(Credits: Far Out / Phyllis Keating / Alamy)
Guitar music has changed unrecognisably from the days of Pete Townshend and The Who. Growing up in the first age of rock ‘n’ roll, Townshend found an appreciation for melodic, skilful rhythm and blues guitarists, which he certainly incorporated into his own playing style with The Who. With his windmill strumming and penchant for instrument destruction, the songwriter laid the foundations for virtually all future rock guitarists, but he could not particularly identify with the shredding of later artists like Prince.
Townshend’s guitar journey began during his childhood, when he was gifted a cheap Spanish six-string in 1956, around the same time that the infectious sounds of skiffle, rockabilly, and rock ‘n’ roll were making it to the shores of Great Britain. Although the young music obsessive was rarely seen without the instrument in his hand from then on, he was never particularly interested in the long, overly complex solos that came to define rock during later decades. Throughout The Who’s existence, Townshend tended to prefer rhythmic playing, rather than showing off.
Still, Townshend was an essential figure in bridging the gap between the simplistic rhythm playing of the rock ‘n’ roll age and the endlessly complex playing style of the hard rock scene, which blossomed during the late 1960s. The Who were a significant influence on the development of hard rock, and Townshend’s playing was no small part of that inspiration, yet the guitarist himself often felt alienated by the shredding of hard rock and metal guitarists, failing to find anything relatable about that kind of playing style.
His lack of appreciation for long, complex, and self-indulgent shredding is evident through Townshend’s scathing assessment of various hard rock guitarists, including the likes of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, neither of whom he could identify with. However, Townshend’s distaste with the idea of shredding has continued on into the modern age, only intensifying with the advent of social media guitarists.
It’s difficult to imagine the 79-year-old rock god scrolling through TikTok, but Townshend appears to be well-versed in social media, at least enough that he has encountered a wealth of guitar influencers over the years. However, the guitarist said in a 2024 interview with Loudwire that these internet guitarists often prioritise playing fast, overly complex riffs without much thought of playing melodically or within a group.
“A lot of them are just solo musicians that have mastered their craft and got really, really fast,” Townshend declared. “So, I think what needs to happen is they need to be fitted into the music world, somewhere other than Instagram. That’s the challenge for them.” Bizarrely, though, this assessment of social media guitarists drew comparisons with none other than Prince, the funk master who is regularly (and rightly) hailed among the greatest guitarists of all time.
Townshend, on the topic of internet guitarists, took a jab at Prince, sharing, “Well, Prince could shred, and he often would play a really soulful blues track, and then in order to get from one bit of blues to the other, he would do an extraordinary shred.” While that could easily be a compliment from any other guitarist, Townshend accuses the late musician of showing off a little. “It was a bit flashy,” he said, adding: “Maybe it was just to show he could do it. So, I don’t know.”
While Prince is far from being the only guitarist to suffer criticism from Pete Townshend, he is probably among the most undeserving. Prince’s guitar playing might have been “flashy” – according to the man who invented ‘the windmill’ – but that was part and parcel of the ethereal performances put on by the Minnesota musician.
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