![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pete-Townshend-David-Bowie-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sat 20 September 2025 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
David Bowie<\/a> was never meant to have only one genre of music as his template. <\/p>\n He wanted to sample everything he could get his hands on, and nothing was off the table when it came to what ended up on a record, be it soul music, glam rock, jazz, or even the occasional flirtation with genres like hard rock and industrial music. But no one starts their musical journey with that kind of confidence. Bowie knew he could change the world, but he needed to see an example of how to do it right.<\/p>\n When Bowie was first starting to strum his folksy rock tunes in the late 1960s, though, the music world had already begun to change. Sgt Pepper had only been out for a few months after he released his official debut album, but considering he was trying to make his own vaudeville take on rock and roll, it didn\u2019t take him long to leave that persona behind and transform himself into the musical alien that we know today.<\/p>\n But Bowie wasn\u2019t simply a musician when he walked into the studio. He wanted to be a sonic actor in many senses, and that meant inhabiting every character that he wrote about. It could be the sexual energy of Ziggy Stardust or the sinister demeanour of The Thin White Duke, but whichever person showed up on record, Bowie would always keep that energy inside him when he walked onstage.<\/p>\n Then again, making a persona around an album was nothing new. The Beatles had opened up the possibility of becoming another group when they embraced the studio, but if that was a suggestion of what could be done, Pete Townshend took that model and ran with it the minute he settled on the concept for Tommy<\/a>. <\/p>\n No one had any idea of what the rock opera format was supposed to be, but all the motifs in Townshend\u2019s magnum opus seemed to make perfect sense together. The deaf, dumb and blind kid may have been a strange concept for everyone to grasp, but once the music began, it was easy to get swept away in the story when hearing Roger Daltrey cry out in pain on tracks like \u2018We\u2019re Not Gonna Take It\u2019.<\/p>\n