(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Thu 11 December 2025 12:00, UK
Throughout every era of rock music, Pete Townshend knew that the genre meant a lot more than a bunch of loud guitars.
He stormed onto the scene playing the most chaotic rock and roll that anyone had ever seen, but given how many times he had worked to push the genre forward, it’s not like he was interested in the ratty punk version of a Mod for the rest of his life. He was interested in painting pictures with his songs, and every one of The Who’s classics felt like another adventure whenever it came out.
Granted, it’s not like Townshend was necessarily on the same level as Bob Dylan as a lyricist. Dylan liked to beat people up and tell people about the horrors of the world through a fantastical lens, whereas Townshend took his short stories that turned up in ‘A Quick One’ and stretched them out into a musical odyssey whenever he made records like Tommy and Quadrophenia. For all of the new sounds, though, he never forgot about the volume of everything.
Live at Leeds might be one of the more aggressive albums that the band ever put out, but if you look at the special editions of the record where they play Tommy in full, you get a much better picture of what he wanted to do. Getting every single piece of the puzzle down on record was one thing, but the power behind a song like ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ is hearing the rest of the crowd react to the ‘See Me Feel Me’ sections and having every member work off each other to make it sound like a true opera.
But perhaps the reason he wanted to bring those stories to life was because he never got to see his idols doing the same thing. Paul McCartney had written different short stories across Sgt Pepper, but it was pretty clear that The Beatles were never going to see the road again after 1966. And while Ray Davies was making his own character portraits, he couldn’t manage to get anyone to see the magic behind them.
The Village Green Preservation Society may be one of the best records The Kinks ever made, but Ray was framing it as a goodbye record. There was no way that the band was going to be able to sustain itself, but even if they managed to soldier on, Townshend was gutted when he heard the band decided to call it a day.
Townshend had long since put The Who to bed by the time The Kinks closed up shop, but he would have given anything to see the brothers back on good terms again, saying, “I am quite simply a fan. I am also a huge fan of the whole Kinks band – especially Dave Davies. For me to collaborate with Ray would be strange – we both occupy similar ground, and come from a similar place, but arrive at very different destinations as artists. I pray that one day Ray and Dave can play again on a tour.”
Even if Townshend’s sonic masterpieces are uniquely tied to him, you can see the similarities if you know where to look for them. While the fragments of Lifehouse are on full display throughout Who’s Next, a song like ‘Going Mobile’ does have Ray’s fingerprints all over it, especially in the way that Townshend described this character living life on the breeze as they travel in a mobile home.
If you want to hear those same stories, you’re better off looking at one of Ray’s solo shows, but stranger things have happened in rock and roll history. Because if the Gallagher brothers managed to put all their differences aside and give their band one more shot, who’s to say that the other sibling rivalry in rock and roll can’t find a way to lay down their boxing gloves and fire up those guitars one more time?
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