I'm having a bit of a "Who week" and so I've decided to repost a blog post I wrote about Pete Townshend a while ago...
Pete Townshend has been an inspiration to me for years. It really kicked in when I watched The Kids Are Alright the
1979 documentary movie of The Who. I bought the DVD to cheer myself up
after a teenage romance ended badly, and the scene in which the band
perform A Quick One While He's Away on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus just
totally summed the musical power and inventiveness of The Who and in
particular Pete. In this clip Pete sings, jumps all over the place,
plays beautiful guitar, plays hard guitar and kicks over then rescues a
drum mic mid song.
As well as the seminal performances on that
DVD I also studied The Isle Of White 1970 DVD. So influential was
Townshend that I could often be seen at gigs with my then band The Bleak
doing this sort of thing.
Windmills,
jumping around, all that sort of thing. Many was the gig where I'd
bloodied my hands and bruised my thumb. I carried on though and in my
way I meant it. And Pete means it too, even going so far as to impale
his hand on his Strat's wammy bar at a gig in the 80s.
I never
smashed up my guitars though and I wouldn't recommend anyone else doing
it either. (I heard a great story around this time about a local
guitarist who smashed up his crappy old guitar at a gig because his band
had just been signed to a major label. A day later not only had the
deal fell through but he was scratching around for money for a new old
crap guitar.) I would say I was too poor to smash up my gear but
according to legend so were The Who in 1964. They didn't make proper
money until the album Tommy in
1969 because of all the debt they had built up through being expected to
destroy their gear at EVERY gig. It's hard to really appreciate now
what effect this smashing of gear must have had when The Who were the
first band to do it. It had only been a matter of a couple of years
since the cutting edge of British Rock and Roll was Cliff and The
Shadows (nothing against Cliff or The Shadows by the way, I love Move It and Wonderful Land)
So
Pete the showman had a big effect on me. The Who were one of the most
visually arresting groups in history and Pete's performance style had a
very obvious effect on Jimi Hendrix in 1966 and thousands of others
since. When I actually got to see The Who play in concert in 2007 it was
astonishing to see Townshend, a man in his 60s, still being the
frenetic and energetic showman he was in his 20s. He was also the only
member of the band to stay on stage throughout the show.
Then
there is his influence as a guitarist. If you look up his name in one of
those great Rock Guitar Players lists you'll most likely find him
described as a truly inventive rhythm player with an aggressive,
staccato, almost flamenco style. This is very true and this alone makes
it very likely that of all the 1960s guitar gods he has been influential
on the most bands. I've got to add some more to that though. Whilst
it's true that his lead guitar style never reached Clapton, Beck, Page
or Hendrix levels of technicality and speed he did play a lot of
stunning solo lines from the late 60s onwards. Maybe he hasn't got the
big famous solos of other players but he always did the right thing. You
can't improve on the lead guitar in the intro of Eminence Front, or the beautifully melodic breaks in tracks like Join Together. Very
often his rough edges made the perfect sound, such as in all those
improvised jams in the Woodstock/Tommy era. He also has a fabulous
acoustic style which can go from delicate finger picking back to that
aggressive rhythm.
So he helped make me the guitarist and the
performer I am today. Thanks Mr Townshend. Most important of all, of
course, is his song writing. By the time he was my age Pete had already
written I can't Explain and My Generation.
Had this been his only contribution to the cannon of British popular
music he would be a giant, but by 1969 he was working towards Tommy and
from there Who's Next and Quadrophenia...
There are so many of Pete's songs that I love both mega famous and criminally under valued. The lyrics on Quadropenia, the Synths on Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again, the beauty of Blue, Red and Grey, none of these things are accidents.
Great songs, great performer, exceptional guitarist.
When I first started playing solo Pete's appearances on the webcast series In The Attic
were very helpful in convincing me to make the plunge. I even had a
slightly surreal dream in which I sought Pete's assurances that I should
perform solo and he said yes. I don't think he liked me much though...
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