![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/The-Beach-Boys-song-that-Pete-Townshend-called-22perfect22-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sun 19 October 2025 16:22, UK <\/p>\n
It was Pete Townshend<\/a> who once said, \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 roll may not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them.\u201d It\u2019s a pithy little quote that outdoes itself. With 17 words, he distilled the history of a cultural movement down to a single sentence. The original pioneers propagated the art form as a way to push through exultant liberation despite the problems surrounding them. Townshend himself has picked up that very mantle.<\/p>\n As the lead guitarist of one of the 1960s most celebrated rock bands,\u00a0The Who\u2019s Pete Townshend has, unsurprisingly, spent the last 20 years or so desperately trying to correct misconceptions about the era. <\/p>\n As well as claiming that Woodstock really wasn\u2019t all that, he\u2019s refuted claims that Keith Moon was the driving force behind The Who and made numerous attempts to diminish Eric Clapton\u2019s reputation as a world-class guitarist. But even an iconoclast like Townshend has struggled to criticise one of the \u201960s most beloved musicians.<\/p>\n The Who were one of the many British rock acts to come out of London\u2019s Marquee Club in the mid-1960s. Townshend was instrumental in their rise to fame, penning the knowingly Kinksesque \u2018I Can\u2019t Explain<\/a>\u2018 to attract the attention of American music producer Shel Talmy. The track was subsequently picked up by influential pirate station Radio Caroline, ensuring the song reached the ears of Britain\u2019s pop-mad youth.<\/p>\n Just a few years later, The Who were one of the biggest rock bands in the world and found themselves in competition with The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Jimi Hendrix for control of the London circuit. In a 2021 interview for\u00a0Guitar<\/a>\u00a0magazine, Townsend explained that he\u2019d never understood the obsession with Cream. \u201cIt felt to me that sometimes it sounded so empty,\u201d he said of their music. <\/p>\n Cream seemed to lack bite: \u201cI thought they would\u2019ve been so much better if they had a Hammond player. I always loved Eric\u2019s playing, but not always his sound. It always felt to me like it was a bit muffled, in the Marshall days. That\u2019s why I prefer Traffic and Blind Faith. I like the sound of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Hendrix, on the other hand, even Townshend couldn\u2019t find fault with. \u201cAlthough he played single lines, he was such an elegant, remarkable, decorative player as well, and just in a different league,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d like to say I was influenced by him, but who in their right mind would back that up today \u2013 even some of the shredders of the modern world \u2013 and say they could cover what he does?\u201d<\/p>\n Hendrix might be so singular that he is beyond the level an influence, but aside from his virtuoso playing, his performative style is something that made his skills travel even further. It is this that Townshend most admires. Townshend continued: \u201cAnd even if you can, you can\u2019t make it speak the way he did, and of course, the other thing, which is not shared often, which is unless you were there, you kind of missed 80 to 90 per cent of where the magic was. He was just such an extraordinary presence once he walked onto the stage with a guitar. It was kind of weird.\u201d <\/p>\n For Townshend, and so many others who witnessed him on stage: \u201cIt was almost like he was some kind of angelic, seismic, metaphysical force, who seemed to have light rays coming out of him, and then, as soon as he walked offstage, it would switch off. He was an extraordinary presence. And that definitely made what he did as a player penetrate in a soulful way as well as musically.\u201d<\/p>\n The two guitarists shared a tempestuous relationship<\/a>, however. As well as engaging one another in a bit of backstage posturing at Woodstock, a scene which encouraged Townshend to tell his band to infamously \u201cleave a wound\u201d on the audience after being shuttled in front of Hendrix on the bill, Townshend also held a degree of jealousy at Hendrix\u2019s performance. \u201cWhat I did for Jimi \u2013 which I always regretted doing for Jimi,\u201d he recalled to Ultimate Classic Rock Radio<\/a>. \u201cHis manager brought him to meet me at a recording studio when he first arrived, and he asked me what equipment to buy. I told him that I\u2019d been using a mixture of an amplifier called Sound City. Which was a Marshall substitute, with a Marshall, to get this really kind of slabby sound.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen, a couple of weeks later, we did a show with him at the Saville Theatre with him allegedly supporting us,\u201d recalled Townshend, \u201cI wish I\u2019d never given him the tip! I was thinking, \u2018Oh my God, this guy\u2019s brilliant enough without being a thousand watts loud.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Alamy) Sun 19 October 2025 16:22, UK It was Pete Townshend who once said, \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 roll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,42028,28058,269,14569,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-512406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eric-clapton","10":"tag-jimi-hendrix","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-pete-townshend","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115402050397126150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jimi](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Jimi-Hendrix-1970-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>Jimi Hendrix on stage. (Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n