The Consensus 100 · #1 of 100
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Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin · 1971 · solo by Jimmy Page
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Guitar hero

Pete Townshend

The windmilling visionary who turned volume, feedback and story into rock art

Pete Townshend grew up in west London in a musical household: his father Cliff played saxophone in a dance band and his mother Betty had sung professionally. As a teenager he joined Roger Daltrey's group the Detours alongside bassist John Entwistle, and after drummer Keith Moon arrived and the band settled on the name The Who in 1964, Townshend emerged as its principal songwriter. While studying at art college he absorbed ideas about auto-destructive art that would soon shape the most notorious part of his stage act.

The Who broke through in 1965 with the top-ten single I Can't Explain and then My Generation, songs that channelled mod frustration into jagged power chords and bursts of controlled feedback. Their explosive set at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 introduced them to American audiences, and smashed guitars became a nightly ritual. Townshend's ambitions kept growing, and in 1969 he delivered Tommy, a double-album rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind boy, partly shaped by his devotion to the spiritual teacher Meher Baba.

The early 1970s were Townshend's creative peak. Live at Leeds (1970) captured the band at full roar, and when his sprawling multimedia project Lifehouse collapsed, its best songs became Who's Next (1971), whose synthesizer sequences on Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again sounded like nothing else in rock. He followed it with Quadrophenia (1973), the only Who album he wrote entirely by himself, a portrait of a troubled young mod. The 1975 film of Tommy earned him an Academy Award nomination for its music.

Keith Moon's death in 1978 shook the group, and Townshend increasingly turned to solo work, scoring his biggest success with Empty Glass in 1980. The Who formally split in 1983 but reunited repeatedly, playing Live Aid in 1985 and touring through later decades even after Entwistle died in 2002. Townshend was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 1990, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2008, and published his memoir Who I Am in 2012, the same year The Who closed the London Olympics.

The 10 greatest Pete Townshend solos

  1. 1
    Won't Get Fooled Again
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1971
  2. 2
    Young Man Blues
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1970
  3. 3
    Sparks
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1969
  4. 4
    My Generation
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1965
  5. 5
    I Can See for Miles
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1967
  6. 6
    Going Mobile
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1971
  7. 7
    Bargain
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1971
  8. 8
    5:15
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1973
  9. 9
    Pinball Wizard
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1969
  10. 10
    Eminence Front
    The Who · solo by Pete Townshend · 1982

The sound

Townshend treats the guitar as a rhythm engine first. His signature is the ringing, heavily strummed power chord, often with open strings left droning, played with a huge overhand swing that grew into the famous windmill. He blended suspended chords and bright acoustic strumming with brutal electric crunch, and he pioneered deliberate feedback as a musical colour rather than a mistake. His lead playing is terse and percussive, built from rapid rhythmic flurries, slides and string scrapes instead of long scalar runs. Above all, his parts serve the song and the drama, locking with Moon and Entwistle to create a sound far bigger than three instruments.

  • Rickenbacker semi-hollow models (guitar) His main electrics in the early mod years, and the first victims of his guitar-smashing act.
  • Gibson SG Special (guitar) The workhorse of the late 1960s, seen at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight and heard on Live at Leeds.
  • Gretsch 6120 (guitar) Used heavily in the studio for the thick electric tones on Who's Next and Quadrophenia.
  • Gibson J-200 (guitar) The big-bodied acoustic behind the famous strummed introduction to Pinball Wizard.
  • Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster (guitar) His main stage electric from the late 1980s onward, fitted with Lace Sensor pickups.
  • Hiwatt heads and cabinets (amp) The backbone of his live rig for decades and a key part of the band's colossal stage volume.
  • Fender Bandmaster (amp) A small combo that supplied much of the studio crunch on Who's Next, Quadrophenia and The Who by Numbers.

Covers

  • Summertime Blues, originally by Eddie Cochran The rockabilly hit becomes a thunderous, riff-heavy stomp in The Who's hands.
  • Young Man Blues, originally by Mose Allison A cool jazz-blues tune transformed into a ferocious heavy-rock workout.
  • Shakin' All Over, originally by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates He turns the British rock-and-roll classic into a loose, menacing jam.
  • Heat Wave, originally by Martha and the Vandellas A Motown favourite given a scrappy, mod-flavoured guitar-band treatment.
  • Barbara Ann, originally by The Regents A lighthearted nod to the surf and doo-wop records the band loved.
  • Eyesight to the Blind, originally by Sonny Boy Williamson II He folded an old blues into his rock opera and reshaped it to fit the story.
  • The Last Time, originally by The Rolling Stones Rushed out as a show of solidarity while Jagger and Richards faced drug charges.

Timeline

  • 1945 Born in Chiswick, west London, to musician parents
  • 1964 The Detours become The Who
  • 1965 I Can't Explain reaches the UK top ten; My Generation follows
  • 1967 Breaks through in America at the Monterey Pop Festival
  • 1969 Releases the rock opera Tommy and plays Woodstock
  • 1971 Who's Next rises from the ashes of the Lifehouse project
  • 1973 Writes all of Quadrophenia
  • 1980 Solo success with Empty Glass
  • 1990 Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with The Who
  • 2012 Publishes memoir Who I Am; The Who close the London Olympics

Facts

  1. His father Cliff Townshend was a professional saxophonist and his mother Betty was a singer.
  2. The windmill arm swing was inspired by watching Keith Richards loosen up before a show.
  3. His guitar smashing drew on the ideas of auto-destructive artist Gustav Metzger, whose lectures he encountered at art college.
  4. The first guitar he broke on stage was an accident, when the headstock hit a low ceiling.
  5. He played bass on Thunderclap Newman's recordings under the joke name Bijou Drains.
  6. A 1976 Who concert at Charlton Athletic's ground was listed by Guinness as the loudest concert ever, at 126 decibels.
  7. He has partial hearing loss and tinnitus, which he links partly to Keith Moon's exploding drum kit on a 1967 US TV show.
  8. Quadrophenia is the only Who album he wrote entirely on his own.
  9. His music for the 1975 film of Tommy earned an Academy Award nomination.
  10. He received the Kennedy Center Honors alongside his bandmate Roger Daltrey in 2008.

Sources