To say the legacy of Pete Townshend, legendary guitarist for British rock band The Who, has become complicated in the past decade might be the understatement of the century. While Townshend remains a rock and roll icon and pioneer, a 2003 child pornography scandal that ended with the guitarist being forced to register as a sex offender threatened to derail everything he'd worked for over the last 40 years.

For the first time, Townshend discusses the story behind the scandal, and divulges other surprising anecdotes from his harrowing life in his new memoir, "Who I Am" to be released Oct. 8.

"Who I Am," traces Townshend's life from the formation of the Who in 1962 through their historic headlining slot at Woodstock seven years later. In addition to many other revelations, Townshend writes that he was concerned his co-manager Kit Lambert was having an affair with Mick Jagger.

Read on for more surprising revelations from Townshend's memoir. 

Townshend admits it was probably a bad idea to pay for child pornography in an attempt to out a secret child molester ring ... well, we'll just let him explain that one.

The memoir is the first time the 67-year-old has discussed the matter publicly since police warned him and put him on a British registry of sex offenders.

Townshend says that he paid $14 to download images of abused children in an admittedly "insane" bid to prove British banks helped channel profits from pedophiles to illegal child pornography rings.

He says he planned to show that the sick industry of child sex spans from Russian orphanages to British banks. But when word of his illicit web work got out, he says in his memoir, he was ashamed and distraught.

"It's White Knight Syndrome," Townshend said. "You want to be the one that's seen to be helping."

"I had experienced something creepy as a child, so you imagine, what if I was a girl of nine or 10 and my uncle had raped me every week? I felt I had an understanding, and I could help,'' he added.

"If I had a gun I would have shot myself. It really did feel like a lynching."

Police confiscated Townshend's computers and files, and found nothing incriminating. But his reputation was in tatters.

He said he didn't fight to clear his name in court because, "I think I was exhausted. The police at Kingston station gave me half an hour to make a decision about whether to go to court or not.

"My lawyers were as surprised as I was because everyone thought I would be let off. And I thought that if I went to court they would f***ing rip me apart."

Mick Jagger is the only man Pete Townshend has ever "seriously wanted to f***."

'I felt a little jealous. Mick is the only man I've ever seriously wanted to f***. He was wearing loose pyjama-style pants without underwear; as he leaned back I couldn't help noticing the outline of his ample c*** lying against the inside of his leg.

'From then on, I encouraged the band to arrange our equipment for maximum effect, especially onstage or in photographs.'

Meeting drummer Keith Moon for the first time

"As soon as he began to play we knew we'd found our missing link. Roger tried to befriend Keith, but Keith kept his distance. He also seemed to see Roger's success pulling girls at our gigs as a challenge. They sometimes chased the same girls in these early days, and it was never clear to me who was winning . . . Keith's main pal in the band became John [Entwistle]. They were hysterically funny together and shared an apartment for a while. Roger and I got the impression they did almost everything together, including having sex with girls. It must have been mayhem."

"My Generation" was written while the Who were on tour in Holland and Scandinavia in 1965.

"I produced several sets of lyrics and three very different demos," Townshend writes. "The feeling that began to settle in me was not so much resentment towards those Establishment types all around my flat in Belgravia, but fear that their disease might be contagious. What was their disease? It was actually more a matter of class than age. Most of the rich kids around me were striving to be corporate executives of the future - not rebelling against anything. I associated their values with stasis, and therefore with death."

Backstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix and Townshend couldn't agree on which act should close out the show. Hendrix eventually got the slot after a coin toss. At the airport the next day Townshend ripped into the Who's publicist over the matter.

"Jimi got wind of our little spat in the airport lobby and started giving me the evil eye," writes Townshend. "I walked over to him and explained that there were no personal issues involved. He just rolled his head around - he seemed pretty high. Wanting to keep the peace, I said I had watched his performance and loved it, and when we got home, would he let me have a piece of the guitar he had broken? He leaned back and looked at me sarcastically: 'What, and do you want me to autograph it for you?'"

"Who I Am" will be available Oct. 8.