Happy Birthday is a collaboration album by Pete Townshend and friends including Ronnie Lane, pressed and released in 1970 by Universal Spiritual League. The album was originally released in February 1970 (in commemoration of Meher Baba's birthday on February 25) as the first in a series of tribute albums dedicated to Pete Townshend's spiritual mentor Meher Baba. Only about 2,500 copies were pressed in the original 1970 issue. The album was reissued in similar numbers in 1977. Later albums by Townshend and friends dedicated to Meher Baba included I Am, With Love, and Avatar (a compilation of the previous three albums, later released as Jai Baba). Several songs from Happy Birthday and I Am reappeared in the 1972 Townshend solo album Who Came First.
Famous quotes containing the words happy, birthday and/or townshend:
“Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Since mothers are more likely to take children to their activities—the playground, ballet or karate class, birthday parties—they get a chance to see other children in action.... Fathers usually don’t spend as much time with other people’s kids; because of this, they have a narrower view of what constitutes “normal” behavior, and therefore what should or shouldn’t require parental discipline.”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)
“Because Time cannot alter but obey Fate’s laws.
[Chorus:] Then happy those whom Fate, that is the stronger,
Together twists their threads, and yet draws hers the longer.”
—Aurelian Townshend (c. 1583–c.1651)