![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Pete-Townshend-The-Who-Musician-Guitarist-2025-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n
Thu 4 June 2026 19:53, UK <\/p>\n
Arguably, one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, Pete Townshend, brought a wealth of visceral technique to the electric guitar when he and The Who<\/a> burst onto the scene in the mid-1960s.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the image of Townshend thrashing his strings and then separating them from the fretboard with an axe-like chop to the concrete below is burned into the fabric of rock and roll<\/a>, it often belies his unique songwriting ability and keen ear.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, he grew to lament the band\u2019s instrument destruction a little further down the line. After all, it was spiritualism he craved in music more so than anarchy, although the 1965 album he adores has a hint of both.<\/p>\n Undoubtedly, Townshend had a sharpness to everything he did. That same cutting edge wasn\u2019t reserved for his on-stage playing, nor just his on-stage instrument smashing, but in interviews, too. The guitarist has often been quoted as tearing down his contemporaries and has\u00a0never really found too much admiration\u00a0for those with whom he, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and Keith Moon came up<\/a>. But by the same token, when it comes to the rare exceptions, he\u2019s usually quite effusive with his praise.<\/p>\n Though you may not call Sun Ra, the cosmically inspired jazz musician and composer, one of The Who\u2019s most adjacent counterpoints, the album The Heliocentric Worlds Of Sun Ra arrived around the same time that The Who exploded onto the music scene. The 1965 album is one album<\/a> that Townshend thinks everybody needs to hear before they die. It\u2019s a powerhouse record that not only delivers on artistic intent but provides a basis from which one\u2019s own creativity can flourish.<\/p>\n A mercurial LP, Sun Ra does some of his finest work on this compilation record, which accurately documents the free-form jazz that emanated from the band. The back cover describes it as an \u201calbum of compositions and arrangements by Sun Ra played by Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra.\u201d At 35 minutes long, it is a vibrant and quick injection of what made Sun Ra so desirable.<\/p>\n Marshall Allen, performing Piccolo on the album describes what it was like working with such a character, \u201cSun Ra would go to the studio and he would play something, the bass would come in, and if he didn\u2019t like it he\u2019d stop it; and he\u2019d give the drummer a particular rhythm<\/a>, tell the bass he wanted not a \u2018boom boom boom,\u2019 but something else, and then he\u2019d begin to try out the horns, we\u2019re all standing there wondering what\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n Adding: \u201cI just picked up the piccolo and worked with what was going on, what mood they set, or what feeling they had. A lot of things we\u2019d be rehearsing, and we did the wrong things, and Sun Ra stopped the arrangement and changed it.\u201d This was always his modus operandi. He didn\u2019t have much time for stuffy convention.<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cOr he would change the person who was playing the particular solo, so that changes the arrangement. So the one that was soloing would get another part given to him personally. \u2018Cos he knew people. He could understand what you could do better so he would fit that with what he would tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a type of creation that perhaps appealed to Townshend<\/a>, whose own experimental thinking saw him and The Who provide some expansive rock moments, especially their rock operas. Speaking with <\/a>NME<\/a>, Townshend recalled his baptism of fire when discovering Sun Ra. <\/p>\n \u201cI got really into that sort of way-out avant-garde jazz, but you couldn\u2019t find his record anywhere\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Hungry for a copy to study and enjoy, Townshend continues, \u201cSo, one day I was in a jazz shop in Chicago \u2013 which I think is where Sun Ra came from \u2013 and I said, \u2018have you got any Sun Ra?\u2019 The guy says, \u2018Yeah, all his stuff.\u2019 I said, \u2018Give me everything.\u2019 \u2018Everything?\u2019 \u2018Yeah.\u2019 He comes back with 250 albums. Most of which I\u2019ve still got in that room over there, still in the shrink-wrap.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019d hit the jackpot. The album\u2019s freeform mix of complex spiritualism and punky anarchy, in it\u2019s own weird way, perfectly aligned with his vision for The Who. While Townshend proposed that rock \u2018n\u2019 roll helped you \u201cdance all over\u201d your problems, Sun Ra proclaimed a similar point. \u201cFirst of all I express sincerity,\u201d the jazz master said. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s also that sense of humor, by which people sometimes learn to laugh about themselves.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sun Ra added, \u201cI mean, the situation is so serious that the people could go crazy because of it. They need to smile and realize how ridiculous everything is. A race without a sense of humor is in bad shape. A race needs clowns.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Sun](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sun-Ra-Musician-1973-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
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