fully content with the usual rock excesses. You know, drugs, alcohol, groupies, and maybe some large fish borrowed from Zep. I really don't know. Pete Townshend strikes me as a lot of things, but child pornography enthusiast isn't one of them.

Obviously he has a chance to clear his name here. He very quickly released a statement after it was revealed he was a subject of the probe. Give the cops a look at your computer hard drive, that should help. And hey, get serious about being an anti-childporn activst. Again, my sense is that he's no Peewee or Gary Glitter*. This is his chance to show everyone that fact.

*- isn't it just lovely that every time a hockey player scores a goal, a pedophile gets money?