Looking for something to fuel long-held desires to become an old-fashioned cock-out rock star? Then welcome Pete Townshend's emotionally wrought and self-flagellating autobiography. For here is everything you hoped was true: the ability to buy Ronnie Wood's house, a fresh brow-mopping girl in the hotel room, the television-through-window exuberance of bandmates, the close encounters with Mick Jagger's bulge.

But in Townshend's complex world there is much more too, perhaps enough to turn the rock dream sour: the awkward relationship with fans, the inability or unwillingness to recreate the hits of one's heyday with the Who (and the paranoid insecurity associated with that), the ordeal of sustaining a loving marriage, an unhinged childhood with an insatiable grandmother on the English coast. And at the end of it all is the auto-destruction, far more effective than his guitar smashing, an act that temporarily made Townshend one of the most reviled and misunderstood men in rock, which is saying something.

In many ways, this is an important book, a fearless account by an influential cultural figure from a period when rock music could still transform lives. The writer Nik Cohn was the first to nail the Who's significance, observing in 1971 that they had made themselves into both the epitome and the entirety of rock music. The best thing about them? They were disaffected and they were loud, and often with rock that's all you need. We may now judge them as a template, a renewable rebellion that has led – via the Clash – to Nirvana and beyond. And Townshend's chords resonate still: with Keith Moon and John Entwistle gone, he and Roger Daltrey still fly the flag defiantly at rousing live shows, something Townshend calls a "celebration machine".

But where Townshend can be an ungainly and a coruscating performer on stage, his writing is mostly the reverse; it is well-behaved and ordered, one catalogue of uppers and downers, mostly told at a flat pace. The book lacks the fiery eloquence of Townshend's windmilling mind, and there is a sad lack of hell-yeah enjoyment in his life, as found, for example, in Keith Richards's indulgent memoir. There are occasional flashes of irony, but too much straight-faced telling without showing, and an uncharacteristic lack of imagination in the architecture of the narrative.

But I did find myself laughing at the excesses, something Townshend also now finds absurd. In 1967, for example, he is worried that the Who are no longer the loudest group on Earth, surpassed in their ear-bleeding by (of all people) Vanilla Fudge. "They had found a way of amplifying a Hammond organ up to rock guitar decibels," he writes. "We were actually upset by this."

Townshend's story is essentially one of searching. His songs powerfully reference the act of seeking and the concept of the seer, and he has always been keen to engage his own followers with this spiritual quest. But it's a mission that has barely concluded at the volume's close.

The book is insightful about the creative process, haphazard and accidental as this often is; Tommy only makes sense to its creator once it has been performed live. I also enjoyed his memories of his time in the 1980s as an editor at Faber, an inspired shit-stirring exercise by chairman Matthew Evans and then head of fiction Robert McCrum (now of this parish), which managed the dual achievement of astonishing the old guard (PD James in particular was not impressed by his yobbo credentials), and bringing the fiercely old-school publishing house slightly closer to the modern world.

Townshend's biggest concepts were usually too advanced for both his bandmates and his fans, and the sections in the book devoted to the lesser ones – the Lifehouse, White City and Psychoderelict projects – suggest deeply ingrained psychological trauma in which the writer is struggling to get something off his chest.His explanation for the charges relating to his use of a credit card to access images of child sex abuse holds up to scrutiny and what those close to him know of his generous and charitable character. He has always been digging for clues to abuse in his childhood and was now actively campaigning for a way of helping others with early trauma, and fighting against internet companies profiting from indecent images. Banged to rights and rightly so, he appears permanently humbled by the whole ordeal, no longer defiantly above the law in rock god strides.

This is a worthwhile, comprehensive and culturally valuable account of a life, but its solidity is slightly enervating; it's no celebration machine. Unusually for me, it didn't inspire a rush to the iPod or Spotify, and it didn't leave me with the sense of elation I normally feel after brushes with the Who. In these sober and self-effacing times, Townshend gardens, sails, walks his dogs, loves his long-term companion Rachel Fuller, plans a new musical suite called Floss, and compiles definitive box sets. It may be unreasonable to continue to expect more from the man.