Pete Townshend has enormous respect for Angus Young. He also believes the AC/DC guitarist is living proof of what can happen when a musician spends too much time on the road.

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2000, the Who guitarist argued that many rock musicians stop evolving because they're constantly touring instead of developing new ideas in the studio.

“I think a lot of great musicians become frozen in time because of their obsession with the road,” Townshend said. “I mean, look at AC/DC. They've never stopped touring and Angus is still wearing those stupid shorts. He still plays brilliantly—and he's one of my favorite guitar players—but the band is definitely stuck in a rut.”

It was a surprising jab at one of rock's most enduring guitar heroes — and, in fact, AC/DC are currently out on their massive Power Up tour, which returns to the U.S. on July 11.

But for Townshend it illustrated a larger point. Long before home studios became commonplace, he'd built one of his own and made it the center of his creative life.

“I was the first person,” Townshend told Guitar Player. “The only people I know who had home studios before I did — apart from electronic music composers — were Les Paul, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Barry Gray, who did music for English cartoons.”

Having his own studio gave Townshend a place to experiment with sounds and develop songs long before he brought them to the Who. Working alone, he built remarkably complete demos that served as blueprints for ambitious projects including Tommy, the abandoned Lifehouse project and Quadrophenia, allowing the band to hear exactly what he envisioned before they entered the studio.

Many of those recordings were eventually released on the Scoop albums, Lifehouse Chronicles and expanded editions of classic Who releases, including Who's Next/Lifehouse and My Generation.

Despite his reputation as one of Britain's most influential guitarists, Townshend said recording — not playing guitar — had always been his true passion. In addition to his fluency on electric and acoustic guitar, he’s also a capable drummer, bass guitarist and keyboardist when it comes to turning his ideas into fully formed demos.

“Recording has always been a passion of mine, and it still is,” he said. “I find it hard to talk about guitars and amplifiers because playing guitar is just something that I do—it's not a passion. The guitar just happened to be what I fell into, and the guitar has become an icon that has grown out of all perspective. The way that I used the guitar in the early days was incredibly irreverent. To some extent, I continue to be irreverent about it.

“My passion and enthusiasm has often been contained in my home studio — partly because it's private, and it's where I've found a way of expressing my complete musicianship. For me, the creative idea is about a neighborhood. The creative spirit needs roots — you have to be fairly well grounded before you can set it free. My studio provides me with a place to create and to be creative.”

Townshend believed the place where music is made becomes part of the music itself, pointing to early rock pioneers like Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly, who rehearsed and recorded in garages.

“I’m a great believer in the concept that the creative process is often about where the music comes from,” he said. “People like Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly rehearsed their routines and made recordings in their garages — Cochran used to engineer his own records!

“So you can't remove the garage from the sound of their early work. You'd never find a painter, for example, who would say they didn't need a place to work, but a lot of musicians undervalue the importance of the studio space. They'll say, ‘Here's my guitar and my bottle of water, so now I can go anywhere.’ Crap! You can't really do that.”

Townshend's own fascination with home recording began in the early 1960s after meeting Barry Gray, whose electronic soundtracks for British television introduced him to the creative possibilities of recording outside a commercial studio.

“He was doing those cartoon soundtracks electronically with simple organs,” Townshend recalled. “Pete Wilson, the guitar player in my very first band, had his father arrange for us to record our first demo in Gray's studio. We recorded one of my first songs, ‘It Was You,’ which was also the first song I ever published. This was around 1963 or ’64.”

Townshend soon began experimenting with a pair of film-location tape recorders, bouncing tracks between the two machines to create sound-on-sound recordings before upgrading to a Revox recorder with Dolby noise reduction and, later, a 3M eight-track machine.

By 2000, Townshend had embraced Pro Tools, but his old analog studio remained his creative refuge. It was the kind of space he believed every musician needed—a place to experiment, evolve and avoid becoming, in his words, "frozen in time."

“If I want to make a great-sounding demo,” he said, “I'll go back to my classic analog equipment.”

If Rob Arthur gets to do a director's cut of his new Frampton documentary, he knows what the first addition to the story will be.

“The one thing I regret we couldn't fit in is the Phenix story,” Frampton's longtime keyboardist tells us via Zoom. He's of course referrnig to the famed 1954 Gibson Les Paul that was given to Frampton by a fan after a 1970 Humble Pie gig but was presumed destroyed in a 1980 crash of a cargo plane transporting his gear from Caracas, Venezuela.

The tail section of the plane stayed intact amidst the debris, however, with all of the guitars intact — although it wouldn't return to Frampton until 2011, after passing through a variety of hands in the Caribbean. He rechristened it Phenix at the time, as in rising from the (literal) ashes. Frampton also gave the name to his Nashville recording studio and to a film production company he and Arthur started during the pandemic, which produced Frampton.

“It's a really fascinating story about the guitar. A great story, an amazing story — but not a character-based story,” Arthur says of the decision to leave Phenix on the cutting-room floor. “We had so much to say about him and how he maneuvered his career and his life that I just couldn't see taking any of that stuff out to fit in the Phenix story.

"If we ever get a chance to make it longer, then maybe it gets back in. On the other hand, it's been covered. Gibson did a whole piece on Phenix, and it's beautifully shot and really well done, so the story's still out there for people to get.”

Frampton had its premiere on June 4 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Its future has not been announced yet, but Arthur is confident it will be picked up by a streaming service and perhaps even have some sort of limited theatrical release.

The deeply candid Frampton does, however, cover the story of how he “almost” became part of the Who.

It occurred during the early '80s, when the glow of 1976's Frampton Comes Alive! had faded. The combination of the I'm in You album and the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie had made him a punchline, he'd been dropped by his label (A&M Records) and split with his manager, Dee Anthony.

All of which left him in such deep financial straits that Frampton had to borrow money from Atlantic Records chief Ahmet Ertegun. Around then he received a call from Pete Townshend, explaining that he'd decided that, à la Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, he was going to give up touring with the Who but would still write songs for the band.

“I didn't think it was a great idea,” Frampton says now, with a laugh. “I was kind of laughing as he was talking about it, to be honest. I wanted to say, ‘You must be kidding! First of all, I can't jump that high. Secondly, I'm not you, and you've got an awfully large pair of shoes to fill, live.’

"I really didn't think it would happen. But when the leader of the Who or a founding member of the Who says, ‘I think I want you to play with the Who now,’ you go, ‘Well, that's crazy ... But wait. I don't have anything going on, so maybe it is a good idea.’”

Frampton — who first revealed the invitation in 2020's Do You Feel Like I Do?: A Memoir — told Townshend he wanted assurances that the other members of the Who, particularly singer Roger Daltrey, were onboard with the idea. Townshend said he would discuss it with them and get back to Frampton, who even started practicing his windmills at home.

But there was radio silence from Townshend for three weeks after that, and an anxious Frampton had to track the guitarist down at a recording studio, by phone, to receive a profuse apology and an acknowledgment from Townshend that he “should never have” made the offer. (Years later, while suffering from tinnitus, Townshend brought Steve Bolton on tour to handle electric guitar duties for the Who's acclaimed 1989 tour — although Townshend was along as well, playing acoustic.)

Arthur says the incident “symbolized to me that here's a guy who's so desperate, he's grabbing at anything. He's got to get something going on. There's no way Pete Townshend is going to let someone else be in his place onstage, but Peter just didn't have a lot going on and was like, ‘I need to know! I need to know!’ That, to me, was the bottom for him. That's a rock 'n' roll bottom — really wishing that might happen so he could ignite a fire again after the fall.”

Frampton — whose career, of course, picked up again after childhood friend David Bowie took him out as a guitarist on his 1987 Glass Spider Tour — adds that the Who story was “too big a deal to leave out” of the film. “I didn't want to put down Pete, but it happened, and he knows it did. He was there.”

The two bumped into each other not long after backstage at a Bruce Springsteen concert at Madison Square Garden, where they kissed (Townshend on Frampton's head) and made up. “He apologized, and I love him dearly and we're great friends,” Frampton says. “It was just a brotherly problem for a minute — a big one, though.”

In addition to the documentary, Frampton is also promoting Carry the Light, his 19th studio album as a solo artist and first of all-new songs in 16 years. Released May 15 and co-produced with his son Julian Frampton, it features guest appearances from Tom Morello, Sheryl Crow, Graham Nash, H.E.R. and saxophonist Bill Evans. His continuing struggle with the degenerative Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM), however, has kept him from making any tour plans in the near future.

The Who’s Roger Daltrey says his band invented heavy metal — and he believes the evidence is already on the record.

Most fans credit Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath with creating heavy metal in the late 1960s, forging a darker and heavier sound in industrial Birmingham after Iommi abandoned the Stratocaster-style guitar he nearly launched the band with.

But others have long argued they helped lay the groundwork. Paul McCartney famously tried to “dirty up” rock music with the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter,” while Blue Cheer turned Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” into one of proto-metal’s defining early statements.

Daltrey’s argument, however, has less to do with specific songs than with the Who’s sheer volume, aggression, and use of feedback at a time when few bands were operating at that intensity.

“We were just different than everybody else,” Daltrey tells Rolling Stone. “Americans don’t really know the Who from the early ’60s, but as the drummer of Deep Purple [Ian Paice] said recently in a magazine, ‘The Who started it all.’ We were the first heavy metal band.”

For proof, Daltrey points to Pete Townshend’s pioneering use of Marshall amplification and the destructive stage theatrics that later became synonymous with hard rock.

“Jim Marshall invented the 4×12, 100-watt stack for Pete Townshend,” Daltrey said. “All the guitar smashing that Jimi Hendrix became famous for, in his style, was basically copied from Pete Townshend.”

In truth, Ronnie Wood laid the groundwork for the 4x12 stack, but there’s some truth to Daltrey’s claim. Townshend’s quest for ever-louder stage volume helped push amplifier design into new territory, laying groundwork for the massive guitar tones that would later define hard rock and metal. The Who’s confrontational performances and instrument destruction also established a blueprint for the genre’s rebellious spirit.

Daltrey even argues that albums like The Who Sell Out and Tommy helped elevate rock into something more ambitious and theatrical.

“We elevated rock to be maybe up its own ass in a way, you could say it,” he said.

Whether that makes the Who the inventors of heavy metal is another question entirely.

While the band undeniably influenced rock’s volume, attitude, and presentation, many fans still view Sabbath as the group that fully established metal as a distinct musical language. Iommi’s downtuned riffs, ominous songwriting, and industrial heaviness created a sound that countless bands would follow.

Other musicians have also staked their own claims. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page both argued that the guitar riff in “Beck's Bolero” was among heavy metal’s earliest defining moments — although they never agreed on who actually wrote it.

Ultimately, the strongest argument for Sabbath may be the reaction the band provoked.

“When Sabbath first played in the USA, people were frightened of us,” Iommi once told Classic Rock. “They thought we’d turn them into a frog! It was very peculiar. They were frightened to death!”

That sense of menace and shock became central to heavy metal’s identity — and it’s a large part of why many fans still place Sabbath on the throne, even if the Who helped build the stage beneath it.

When Eric Clapton brings his Crossroads Guitar Festival back to Austin, Texas, this fall, he’ll be joined by a guitarist who played a pivotal role in one of the most important turning points of his life.

For the first time, Pete Townshend will appear at the festival, scheduled for September 26 and 27 at the Moody Center. The event marks the seventh edition of Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival and coincides with the 28th anniversary of the Crossroads Centre Antigua, the addiction recovery facility Clapton founded in 1998.

Townshend’s appearance comes full circle. More than 50 years ago, the guitarist helped stage the comeback that pulled Clapton out of one of the darkest periods of his life.

The two men go back to the early days of the British rock scene. Townshend remembered first seeing Clapton in Richmond, southwest London, in 1963, before either guitarist had achieved widespread fame.

“Eric Clapton was a myth in Richmond where we played, even in 1963,” Townshend recalled. “I remember seeing him at a bus stop looking very, very posy, I thought.”

If Clapton already carried an aura, it only grew over the next few years through his work on electric guitar with the Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and later Cream. But by the early 1970s his career had stalled. Following the breakup of Derek and the Dominos, Clapton had retreated from public life amid a severe heroin addiction.

He released no new albums and made only one high-profile appearance: performing at the Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison in August 1971.

Townshend decided to intervene. Rather than stage an intervention, he devised something far more dramatic: a pair of all-star comeback concerts at London’s Rainbow Theatre on January 13, 1973.

Now remembered as Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert, the shows featured an ensemble of Clapton’s friends and collaborators. Townshend himself joined on guitar alongside Ronnie Wood, while Clapton’s former Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood played keyboards. The band was rounded out by former Blind Faith bassist Ric Grech and Traffic drummer Jim Capaldi.

“Pete actually dug me out of the hole that I was getting deeper into,” Clapton said in a 1989 interview with Sue Lawley. “I think he was instrumental in getting me to look at life as a proposition again, because I had gone into a real hermit-like existence.”

Without Clapton’s full awareness, Townshend assembled the musicians and coordinated the event to force his friend back onto the stage.

“Pete organized all my old mates — musicians — to put on a concert specifically to get me out of it,” Clapton said. “To get me back on my feet again.”

Townshend later recalled the motivation more bluntly.

“We really missed him,” he said. “And there’s this feeling that it was a genuine waste of talent.”

Convincing Clapton to take part was no easy task. When Townshend first approached him shortly before Christmas 1972, Clapton had little interest in returning to the stage. Rather than wait for him to change his mind, Townshend simply pushed ahead.

“Me and the father of the girl Eric was living with at the time organized this concert and bullied him into doing it,” Townshend told the New Musical Express on the eve of the show. “He didn’t want to do it.”

Getting him performance-ready proved another challenge.

“I had to prop him up and teach him how to play again,” Townshend later recalled. “The guy had shut himself away for the better part of two years.”

On the night of the show, Clapton appeared onstage with a heavy beard and a white suit, letting Townshend handle much of the talking between songs. But once the music began, Clapton quickly reclaimed the spotlight with his playing. The shows marked the first time he played Blackie, his now-iconic Fender Stratocaster.

The set functioned as a sweeping tour of his career, touching on material from Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos and his solo work. Among the songs performed were “Crossroads,” “Badge,” “Layla,” “Bell Bottom Blues,” “Blues Power,” “Let It Rain” and the J.J. Cale cover “After Midnight.”

The Rainbow Concert proved to be a turning point. Within a year Clapton had overcome his heroin addiction and returned to recording, releasing 461 Ocean Boulevard in 1974. The album — featuring his hit cover of “I Shot the Sheriff” — became one of the most successful of his career.

More importantly, the experience planted a seed that would eventually shape Clapton’s life beyond music.

After achieving lasting sobriety in 1987, he founded the Crossroads Centre Antigua in 1998 to help others struggling with addiction, a mission that later inspired the creation of the Crossroads Guitar Festival itself.

Looking back years later, Clapton admitted the Rainbow performance itself was far from perfect.

“I had a good time doing it,” he wrote in Clapton: The Autobiography. “It was when I listened to the tapes afterwards that I realized that it was well under par. Everyone made mistakes.

“But Pete was the only friend who had refused to take no for an answer.”

In November 1964, the Who entered the studio to record “I Can’t Explain,” the single that would help launch their career.

But guitarist Pete Townshend and the session’s other guitarist, Jimmy Page, had something else on their minds that day: a woman they had both been sleeping with.

In fact, when Page arrived at the studio, the two guitarists spent much of their time talking about her.

By that point the Who were building a loyal following in London’s clubs, but their first single, “Zoot Suit,” released under the name the High Numbers, had failed to chart. Their next record needed to work. Townshend wrote “I Can’t Explain” with a clear objective — to capture the explosive sound producer Shel Talmy had recently helped create with the Kinks.

Talmy had produced the Kinks’ breakthrough hits “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” which served as Townshend’s template. The Kinks records had reset the expectations for British guitar-driven pop, and Townshend was deliberately aiming at that compressed, aggressive sound.

Talmy liked “I Can’t Explain,” but he wasn’t entirely confident the young band could deliver a tight studio performance. Keith Moon’s timekeeping could be unpredictable, and Townshend himself felt he wasn’t yet much of a lead guitarist.

So Talmy reinforced the session. The English vocal trio the Ivy League was brought in to supply backing vocals, and two session players were hired as insurance. The identity of the substitute drummer remains unknown, but the guitarist was Page, a favorite of Talmy’s and one of London’s busiest studio musicians.

Page’s presence later fueled speculation that he played the distinctive guitar solo on “I Can’t Explain.” Townshend has always rejected that idea. “The solo’s me,” he told Guitar World in 1995. “Jimmy doesn’t play like that.”

Townshend already knew Page from the London music scene — and from a more personal connection.

“Jimmy was a friend of mine,” he continued. “We’d had a mutual girlfriend. She’d been going out with Jimmy before and was still, you know… kinda hooked on him for a little longer than I was comfortable with.”

The situation, he admitted, left both young guitarists unusually entangled.

“Anyway, she was much older than us. We were 19 or 20 and she was about 30. And a fucking sexy woman! She’d obviously fucked him to death and then proceeded to fuck me to death. And we had her in common. We were both kind of cross-eyed with this woman.”

So when Page showed up at the studio that day, the conversation quickly drifted from guitars to their shared romantic history.

“We just started to talk about what we always talked about,” Townshend said. “‘How's Anya?' ‘How is she? What’s she going through? Has she called you? Has she called me?’”

Only after a while did Townshend ask the obvious question.

“And then I said to him, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I’m here to give some weight to the guitar. I’m going to double the rhythm guitar on the overdubs.’”

Townshend had no objection. The two discussed their electric guitars and settled on their parts easily.

“He said, ‘What are you going to play?’ ‘A Rick 12,’ I told him. And he said, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll play a…’ whatever it was. It was all very congenial.”

Keith Moon, however, was less accommodating. Furious that another drummer had been brought in, he confronted the session player directly.

“Keith was over in the corner,” Townshend recalled, “telling the drummer, ‘Get out of the fucking studio or I’ll kill ya. Only Keith Moon plays the drums on a Who record!’”

Somehow, amid the tension — and while Townshend and Jimmy Page compared notes about the same woman they’d both been seeing — the band captured “I Can’t Explain,” the single that would launch the Who’s rise.

More importantly, “I Can’t Explain” confirmed for Townshend the group had a future.

“We had a hit record, ‘I Can't Explain,’” Townshend told The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in November 2025. “I was driving my mom's little yellow van back to Ealing, where we lived in West London. I heard it on the radio, and that was it. I thought, Wow, I'm communicating. I have an audience.”

The Who may have retired from the road, but Pete Townshend says the band could still have another album in them.

The possibility is surprising given that singer Roger Daltrey has previously expressed little interest in making another record. The group’s last release, 2019’s Who, sold poorly, leading Daltrey to complain about streaming economics and the modern music marketplace.

“There’s no record market any more,” he told Uncut. “Everybody talks about streaming, but have you seen what artists get from that? It’s a joke.

“It was great to get an album out there, something that the fans liked, and I was really proud of it. But far too much money was spent making it.”

But it wouldn’t be the Who if Townshend weren’t contradicting his longtime partner. The guitarist raised the possibility of a new record in an Instagram post showing off his new writing studio, formerly owned by “Never Gonna Give You Up” singer Rick Astley.

“It’s mine now,” Townshend wrote. “I’m loving it. Great sound. I’m very spoiled.”

When a commenter replied, “There’s no way you’re gonna do another Who album,” Townshend shot back: “You might be wrong. Roger wants to give it a try.”

They certainly have no shortage of material. Townshend is famously prolific and has said he has hundreds of unfinished pieces of music—many of which he has considered completing with the help of artificial intelligence.

“I’ve got about three hundred and fifty, four hundred and fifty pieces of music,” he said. “Now, a lot of it is probably terrible. I’ve managed to wade through about half of it.”

He added that he’s interested in experimenting with platforms such as Suno, which can generate songs from text prompts, to help finish some of the fragments.

“It might be some hits.”

Townshend has previously joked that AI could even recreate the style of the band’s classic era.

“If I told A.I., ‘Write a load of Pete Townshend songs like he used to in 1973,’ a lot of Who fans would be really pleased.”

But his more recent comments suggest he’s serious about using the technology to help shape his backlog of unfinished material.

The Instagram post also gave Townshend an opportunity to reveal his current songwriting setup, centered around a laptop and a pair of Genelec speakers. (No guitars, electric or acoustic, were in sight, but we assume they’re not far away.)

“I use a MacBook. The sequencer is an MPC Live III. I use it on the road like a portastudio,” he wrote, referring to the old multitrack recorders once made by Tascam.

Should the Who convene for another album, the stripped-down approach would at least address one of Daltrey’s chief complaints: the high cost of making records in the modern era.

Pete Townshend believes Tommy resonates more powerfully today than it did upon its release 57 years ago — and he points squarely to social media as the reason.

The album’s narrative turns on a traumatic childhood rupture: young Tommy witnesses the murder of his father by his mother’s lover, reflected in a mirror. The shock leaves him psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind.

Townshend sees a modern parallel in the digital environments children now inhabit.

“So many issues that we deal with today, particularly with our kids living on social media,” he said in June 2024 on the red carpet at the Tony Awards. “The iPhones that we all look at now are like the mirror in Tommy. It's a very adept, a very succinct reflection of what it is that I feel we're facing today with kids growing up with tremendous anxiety, with suicide issues, and acting it out sometimes.”

Townshend originally conceived Tommy through the lens of his own postwar upbringing in Britain. Raised in the shadow of World War II, he has described a gray, emotionally constrained childhood in which children were often reminded of the sacrifices made by the previous generation.

His home life grew more unsettled after his parents separated, forcing him to live with a mentally unstable and abusive grandmother — a formative relationship he has frequently cited as both painful and complicated.

“You know, the story of Tommy was written when I was looking back at my post-war childhood, thinking, ‘Our parents fucked up,’ and it would be tragic to allow this to happen again,” he explains.

“We've had no war, but we've got climate change, we've got some big issues. Let's not leave our children to do whatever they want; they need to be guided and cared for.”

Tommy’s sweeping narrative arc marked a turning point for rock, helping establish the concept album as a serious artistic form. Townshend has said the project was partly born out of creative necessity after encountering Jimi Hendrix and his electric guitar talents.

“He came along and… just swept everything aside,” Townshend told Guitar Player in September 1989. “I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.”

The album’s success — and its reputation as rock’s first true opera — led Townshend to revisit large-scale conceptual storytelling throughout his career. Most notably, he developed Lifehouse, an ambitious follow-up that anticipated elements of the internet and artificial intelligence (something he’s jokingly threatened to use himself). Though the project remained unfinished in its original form, many of its songs were issued as Who's Next.

Townshend returned to the material decades later, culminating in the 2023 release of Who’s Next/Lifehouse, an expansive 11-CD box set accompanied by a graphic novel that reimagines the story.

Perennially outspoken guitarist Pete Townshend has made no shortage of controversial claims over the course of his long career. But do his famously derogatory remarks about Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin truly reflect what he thinks of his groundbreaking peers?

This is, after all, a guitarist who once said Jimi Hendrix wasn’t “creative,” dismissed Ritchie Blackmore as overrated among rock’s most famous electric guitar players, and, in a 1989 interview with Guitar Player, harshly criticized the musical substance of heavy metal acts, despite acknowledging the technical proficiency within their ranks.

“I’d trade 150 Def Leppards for one R.E.M.,” he remarked. “It’s as simple as that.”

Not even his bandmates exempt from his inflammatory remarks. As recently as 2019, Townshend said he was glad drummer Keith Moon and bass guitarist John Entwistle were gone, adding that they had been “fucking difficult to play with.”

Given that history, it’s hardly surprising Led Zeppelin were not spared his criticism.

“I don’t like a single thing that they have done. I hate the fact that I’m ever even slightly compared to them,” he said in 1995. “I just never, ever liked them. It’s a real problem to me because, as people, I think they are really, really great guys. I just never liked the band.”

While he conceded that some of his resentment may have stemmed from the fact that Led Zeppelin “became so much bigger than the Who,” he stood by his assessment.

Page, for his part, was far less severe. Speaking to Trouser Press in 1977 (via Rock and Roll Garage), he offered a measured evaluation: “Really good. He had his limitations, though. He was no Beck, but he was all right.

“Beck, myself, and Clapton were sort of arch-buddies,” he added, referring to Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. “Townshend was sort of on the periphery. He was like a white elephant, but he was very good.”

In recent years, Townshend has suggested his earlier comments were often more impulsive than deeply held.

“In the years when I drank and shot from the hip, I rarely got into the kind of trouble I could get into today,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2022. “I once said some stuff about Led Zeppelin, that I’d never heard one of their songs, and about Eric Clapton, that after his experience as an addict, he’d never play as well as when he was a young man, and in every case, I’ve been forgiven. I suppose that’s because people see you as a big-mouth rock star, and this is what they expect from you—to be full of shit.”

In that same conversation, he also acknowledged the musical potential he once saw between the two rival camps.

“I’ve always felt there was a real potential for something explosive and nuts with the Who and Led Zeppelin,” Townshend said. “The principals in Led Zeppelin are much more musicians than they’re perceived to be by the heavy metal fans who just think it’s about heavy shit.”

That hasn’t stopped Townshend from delivering headline-grabbing quotes in recent years, including describing himself as a “dangerous fucker” when discussing the Who’s future and threatening to turn to AI in apparent retaliation against segments of his fanbase.

When Link Wray recorded “Rumble” in early 1958, most rock-and-roll guitarists were doing everything they could to avoid distortion. Wray did the opposite, unabashedly leaning into it and, in the process, creating rock and roll’s seminal distorted-guitar instrumental. Unlike any song before it — and like few since — “Rumble” captured the raw essence of adolescence. It was the perfect soundtrack for a ballroom brawl or a backseat bump.

Wray’s ambitions for a singing career had nearly been derailed when he contracted tuberculosis. He spent a year in the hospital and had one lung removed. Though he eventually developed a distinctive, rough-edged vocal style, in the months that followed he focused on his guitar playing. It was during that period, one night at a sock hop, that he spontaneously wrote “Rumble.”

Wray’s use of distortion, his primitive energy, and his do-it-yourself ethic inspired countless guitarists. His legacy stretches from ’60s British rock — Dave Davies followed Wray’s DIY path to distortion on early Kinks hits — through ’70s punk and metal, into ’80s thrash and hardcore, and on to ’90s grunge. Along the way, distortion became available as a pedal effect, putting it within reach of every young rebel eager to follow in Wray’s footsteps.

When Guitar Player caught up with Wray for a November 1993 interview, he was 64 and living in Denmark with his 39-year-old wife, Olive Julie, and their 10-year-old son, Oliver. He had just released Indian Child, his first “commercial” effort in more than a decade. While the album had come out in the U.S., Rhino’s recent compilation Rumble! The Best of Link Wray provided the perfect excuse to have Wray revisit how his journey with distortion began in the 1950s.

“Back in the old days, the good guitars were too clean in sound,” Wray explained. “I was trying to find some off-brand guitar.” He recorded “Raw-Hide,” his second single, released in January 1959, with a Danelectro electric. “I ordered it out of a catalog for 60, 70 bucks. They sent me this longhorn guitar with mandolin pickups and more frets than a normal guitar. I ordered three or four of them.”

His love of distortion, it turned out, came from a simple need to be heard.

“When I was trying to get my music happening back in the ’40s, I was backing up all the cowboy stars like Lash LaRue, Wild Bill Elliott, and Sunset Carson. I played through these Sears and Roebuck amplifiers. They would burn up on me because I wanted to turn them up to 10.

”I bought four of them and hooked them all together. My brother said, ‘You’re crazy, Link.’ I said, ‘I’m not crazy. I just want to hear myself.’”

Wray’s brother Vernon was a recording artist himself, scoring a hit with “Remember You’re Mine,” released on the Cameo-Parkway label. The song was written by Cal Mann, who also penned Elvis Presley’s “Teddy Bear.”

“Bernie Lowe, who owned Cameo-Parkway, wanted Vernon to change his name,” Link recalled. “He said, ‘What are you going to change it to?’ Bernie said, ‘Instead of Vernon Wray, let’s call you Ray Vernon.’ So he changed it backwards. Ray wrote a song on the flip side called ‘Evil Angel.’”

As Wray tells it, “Remember You’re Mine” never stood a chance. Pat Boone, the clean-cut version of Elvis Presley, covered it three days after its release and took it to number one.

“He was covering everybody in those days. It killed my brother as an artist.

“Later on, God gave me ‘Rumble.’ I said, ‘Ray, let’s see Pat Boone cover this motherfucker!’”

That gift, Wray said, arrived at a teen dance party where Link Wray & His Wray Men were on the bill.

“I was playing record hops with Milt Grant in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He was the big disc jockey there — like a Dick Clark, but local to the Washington, D.C., and Maryland area.

“Milt says [in a low voice], ‘Link, play “The Stroll.”’”

“The Stroll,” a 1957 hit by the Diamonds, was accompanied by a slow line dance of the same name.

“The Diamonds, who had the number-one hit, were going to dance the Stroll while I tried to play jive,” Wray said. “I told him, ‘I don’t know the fuckin’ Stroll!’ My brother Doug said, ‘I know the Stroll beat. Just start playing something on the guitar.’

“So God zapped it. I just started playing it.”

The sound that night, Wray recalled, was cataclysmic.

“Ray had stuck the microphone in front of the amplifier, and it was just pouncing all over the place. The kids were going wild. Nobody put microphones in front of amplifiers in those days.”

Built from just three power chords, the improvised tune was such a hit that the crowd reportedly demanded it be played four times that night. Grant financed a studio recording on the condition that he receive a songwriting credit alongside Wray.

But once in the studio, Wray couldn’t recreate the sound he’d unleashed in Fredericksburg — which led to one of rock’s most infamous acts of sabotage.

“When we went to record ‘Rumble,’ I didn’t get that live sound. It was too clean. In Fredericksburg, those Sears and Roebuck amplifiers were jumping up and down, burning up with sound.

“Ray said, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ I said, ‘I’m going to fuck with the amplifier like it was fucking up at the live gig.’”

Armed with a pen, Wray punched holes in the tweeters of his Premier amplifier.

“Ray said, ‘You’re just screwing up your amplifier.’ I said, ‘Who cares as long as we get a fuckin’ sound, man!’”

His gamble paid off.

“I started playing and got that distorted sound, plus the tremolo — ‘chik, chik, chik, chik.’ We got the song in three takes, on one track, for 57 bucks.” Wray laughed. “Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t God wonderful?”

“Rumble” went on to light the way for generations of guitarists, including Jimmy Page. “The first time I heard ‘The Rumble,’” Page said in the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud, “it had such profound attitude.” Pete Townshend wrote in the liner notes for 1974’s The Link Wray Rumble that the song inspired him to play guitar. Bob Dylan was so taken with it that he opened four shows during his 2005 Brixton Academy residency with “Rumble,” calling it the greatest instrumental of all time.

The song’s sense of menace nearly kept it from being released at all. Archie Bleyer, owner of Cadence Records, hated it and initially refused to put it out until his teenage stepdaughter convinced him otherwise. Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers, a Cadence act at the time, suggested calling it “Rumble,” since the sound reminded him of a street-gang fight.

Between its music and name, “Rumble” proved too dangerous for some radio stations, which banned it, keeping the song from climbing higher than number 11 on the charts.

Even so, Wray — who would go on to perform with rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon in the 1970s — built an entire career around it, rerecording “Rumble” in the 1960s and collecting royalties from covers by everyone from surf-rockers the Trashmen to jazz guitarist Bill Frisell.

Wray gave all credit to God.

“My 10-year-old son says, ‘Daddy, you’re very spiritual.’ He asked me, ‘Daddy, does God love rock and roll?’ You know, because some churches say rock and roll is evil.

“I said, ‘Well, honey, he pulled me out of the death house and gave me “Rumble.” I recorded it three months after I had my lung taken out. It was a four-million seller.’ So I said, ‘Yeah — I think God loves rock and roll.’”

More than a decade before the first distorted power chords echoed through London’s underground punk clubs, Pete Townshend was drafting that genre’s blueprint. While his mid ’60s contemporaries were lost in psychedelic whimsy or blues-rock virtuosity, the Who’s primary architect was busy weaponizing the electric guitar and transforming the stage into a theater of destruction that prized raw, visceral energy over technical perfection.

Feedback and smashed Rickenbackers were the results of his frustration with both suburban life and his limited guitar skills. Townshend and the Who didn’t merely play music — they assaulted it with sheer volume and a ferocious approach the punks would follow.

Townshend was thrilled with punk and happy to be recognized as its godfather. He was, however, less enamored with another genre of music that bore his sonic signature: heavy metal.

Years before punk’s arrival, Townshend was being credited for laying the foundation of heavy metal with the Who’s live 1970 document, Live at Leeds. The record is considered among the greatest live albums in rock history, capturing the Who at their raucous peak as Townshend wielded distortion, feedback and power chords to create a sound that was heavier and more aggressive than anything previously recorded.

Live at Leeds tracks like “Young Man Blues,” “My Generation” and “Summertime Blues” established the high-gain and overwhelming intensity that would become the foundational requirement for all metal that followed. Even Eddie Van Halen studied the album, down to each of Townshend’s riffs and solos.

“We sort of invented heavy metal with Live at Leeds,” Townshend told the Toronto Sun in 2019. “We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin, you know, heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar.”

But as Townshend revealed in a 1989 interview with Guitar Player, the genre transformed into something he scarcely recognized by the dawn of that decade. The glam trappings of spandex, makeup and big hair were ubiquitous, as were the “bad boy” lyrics of heavy-metal songs and the virtuoso solos played on pointy electric guitars.

“I think it's very lighthearted, isn't it?” Townshend offered in a 1989 interview with Guitar Player. “You know, I'm not into men in spandex trousers with hair like that [holds palm one foot from head]. I'm kind of confused as to why these guys look like that, and why it is that they think they look so cool. Maybe they would just say that I was old-fashioned, I don't know.”

He had to admit, though, that the guitar playing from these groups was outrageously good.

“A lot of these guys in spandex trousers and hair like that are playing some of the most unbelievable guitar, and you can't really argue with it,” he said. “It's just that sometimes the vehicles seem to leave a little bit to be desired.”

That was true, he thought, even when heavy-metal acts were covering his own songs. He pointed to the band W.A.S.P., which had covered “The Real Me,” one of the tracks from the Who’s Quadrophenia.

“You give them a good song, and they're fuckin’ out there; it's frightening,” he admitted. “But it’s interesting that they picked that song; they picked a song which is a boast, a threat. It's just that the form is limiting, and I suppose part of that I actually respect, because I think that limitations are very, very valuable.

“But I just can’t understand how so many musicians just want to be the same as so many others.”

To Townshend’s point, heavy-metal’s look and sound were becoming homogeneous by the late-’80s end of its reign. About the only good thing he could say was that the music was inspiring youngsters to pick up guitar and develop into young virtuosos.

“Kids have been playing guitar and having lessons from the age of eight, sometimes younger,” he noted. “So when they hit 14 or 15 or 16, they're sort of going past their peak.

“There's some wonderful stuff happening there,” he admitted. “I just wish there was a better medium for it. I wish we had something that was more akin to jazz in its ability to take virtuoso performers and give them a stage, rather than just be hit with little tongue flashings and wagging fingers and legs astride, and waggling very big kind of psychedelic cocks at the audience. So in that sense, I suppose I do despise it.”

What he preferred was music that cut its own path. In that respect, he was drawn to the sounds of alternative rock, in particular R.E.M. Though they started out in the early 1980s as architects of southern gothic jangle-pop, by the end of the decade the group had transformed from college-radio darlings to a stadium-ready rock powerhouse through hits like “Orange Crush,” “Stand” and “The One I Love.”

Within Peter Buck’s aggressively strummed Rickenbacker rhythm work, Mike Mills lead-style bass and Bill Berry’s thundering drums, Townshend heard something not unlike the Who nearly two decades earlier.

“I'd trade 50 Def Leppards for…” Townshend began. “That's not enough. I’d trade 150 Def Leppards for one R.E.M. It's as simple as that.

“I heard R.E.M., and my heart just soared. To me, that’s just divine music; I like the sound of it, I think the words are brilliant, I think it's just perfection, and the fact that none of them can kinda go [he mimics shredding] just doesn't interest me at all, because if they wanted to, they could go out and they could hire any one of those guys.

“What's really important is the music, the content, the heart of it.”

Jimi Hendrix changed the music so entirely in 1966 that, within months of his arrival in England, established guitarists were wrestling with how to respond. Jeff Beck told Guitar Player, “It was a horrible time, really. Not because of him, but because of the fact that he swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Pete Townshend, realizing he could never better or even equal Hendrix’s guitar talents, decided to focus on his song craft. “He came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside,” Townshend told Guitar Player in 1989, in terms remarkably similar to Beck‘s. ”I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.” The results were revealed in the Who’s pioneering 1969 rock opera, Tommy.

But what about Clapton? From the start, he knew he’d met his match in Hendrix. When, just a few weeks after his arrival in London, Jimi crashed a Cream gig and asked if he could play, Clapton was so stunned by what he heard that he had to leave the stage.

Rather than run from his challenger, Clapton forged a friendship with him. He also permed his hair and plugged his electric guitar into a wah pedal, making him the first, and most visible, guitarist in rock to try to channel Hendrix’s mojo.

But inside, Clapton was as frustrated as Beck and Townshend. That was partly because Hendrix had achieved what he had hoped to when he first saw Buddy Guy perform with a trio in London. Clapton had been so thoroughly convinced by Guy that he left John Mayall and the Blues Breakers in July 1966, at the height of his fame, to form Cream, with the intention of following in Guy’s footsteps with his own power trio.

But Hendrix got their first. What’s more, Hendrix was the real deal, not a copy.

“Although I was with Cream, I had fantasies of incorporating all of that Buddy Guy–like showman stuff into my act,” Clapton told Guitar Player in 2004. “But when Jimi showed up and did it all for real, it burst my bubble. I realized then that I had to look at Cream as a band, and forget about my little solo odyssey.”

Clapton was also floored that Hendrix, an American, had come to England to find fame. Like his fellow British musicians, Clapton was looking toward America as the place to stake his claim in rock.

“What was even more of a shock was that Hendrix was part of America coming to England to take over, while we were all going to America trying to take it by storm,” he said. “Cream was cutting Disraeli Gears at Atlantic Studios in New York while he was cutting Are You Experienced in London. Then, when we came back to England with that album, no one wanted to know, and I was pissed for a little while.”

Speaking of which, Disraeli Gears is the album that most shows Hendrix’s influence on Clapton. “I was full-tilt on the wah pedal for a year-and-a-half,” he says.

But Clapton was also cutting his own path. It was here that his famed “woman tone” came about, the result of rolling off his Gibson SG’s tone control.

“I used the bridge pickup, but with the tone control all the way off, so it was all just bottom end, and then I played on the high strings, getting a really fat tone and feeding back,” he explained. “I just played like that all the time. Even with power chords, there was never any variation in my tone.

“It was much later that I came to the Stratocaster, and I think that was because of Jimi. He could get more tonal variation out of that instrument than I ever thought possible. I knew about the Buddy Holly, thin bridge-pickup sound, but I didn't know that it was possible to get the Strat to sound really big, or get it to feed back in tune-which was very easy with a Les Paul. And then, when I started playing around with the Strat, I realized it was nice to be able to play clean, too.”

Like Beck and Townshend, Clapton eventually found a path through Hendrix’s scorched earth. Through the stripped-back roots music of Band guitarist Robbie Robertson and the influence of American country guitarist Delaney Bramlett and his group, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Clapton was led to the birthplace of the blues and the music of Robert Johnson. Unlike the world of late 1960s blues rock, there was nothing to compete with — just music from which to live and learn.

“The blues is a strange phenomenon,” he concluded in his 2004 chat with Guitar Player. “I’ve always thought it was rather funny and ironic when I'd see footage of interviewers actually asking people like John Lee Hooker what the blues is. I've heard those old guys say some really funny things — either profound or ridiculous.

“My way of putting it is that it's a set of rules imbued with deep emotion. But, of course, that doesn't really describe anything at all. The blues is a strange phenomenon, and I'm certainly not bigger than it.”

“I’ve been lucky in my life with the people I’ve worked with,” says Andy Fairweather Low. “‘Blessed’ is the word I would use to best describe it.”

Prior to becoming a regular sideman for the likes of Eric Clapton and Roger Waters, and a gun-for-hire guitarist for sessions that included those for Gerry Rafferty, the Who, and David Crosby — to name but a few—the Welsh guitarist was lead vocalist with 1960s pop combo Amen Corner. During their run, he played gigs with acts of the day that included Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix.

Soon after their split in late 1969, he embarked on a prolific solo career. But it’s his work with Waters and Clapton — where Low featured on both recordings and tours—that etched his guitar-playing reputation into stone.

We tapped him for memories of his time with some of rock’s biggest artists, including Clapton, Waters, Hendrix, Pete Townshend and former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman.

Jimi Hendrix

“In November 1967, Amen Corner were on a U.K. package tour with Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Move, the Nice, Eire Apparent and the Outer Limits. [Northern Ireland’s Eire Apparent featured future Spooky Tooth/Wings guitarist Henry McCullough and were noted for having Hendrix produce and play on their only album].

“The shows were sometimes a bit lively and a bit out there, and the places we played were concrete town halls. In Sheffield, Jimi ended the set by smashing up the drums. Then in Newcastle, he sent his Flying V into the Marshall cab and proceeded to smash it.

“Apparently, Jimi liked our group. Kathy Etchingham, his girlfriend at the time, was asked what Jimi thought of the other acts on the bill, like Pink Floyd and the Nice. She said, ‘Well, actually Jimi didn’t really think too much about anything, but he did think that Amen Corner were all right.’

“A couple of years later, I was in New York and Jimi asked me to come down to the studio to do some backing vocals on a new version of ‘Stone Free.’ [The April 1969 sessions produced a finished track that was first released on the 1975 album Crash Landing.]

“[Engineer] Eddie Kramer was there taking care of everything, and my friend Roger Chapman was there as well. We both ended up putting backing vocals to the song. But in my humble opinion, the original ‘Stone Free’ was absolutely the best version.”

Bill Wyman

“The first time I saw Bill was with the Rolling Stones, at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, Wales, on February 28, 1964. That was the night that changed my whole life. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a guitar player.

“But my association with Bill began during the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983. [The star-studded shows featuring Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and many others supported Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis and were created by ex-Faces bassist Ronnie Lane, who had MS.]. That’s when our friendship really began. Because the tour was to raise money for Ronnie Lane, Bill then came up with the idea of putting an album together to raise even more money for the cause to help people with multiple sclerosis. So he put together the Willie & the Poor Boys album, and I got involved in that.

“While we’re making it, Bill had to go off to do some work with the Stones in Paris. He asked if I would produce a pair of songs for the album featuring Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers while he was away. So I put a band together, with Jimmy Page on guitar, Paul on vocals and me on bass, and we did ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ and ‘These Arms of Mine.’ They turned out really well.

“Soon afterward, Bill and I were in a taxi on the way to do a breakfast TV show when he told me, ‘They’ve agreed to do a video for “These Arms of Mine,” but they don’t want you in it.’ The double whammy was when Bill’s manager asked to have Bill credited for my bass playing because he was known as a bassist.”

Pete Townshend

“The first time I saw Pete was with the Who in 1965, and I might add, there weren’t many people there either. But god, the energy!

“I was staying at [producer] Glyn Johns’ house while he was working on the Who’s Who Are You album and Pete said, ‘Tell Andy to come in to do some backing vocals.’ So I did and ended up singing on ‘Who Are You,’ and five other songs too.

“On that album Pete was plugging his guitar directly into the board. [Townshend had a preamp that he plugged into a compressor and straight into the mixing console, and which he says he “used a lot on Who Are You.”] Plugging into the board is generally a shit sound, but when Pete plugged in and banged an A chord… My god, the attack! You could cut metal with it. Nobody plays an A chord like Pete.”

Roger Waters

“My first encounter with Roger was on that November 1967 U.K. package tour with Jimi Hendrix. We had an issue. Our manager at the time was Ron King, who was an associate of the Krays [the famed British organized-crime kingpins Ronnie and Reggie Kray]. Roger had shouted at me — mind you I was still only a teenager — for touching a Leslie speaker. Ron heard it and told Roger, ‘If you do that again, I’ll break your fucking legs!’ Ron was connected. He meant it.

“I never understood the Floyd back then at all. I kept thinking to myself, Where’s the backbeat? Their first song in their short set on that tour was ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,’ and the song absolutely baffled me. The irony is that it became my favorite song to play when I was in Roger’s band later on.

“Here’s how that happened: Eric Clapton had been in Roger’s band for his Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking album and tour. Afterward, when Roger made his Radio K.A.O.S. album, he reached out to me: ‘Roger Waters here, we’d like you to come up and see if we get on.’

“The night before I went to his studio, I had been working with Bill Wyman and had drunk at least a liter of a red wine. I woke up at 9:00 a.m., not feeling great. I rushed to the studio and Roger asked me to play on a track. And we didn’t just ‘get on’—we really got on!

“Soon afterward I went to work for Roger — for 24 years! He likes to laugh, and I like working with people who can laugh. I know what you’re thinking about Roger, but take it from me: I was there for 24 fabulous years. I wouldn’t have stayed if it wasn’t. I had a great time learning about how to put a show on, the dynamics, lighting, visuals… you name it.

“After that I did the In the Flesh tour, the Dark Side of the Moon Live tour… And we always had the best food, the best wine, the best travel, the best company. Roger gave me so much respect, loyalty, support and encouragement. He’s a true friend to this day, and a bloody force of nature.”

Eric Clapton

“My first tour with Eric Clapton was ARMS in 1984, but my first time as a member of his band was when he and his group backed George Harrison in 1990 on a tour of Japan. On the first day of rehearsals, Eric asked me to join his band permanently. From there, I ended up on the acoustic Unplugged album, and the rest is sort of my history with him.

“I’m so proud to be on From the Cradle. It’s my favorite Eric album, as he was absolutely playing at the top of his game. I’ve also been back in the band a few times since too. In fact, in 2023 I did three weeks in America with him, and we finished up at the Crossroads Guitar Festival.

“I loved every rehearsal, every recording, every live gig I did with Eric. I got paid well, I traveled well, I ate and slept well. It was wonderful to work for him. Eric liked to laugh too, and as I mentioned earlier, I like working for people who like to laugh and I never tired of listening to his playing and singing. I loved his voice. I learned so much just by watching him playing and being in his company. All he ever wanted for me was to be the best I could be. There was no competition with him. He would just say, ‘Go for it, Andy!’

“I never really wanted to take solos, as I’m more a rhythm guitar player. He’d nod to me, but I’d go, ‘No, no,’ as I believed the audience didn’t really want to hear from me. But then we were playing Hyde Park in 1996, in front of 150,000 people. By then we’d been on tour for about three months and I’d not taken any solos. Eric wandered over to me and nodded his head as if to say, Go, take a solo! And I went, ‘All right then, I will.’ He was very encouraging like that.”

Guitar Player is closing out 2025 by republishing 25 of your favorite stories from the past year. We thank you for spending the past year with us and look forward to bringing you more of the stories you want in 2026.

Pete Townshend is hailed as one of rock’s greatest rhythm players. Even he’s not shy about his talents, telling Sound International in 1980, “in that particular area, I don’t think I’m topped.”

But when it comes to lead work, he admitted long ago he’s not much of an improviser. Most of his solos — from “I Can’t Explain” to “Love Reign O’er Me” were composed ahead of time.

“I started out as a rhythm player, and a few of my lead licks are things I’ve basically developed in recording sessions,” he told Guitar Player in May 1972. “I’ll never be able to play the kind of leads I want. I was happiest listening to Jimi Hendrix — that, to me, was like heaven.’

From early on, Townshend focused on rhythm guitar work, playing slashing chords with his windmilling right arm. By the end of the 1960s, he developed a signature style of 16th-note strumming with his motif for “Pinball Wizard,” played on a Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar, from 1969’s Tommy.

The release of Live at Leeds in 1970 gave a little evidence of his talents as a lead player. He unleashes his fury in a stunning bit of solo work on Mose Allison's "Young Man's Blues" and plays some inspired jagged lines on Johnny Kidd's "Shakin' All Over." Townshend has only improved as a lead guitarist since then, as heard on Who tracks like “Join Together” and — a deep cut — David Bowie’s “Slow Burn,” from 2002’s Heathen. Even when his solos are composed, their impact lies in his execution, and Townshend always connects with listeners emotionally rather than through acts of technical virtuosity.

But from the beginning, the Who’s true guitar player has been the bassist: John Entwistle. It’s Entwistle who takes the lead break in “My Generation,” and whose bass guitar skills came to the fore from Tommy onward, even as Townshend was improving as a lead player.

“What’s interesting is our group is, of course, that the roles are reversed. John is the lead guitar player and although I’m not the bass player he does produce a hell of a lot of the lead work,” Townshend said in the 1980 Sound International interview.

“It’s really funny to this day where you get a song like ‘Dreaming From the Waist’ [from 1975’s The Who by Numbers], when John is doing this blinding bass solo and making Alvin Lee look like he plays in slow motion, and I’m just standing there strumming a chord.

“And the audience looks at me and goes, ‘How does he do it? How does he produce that noise?’”

Part of Entwistle’s stealth is his lack of movement, combined with his penchant for dressing in dark colors.

“You see, for years nobody even knew John was there,” Townshend continued. “He used to wear all black and nobody ever put a lamp on him: if we appeared on TV you never saw him unless the camera was whipping from Roger to Keith.”

As the late Entwistle himself told Guitar Player in the November 1975 issue, “I’ve never truly considered myself a bass player. I think I'm a lead/rhythm bass player. Because the Who was a three-piece, and we tried to reconstruct the same sound as on record, I used to play most of the time with a plectrum and played rhythm figures on the bass.

“Then, when we started doing more complicated stuff with Tommy, I started playing lead figures. Occasionally before that, when the guitar went off, I'd have to take over a solo and turn everything full up and go into a solo.

“Maybe if I'd been with another band I might be one of those very tasteful bass-y players, a proper bass player, really.”

Entwistle went on to explain how he managed to make his bass cut through by switching to a Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar for live performance and using “full treble all the time. We found that it cut to the back of the audience as well, so you could hear what the bass was playing, instead of a blur.”

He also confirmed Townshend’s recollections of how his live bass work confused fans.

“It does tend to happen,” he told Guitar Player. “A lot of people in England, when ‘My Generation’ first came out, thought that Pete was playing the solo — the bass solo. And for months, when we were playing it onstage, that solo would come up, and they always used to look at Pete.

“And after the bass solo was over they used to clap for Pete. I use a very guitar-like sound, so if the audience don't know about the instruments they're obviously going to get confused.

“The offensive thing is they automatically think it's Pete. Yet they can't understand why Pete just has his hands on a chord he's just strummed, and there's a lead figure coming out, and they're still looking at him and saying, ‘How's he doing that?’”

Townshend and Daltrey have announced the Who’s long reign as a performance act is coming to an end. On May 8, the duo — the only surviving members of the original lineup — announced The Song Is Over North America Farewell Tour, named after the band's 1971 hit. The road show begins August 16 in Sunrise, Florida and wraps up on September 28 in Las Vegas.

Tickets will be available starting with a Citi presale and through the Who Fan Club (details below) beginning on Tuesday, May 13.

The news isn’t exactly unexpected. Townshend recently announced he is retreating from performance. “I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t fill my soul in the way that you see some performers — just their soul is filled through being on the stage. That’s not me.”

In the mid-1960s volume wars, no one figures quite like Pete Townshend. Although Ritchie Blackmore would eventually have the loudest Marshall amp, that came later, in 1970.

Before Blackmore, Townshend was pushing the envelope for stage volume, but his efforts were outdone by John Entwistle, the Who’s bass guitarist, who had Jim Marshall build him a 4x12 speaker cabinet.

“Then I got a 4x12 cabinet and put it on a chair,” Townshend explained, “so then he invented the 8x12 cabinet, to get louder than me, and I invented the stack by getting two 4x12s and stacking them up."

“Stacking up” is an apt phrase to use. Townshend’s claims fail to do so when faced with a certain historical artifact: the diaries of Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood.

From 1963 through part of 1966, Wood kept diaries of his daily activities, which included gigs with his first pro band, the Birds (a.k.a. the Thunderbirds). He played with them from 1963 through 1967, after which he joined the Jeff Beck Group before going on to perform in the Faces with former Jeff Beck Group singer Rod Stewart.

Wood’s journals are a fascinating look at London’s rock and roll music scene in this pivotal era — so much so that in 2015, Genesis Publications published his 1965 volume as the limited-edition book How Can It Be? A Rock and Roll Diary. In addition to reproducing Wood’s handwritten notes and illustrations, it featured his newly added footnotes that elaborated on his experience and the heady times.

Among the entries was Wood’s story of buying his first Marshall amp and 4x12 cabinet from Jim Marshall. He and the Birds’ other guitarist, Tony Munroe, would visit Marshall’s shop in Hanwell and discuss their dream rigs.

“It was a friendly rivalry,” Wood told Guitar Aficionado for a 2015 cover story about How Can It Be? “I’d bounce ideas off of him, and we'd usually end up arguing about them.”

But as Wood explained, he had another competitor: Pete Townshend. Each was vying to be the loudest guitarist on the scene.

“We kept on pushing Jim Marshall to make amps with more watts, and volume controls that went up to 12," Wood recalled.

To that end, Wood asked Marshall to create a rig that could outdo any out there. The date of September 4, 1965 is significant — as his diary entry explains, that was the day he received a 100-watt head and 8x12 speaker cabinet from the Marshall shop. Wood proclaimed the sound “a knockout.”

You could say the same of Wood’s revelation. Prior to the publication of his diary, it was assumed Marshall had made just six 8x12 cabinets: two for Townshend, two for Entwistle, and another two models for display that were purchased by Steve Marriott’s band, the Small Faces, precursors to the Faces.

Even more startling was the new footnote from Wood that indicated he was the one who suggested the 8x12 format to Marshall. He recalled Townshend’s reaction upon seeing the cabinet.

“Pete Townshend came in and went, 'You bastard!"

Considering that the Who didn’t perform with their 8x12 cabinets until November 13, 1965, it seems a safe bet Wood got his first, and may very well be the originator of the design.

Wood’s diary demonstrated he was also ahead of the curve with the fuzz box, having used one before Keith Richards did on the Rolling Stones’ May 12, 1965 session for “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.” According to the book, he bought his fuzz unit from Macari's Musical Exchange on London’s Denmark Street music row.

“I don't remember the brand," Wood told Guitar Aficionado’s Chris Gill. "It was a little orange box with no name on it, and it just had a little foot switch on top and two jack-plug holes.” (Gill surmised that it was likely the Fuzzy pedal created by Pepe Rush, an early version of the Pepbox that Rush later licensed to WEM.)

For that matter, Wood was painting graphics on his guitars well before George Harrison applied paint to his Sonic Blue 1961 Stratocaster, which he dubbed Rocky, or Eric Clapton had The Fool art collective paint his 1964 Gibson SG with a psychedelic finish.

"I had two Telecasters back then,” recalled Wood, who is an accomplished painter. “I painted a violin on one of them, and I decorated the other with a mod/pop art pattern of black-and-white checks. I did that to catch the eye of people in the audience. Later I saw the Beatles on tour with their psychedelic guitars and went 'I'm doing something right here!"

Indeed he was, and well before anyone else. He has the proof.

Last March, Pete Townshend teased he would use AI to create new songs that sound like everyone's favorite Who songs. It was an acid-tinged response to fans who refuse to give his new music a try.

But if he was just tweaking noses then, the iconic rock guitarist sounds much more serious about AI these days.

In a new interview with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, Townshend says he's considered embracing AI as he delves into his archive of incomplete song demos.

“I’ve managed to wade through about half,” he says of the trove. “What’s interesting is, I don’t know what to do with it! I’m quite interested in AI.”

AI has often been derided as a threat to the music industry, with Jimmy Page and Brian May both campaigning for the U.K. government to make laws that would better protect the intellectual property rights of artists.

But in other uses, it’s proven to have some merit, including Positive Grid’s Bias X amp plugin, which is able to generate guitar tones from prompts. For that matter, surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr used the technology to create the song “Now and Then” from a John Lennon demo.

It's an approach Townshend thinks has some merit..

“I’m quite interested in [using it to repurpose] some of my old songs that didn’t quite work,” he continues. “I didn’t get them right the first time round.”

He adds that if he were to funnel the music into AI, he could see “what it can make of it,” using it to spur new ideas and breakthroughs based on what the technology perceives as his signature style.

“There might be some hits!” he adds.

Of course, the biggest issues arise when projects that use AI fail to acknowledge it. It’s why the current number one country song in America is causing a stir, and why the BBC is under fire for championing a new act that uses AI.

But where creativity and AI work in harmony — as with McCartney and Starr — the issues are less controversial, because there is still human endeavor involved in the creative process. Townshend seems keen to explore that middle ground.

Elsewhere, Townshend has revealed the Who’s real lead guitarist is, and why some fans struggled to comprehend his noise-making at first.

And the man who played his parts on the band's 1989 tour has dished the details on what it was like to be the group’s stand-in lead guitarist. One rehearsal, he says, caused Townshend to smash a guitar to smithereens in anger.

After 60 years of shows, the Who finally called it a day this past September.

But as Pete Townshend just revealed, he didn't expect the group to last but two weeks when they started out in 1964.

Now 80, and fresh off the road from the group's farewell tour, the guitarist looked back on the group’s early days on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he shared the real reason he smashed his first guitar and the moment he realized the Who were built to last.

“The Who were a gang,” he explains. “I was at school. I was 16 years old. I was doing art classes in the summer and taking my final exams.

“This guy, Roger Daltrey, was the school bully. He'd been thrown out the year before. He's a year older than me, and he came up to me in the corridor, said, ‘You! I hear you play the guitar.' And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Do you want to be in my band?’”

Townshend agreed, thinking Daltrey's could give a scrawny guy like him protection against other rough characters.

John Entwistle had already signed up to play bass in the band, and the teenagers got to work.

But while Daltrey might have harbored dreams of rock stardom, Townshend was less committed.

“I kept it secret, I didn't tell my arty-farty art school friends I was in this band,” he confesses. “Until one day there was this college dance thing and we were hired to do that, and all these fabulous-looking hippie art school girls were pretending to be Beatles fans and were screaming at me. I thought, This is great!”

Yet Townshend — who would go on to rub shoulders with Jimi Hendrix and push guitar amplifiers to their limits in a fierce battle of volume with Ronnie Wood — says it did little change his thoughts about a career in music.

“I thought of myself as a creative,” he reasons. “I wanted to be a painter or a sculptor and that the band would last a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. And that's why I accidentally smashed my first guitar; I didn't care. I thought, ‘Well, we'll be gone in two months and I'll just borrow some money from my dad and buy another one.’”

What changed his mind was hearing the group's first single on the radio.

“We had a hit record, ‘I Can't Explain,’” Townshend says. “I was driving my mom's little yellow van back to Ealing, where we lived in West London. I heard it on the radio, and that was it. I thought, Wow, I'm communicating. I have an audience. They were committed to what I was writing.

“Then I wrote ‘My Generation,’ which was just huge. I had an audience, and then in a sense, I left art behind. There was magic happening.”

By his own admission, the Who were never the most glamorous band — but they made up for it with instrument-smashing chaos. Musically, Townshend learned to leave lead duties to Entwistle, and, as a result, mastered a different art of guitar-playing.

The bassist’s death in 2002 had rocked the group, but Townshend has revealed how he and Roger Daltrey rallied in one of their darkest moments to get the band moving again.

When Pete Townshend’s touring days with the Who came to an end earlier this month, there was no final guitar smash as a punctuation mark for the British rock giants. Which is a surprise, considering that he’s been breaking electric guitars for as long as he’s been playing them.

Born in West London in May 1945, Townshend was raised in a family in which musicality was expected of him. His father, Cliff, was an alto sax player in the Royal Air Force's dance band, the Squadronaires. His mother, Betty, was a singer with the Sidney Torch and Les Douglass Orchestras. The couple also owned an antique store, which provided the means for young Pete to get his first proper guitar.

He tells Playboy that, after failing at playing his father's clarinet — “I couldn’t make a sound” — his father suggested he try guitar. For some reason, his grandmother was given the task of making the purchase.

“My grandmother was — let me put it politely, because she is my beloved, beloved grandmother — clinically insane.

“Somehow she was elected to buy me my first guitar, and the one she chose was one of those you hand on the wall of an Italian restaurant. A cheap Italian restaurant.

“When I complained, my father said, ‘When you can get a tune out of this I’ll buy you a good one.'”

Some time later, a much better guitar showed up at the Townshend's antique store. Despite his father's earlier offer, it was left to Pete to buy the guitar, using money saved from his paper route.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for him to destroy it. Appropriately, it happened in front of his pal John Entwistle, who — as the Who's future bass player — would see him destroy many more guitars.

“I was 13,” Townshend recounts. “John Entwistle and I were rehearsing together in the front room of my house. My grandmother came in shouting, ‘Turn that bloody racket down!’

“I said, ‘I’ll do better than that,’ and I got my guitar — this was a good guitar that I had paid for myself with money I earned from a paper route — and smashed it to smithereens.

“I said, ‘Now will you fucking get out of my life!?’ and she stomped out.”

The consequences of his actions quickly dawned on him.

“I looked at John and said, ‘What now?’”

The ever-reserved bassist was quick with an appropriately dry — and practical — response.

“He said, ‘Another paper route, I think.’”

Townshend says that, from that moment forward, smashing a guitar was never out of the question.

“Once I had done it, it was always there as a possibility,” he explains. “If ever I wanted to deal with any kind of hidden rage, I could always take it out on the guitar. I could always trigger the same little bit of psychotherapy.”

Decades later, after guitar smashing became a key part of the thrill of a Who live show, Townshend refused to apologize for his actions. After all, he said, he ever shared other guitarists' affection for the instrument.

“Young kids that buy their first really good guitar end up in a love relationship with it,” he said. I've never had that.”

By the time the Who went on to play their first U.S. show, the need to repeat such violent feats night after night posed problems. Townshend found the answer in glue

“When we first came to New York, we did a thing called The Murray the K Show and we'd play four times a day,” Townshend told Jimmy Fallon last year. “I only had one guitar, so I'd have to break it and fix it four times a day. In the end, it was more glue and string [than anything else].”

By 1989, a year in which Townshend had hand-picked Atomic Rooster's Steve “Boltz” Bolton to be his co-guitarist for a tour as he struggled with tinnitus, his sense of rage, and the need to break guitars like they were nothing to satiate the red mist, had yet to quell. Bolton says he smashed a Takamine acoustic to pieces right before his eyes for one small error during a run-through of "Pinball Wizard" at rehearsals.

However, Bolton walked away with some more positive memories and a few of Townshend’s greatest guitar secrets up his sleeve.

And though those destructive days are now, at 80, behind him, he's made cryptic clues about what the future of both the Who and Pete Townshend, the solo artist, which may involve using AI to appease his fans. That came just weeks after he admitted to falling out of love with playing live.

He's since revealed he had to get sober again, after a 30-year streak, ahead of the Who's final tour.

The Who have always been one of rock’s most aggressive acts. That has usually come out in their performances when Pete Townshend smashes his guitar and Keith Moon topples over his drum kit.

That sort of violence has always been part of the act. Townshend’s freewheeling attitude toward his guitars persisted over the years because he claims that, unlike other guitarists, he never had a relationship with the guitar. Lead singer Daltrey says he never liked Townshend’s guitar smashing very much, and says he only destroyed one guitar in his life, then quickly came to regret it.

But one thing he doesn’t regret is the time he and Pete came to blows — and the singer landed a punch that put the guitarist out of commission.

“I had one fight with Pete where I knocked him out, which I’ve always felt bad about because it was so unnecessary,” Daltrey tells Classic Rock in a new interview. “But I had no choice, because unfortunately I was the one being held back and he was hitting me with a guitar at the time.”

Not surprisingly, Townshend’s guitar of choice at the time was a Gibson SG, the very model of electric guitar that he came to prize among all others in the early 1970s, thanks to both its sound and its compliant nature when driven like an axe into the stage floor.

But Daltrey was understandably upset to find himself on the receiving end of Townshend’s unapologetic guitar-smashing tendencies.

“And if you break a Gibson SG over someone’s shoulder it’ll fucking hurt,” he says with a laugh.

As for the fight that knocked Pete out cold?

“It was only one punch,” Daltrey admits. “And unfortunately it hit him when he was off balance, coming forward after throwing a punch at me, which I dodged. It was his own fault, because he told the roadies to let me go,” he explains laughing.

“But I’ve always felt bad about it, I don’t know why. He did go out cold, and the next thing I know I’m sitting in the fucking ambulance holding his hand.”

As the Who’s only remaining members, Townshend and Daltrey have tried to keep the battles to a minimum over the years. Townshend says they still rarely see eye to eye.

“We don’t communicate very well,” Townshend says. “He and I are very different and we have different needs as performers,” stemming largely these days from Daltrey’s near deafness.

The two men finished the Who’s final U.S. tour, titled The Song Is Over, on October 1 at Palm Desert, California. And while hitting the road at their respective ages is difficult, Daltrey says they owe it to the fans. He notes how the band carried on even after John Entwistle’s drug-induced death in Las Vegas at the launch of the group’s 2002 U.S. tour. He says canceling the tour was only briefly a consideration.

“But we considered everything,” he says. “We considered how many people we would be letting down.”

Even now, Daltrey says, quitting at their age without a tour would have been understandable. But both he and Townshend feel “it’s too easy at our age.

“We’ve always been a band that reflects what’s happening in our generation, and we’re unfortunately the next in line for the hole in the ground — fact of life.

“We owe it to our fans, our original fans that are our age now, to show them how to live. And you don’t fucking give up because one of your mates died, mate. You carry on. If you don’t feel you’ve got anything to offer, then by all means stop, but at the moment I feel we’ve still got a lot to offer.

"Pete’s writing new stuff now, I can still sing as good as I ever could, Pete’s one of the genius guitarists and songwriters of the last century, why not go on? It might not be the same, but it doesn’t make it irrelevant.”

While the Who's final tour is over, Townshend hasn't closed the door completely on future performances. Guesting on BBC Radio 4's My Cultural Life program this past May, Townshend was asked the inevitable: Is this really the end?

“It’s certainly the end of touring in America,” he replied. “I asked Roger if it’s the end of touring Europe, and he said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’”

Guitarists aren’t so quick to reveal their secrets — until they have to.

And when the Who prepared for their 1989 25th anniversary tour, Pete Townshend was in no shape to keep his guitar secrets to himself. The Who co-founder was battling tinnitus and had brought Atomic Rooster guitarist Steve “Boltz” Bolton onboard to perform his electric guitar parts while Townshend played acoustic.

In the course of teaching Bolton his songs, Townshend told him the surprising details behind some of the guitars he used for classic Who tracks, including “My Generation” and “I Can See for Miles.”

“I learned quite a few things about Pete that I didn't know, especially with the correct way of playing the songs,” says Bolton, who previously told Guitar Player about how he had to endure Townshend’s temperamental ways during rehearsals.

“For example, on all the songs on the My Generation album including the title song, you’d think, because it’s bombastic, there’s loads of guitars. But there's only one guitar on every track, and it is a 12-string Rickenbacker [360-12].

“If you listen to it, all the main racket is coming from the bass. There are no other guitars, or any overdubbed guitars or anything. There may be a little piano on, but that’s it. It’s just how they sounded.”

Bolton recalls a moment during the tour’s stopover in Seattle where Townshend’s less-is-more modus operandi was further affirmed.

“I went into a record store and they had this fantastic sound system, and they were playing, ‘I Can See For Miles’ really loud,” Bolton recalls. “And it just sounded great with the drums, guitar and bass.

“I got back to the hotel and saw Pete and said, ‘Listen, I've got to tell you, I was in a record store and they were playing “I Can See For Miles.” And it was just the most amazing experience!’

“And he was just like a little boy. He said, ‘Oh yeah, should I tell you how I did that? And I answered, ‘Please do!’ He explained that it was just a Telecaster through a Fender Champ. And that was it. Yet, the guitar sounded absolutely enormous.

“I said, ‘My god, Pete, it sounds like 50 Marshall stacks!’”

The reunion tour also brought Bolton a glimpse into Townshend’s approach to songwriting and how jazz pianist Mose Allison inspired “My Generation.”

“In the ’60s, everyone used to do a song by Mose Allison, who was this white jazz piano player,” he explains. “And one of his songs, ‘Young Man Blues,’ was covered by the Who.

“Pete told me that when he wrote ‘My Generation,’ he actually wrote it and demoed it like a Mose Allison song. That was what was in his head. But by the time it got into the lion's den with Keith Moon, it turned into that bombastic anthem.”

In addition, Bolton learned the correct way to play “My Generation.” He says Townshend tuned his guitar down a whole step and played an A chord shape, which sounded as a G.

“It’s an interesting technique,” Bolton says. “Pete plays the main riff using his thumb on the bass string, then the thumb goes down to play the F.”

When it came to the gear for the tour, Bolton used a 1962 Fender Stratocaster that he first bought back in 1977.

“I bought it in London for 240 pounds and sold the Strat for 12,000 pounds only few years ago,” he exclaims. “So that guitar was my main electric for the tour, and I alternated between that and a 12-string Rickenbacker and my stack of Mesa/Boogie amps.

“Pete mainly played a Takamine acoustic, a 12-string Rickenbacker and a bunch of Eric Clapton Signature Strats. And he used rack-mounted channel-switching Mesa/Boogie studio preamps — one for the electric, one for the acoustic and two for backup. He primarily played acoustic guitar at the start of the tour, and the crew had built him a little gazebo onstage to protect his hearing.

“But by the time we got two thirds of the way through the tour, he was breaking out the Strats. So we were both playing Strats.

“They were recording the shows every night too. Pete came up to me one night as we came offstage and said, ‘I spent all night listening to the live recordings and it's fucking fantastic. Don't change a thing. I love what you're doing.’ Which was great to hear because he’s a tricky guy, you never know what’s going to happen with him.”

And what was one of the most surprising discoveries Bolton made from his time working with Townshend?

“He loves new guitars,” he says. “On that tour, he played a new Eric Clapton signature Strat. So, when he saw my ’62 Strat, Pete said, ‘What are you doing playing that onstage? It should been in a museum. Why don’t you play a new guitar?’ I was having trouble with the volume pot, it kept getting locked halfway, so I had to get it repaired.

“So he had a point. All my guitars are new now.”

Noel Gallagher may have once made the bold claim that Oasis were bigger than the Beatles, but few artists have trashed the band’s musical abilities. The Who’s outspoken guitarist Pete Townshend, however, bucked that trend when, in the mid ’60s, he called the Fab Four “lousy.”

At a time when the Beatles were putting out their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, the Who were experiencing a breakthrough year. Their debut album, My Generation, had been hastily put together following the success of the early single "I Can't Explain" and the fervor around Townshend's unapologetic guitar-smashing antics.

Both bands were at markedly different points in their respective arcs. Still, when teed up to talk about the reigning champs in a 1966 TV interview, Townshend didn’t hold his razor-sharp tongue once the subject of "quality" came up.

“What has got quality in the pop business?” he asks. “What’s got quality in anything? It’s just a matter of standards. In the pop business, we’re lucky in that there are no standards.”

That led one of the interviewers, a young woman, to question if Townshend's argument applies to the Fab Four.

“But wouldn’t you say the Beatles and people like that have a certain musical quality?” she questions.

“Ooh, that’s a tough question,” Townshend replies, before telling a story about himself and Who bass guitarist John Entwistle.

“Actually, this afternoon, John and I were listening to a stereo LP of the Beatles in which the voices come out of one side and the backing track comes out of the other,” he said.

“When you actually hear the backing tracks of the Beatles without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy,” he said, spitting the words out.

Unfortunately, this was a common problem with records mixed for stereo in the early 1960s. Before the use of four-track tape decks, around 1964, two-track machines were commonly employed, with the instruments recorded together on one track and the vocals on another.

This worked out fine for mono LPs, but it caused problems for stereo albums, where the only way to create a stereo picture was to place the music on one side and the vocals on another. As the Beatles' first two albums were recorded on two-track tape decks, they both suffered from this when reproduced for stereo.

In addition to sounding awful, the procedure exposed flaws in the playing that vocals — or careful mixing — might have concealed. As one would expect, Townshend tuned into the performances, and he found them wanting — although in all fairness, Please Please Me, the Beatles' first album, was recorded in a single day.

The Who, on the other hand, suffered no such indignities. They were recording on four-track by the time they released My Generation. Although issued only in mono originally, it was remixed for stereo in 2002, with Roger Daltrey's vocals front and center, with Townshend, Entwistle, and their seemingly octopus-limbed drummer, Keith Moon spanning across the stereo field.

Townshend would, of course, come around to the Beatles, eventually.

"I just loved them. They were joyful, they were funny," he said years later, while admitting, "They were more a pop group than I would have liked."

He said the first Beatle songs that "really blew me away" were the single "Day Tripper" and its flipside, "Paperback Writer," a pair of tunes unusual in that they weren't love songs.

"They weren't about falling in love," he said. "They weren't about [girls]; they were about jobs, creativity. They were interesting songs, those two, and I suddenly realized that they were gonna do great things."

Considering those tunes came out in May 1966 — likely around the time of Townshend's 1966 interview — one has to assume he had a change of heart about the group not long after making his comments.

Townshend's mellower moods have seen him praise the Oasis song that made him cry, and reveal his affection for Who singer Roger Daltrey as the band's "driving force," despite the fact that they "don’t communicate very well."

‘”One day around 1988, my phone rings and the voice down the line says ‘Boltz, it’s Pete Townshend!’” Steve Bolton about his career-changing phone call. “And I go, ‘Yeah right,’

“But he says, ‘No, don't hang up, I've got a question to ask you. Will you play lead guitar for the Who?’”

So began one of the stranger moments in the history of the Who and the career of a guitarist little known outside of England. Steve “Boltz” Bolton has performed with some of the biggest artists of the day, including Dave Gilmour, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie, and he played with British hitmaker Paul Young in the 1980s.

But Bolton’s greatest claim to fame is with Atomic Rooster, the hard rock group he joined in 1971, left in 1972 and rejoined in 2016. The group’s latest outing titled Circle the Sun to be issued this October, is their first full collection of studio recordings in over 40 years.

Despite his unfamiliarity in America, Bolton was well known in England in the early 1970s. Townshend was particularly fond of him. Bolton first caught his ear when Atomic Rooster shared the bill with the Who (along with the Faces and Mott the Hoople) in 1971 for a show at the Oval, London, where Bolton plugged his guitar into Townshend's Hiwatt stack. Bassist Pino Pallidino recalled that, while working with Townshend on his White City: A Novel solo album in 1985, the guitarist asked him about Bolton.

“He said Pete then got up on the studio desk in front of a full room of people and did a perfect imitation of all my moves and everything,” Bolton explains

Following the Who’s celebrated reunion at Live Aid in 1985, Townshend began preparing the group for its 25th anniversary reunion tour, dubbed The Kids Are Alright Tour. Unfortunately, the world’s most famous guitar-smasher was suffering from tinnitus and wanted another guitarist to handle the electric guitar parts for the tour while he performed acoustic guitar. For that matter, the Who would be embellished with numerous other members, bringing the quartet's number to 15.

As Townshend explained on Good Morning America in 1989. "The more musicians you have, the quieter you can play. It's a bit difficult to make a big sound with an electric guitar unless it's quite loud. I'm paying the price now for playing too much loud guitar."

Enter Bolton.

“Pete said, ‘I’m a big fan of yours and have seen you with the Paul Young band quite a few times,’” Bolton says. “ ‘I recognize myself in you.’

“He said, ‘There are only two people I would consider for this job: One is Joe Walsh and the other is you. Can you come over to my studio in West London for some kind of audition and we’ll run over some acoustic stuff?’”

On the day of the audition, Bolton arrived and was quickly escorted to the studio’s control room where Townshend was holding court.

“Pete asks one of his minions to get his Gibson J-200 out,” Bolton recalls. “His minion brings the case, and as Pete opens it, the bridge of the J-200 came unglued and all the strings went ‘boing,’ all over the place!

“I said, ‘Look, the guitar smashes itself!’

“And Pete replies, ‘You’ve got the job!’”

Bolton was given box full of cassettes and instructed to learn 200 songs, including the entirety of Tommy, the Who’s breakthrough 1969 rock opera. Rehearsals began without the Who present. But a few weeks in, Townshend dropped by unexpectedly to see how things were coming along. To his dismay, the sound was far too loud.

“Pete pulled me aside into another room and said, ‘You can’t play that loud. It's too loud!’” he reveals.

“My guitar tech made a few phone calls, to this company in Manchester who were making these tiny five-watt amps. But using such a small amp was a ridiculous concept so it never went any further. We just left it and I carried on with my 100-watt Mesa/Boogie one-by-12 combo.”

As the rehearsals went on, his rig grew even bigger. “By the time of the first production rehearsal in America, I was using four of those combos with extension cabinets,” Bolton says. “So it was like a double stack slaved up in the middle with an identical bunch of stuff in the middle. It was fucking louder than I'd ever been in my whole life!”

Bolton recalls a moment during production rehearsals where Townshend’s reputation as the angry young man of his generation was brought to bear.

“We were in this huge rehearsal room in West London, which had now become small in space due to all of the gear,” Bolton begins. “Pete brings along a bunch of minions with him, and one of them says to all of us, ‘Pete would like the band to run over ‘The Overture’ from Tommy.’”

As its title suggests, “The Overture” consists of the album’s primary themes woven together. Among them is the signature, briskly strummed acoustic guitar riff to “Pinball Wizard.” Bolton had been playing it on electric guitar when Townshend was away. But now that he was back, he assumed the guitarist would take the part on himself.

To protect Townshend’s ears, a booth had been built in the studio for him. “It was like a garden shed, with a sound screen and a window,” Bolton explains. “It had two speakers on the wall and a picture of the Queen. He's in there with a Takamine acoustic.”

When it came time for the “Pinball Wizard” riff, there was absolute silence.

“There's nothing, because I'm not playing, and he’s not playing,” Bolton says. “I look diagonally across the room, and Pete's glaring at me. He shouts, ‘Stop!’ And everyone stops.

“He then smashes the Takamine to smithereens, kicks over the front of the shed and walks right over to me. He’s right in my face and says, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

“I pulled him by his lapels and said, ‘Listen — I've been covering for you while you've been swanning around America,” Bolton continues. “I thought, because you were here and you've got your guitar, you would be doing that bit. That's why I didn’t play.’

“And do you know what he said to me? ‘It’s my fucking band. I can do whatever I like!’”

Despite the problems, Bolton considers his Who stint one of his most memorable and most cherished of his career. His relationship with Townshend remains a constant today.

“Pete is a very complex character,” he says. “But that's what makes him who he is.”

The Who — Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey — are currently performing on their farewell tour.

Pete Townshend says his addiction to painkillers made it difficult to get in shape for the Who's final tour.

But, speaking to the New York Times, Townshend has revealed that getting show-ready was an uphill battle.

“I went through a period of feeling very depressed, and when I had a knee operation early this year, I got readdicted to painkillers,” ” Townshend told the New York Times.

“This is the way rock stars die,” he added, “OxyContin.”

Townshend's words aren’t melodrama. Prince died from a fentanyl overdose in 2016, seven years after Steven Tyler got hooked on prescription opioids. Musicians and painkillers can be a potent mix, and tragically, Townshend’s troubles came after three decades of sobriety.

“I’d gone through severe alcohol addiction for many years, then narcotics,” he says. “I’d been clean for over 30 years.”

Thankfully, the story has a happy ending.

“I called a close friend who’s working for a recovery clinic in Spain,” he explains, “and he got my head sorted out. I’m feeling really good at the moment.”

The guitarist, who turned 80 in May, has previously played down this tour being the definitive end for the Who. When asked about the band’s plans post-tour, he’d offered a cryptic response, adding, “I’m a dangerous fucker.”

His response to The New York Times was somewhat more measured.

“It’s in Roger’s hands,” he replied. “I don’t like being away from my family, my studios, my dogs, and my friends. I’m not looking to spend the next five years of my life waiting to drop dead on the stage.”

But he isn’t looking to end his 64-year partnership with Roger Daltrey either.

“The end of the tour could give Roger and I permission never to call each other again,” he admits. “I hope that doesn’t happen.”

He does accept, however, that he and Daltrey “are very different and we have different needs as performers.” The singer is dealing with deafness, which has obviously complicates his performance abilities. Says Townshend, “He’s a singer, and he has to be 100 percent fit in order to do his job.”

Billed as The Song Is Over, the Who tour set to conclude in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on September 28.

Although Townshend has said performing “doesn’t fill my soul” like it does for other performers, he appreciates the U.S. audiences and is glad to be able to give them one final swan song. The Who's first American performance took place in June 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival.

“The warmth and engagement of those audiences began back in 1967 with hippies smoking dope, sitting on their blankets, and listening deeply and intensely,” he said when the 15-date run was announced in May (via Guitar World). “Music was everywhere. We all felt equal.”

As the Who undertake their final tour, it’s worth remembering that half the original group is no longer with us. Drummer Keith Moon died in 1978, and bass guitarist John Entwistle in 2002.

And yet guitarist Pete Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey have continued on as the Who, the famed British Invasion group, which launched its final tour on August 16. As Townshend explains, the group has become something larger than itself, which is why the duo have kept it going all these years.

“It’s a brand rather than a band,” Townshend tells AARP. “Roger and I have a duty to the music and the history. The Who [still] sells records — the Moon and Entwistle families have become millionaires. There’s also something more, really: the art, the creative work is when we perform it. We’re celebrating. We’re a Who tribute band.”

With that said, Townshend has said before he’s not fond of performing, explaining, “I don’t hate it,” he said earlier this year, “but it doesn’t fill my soul in the way that you see some performers — just their soul is filled through being on the stage. That’s not me.”

He admits to AARP that the feelings are somewhat more complicated.

“It can be lonely. I’ve thought, Well, this is my job, I’m happy to have the work, but I prefer to be doing something else.

“Then, I think, Well, I’m 80 years old. Why shouldn’t I revel in it? Why shouldn’t I celebrate?”

Townshend has spent more than 60 of those years in the Who, having formed the group when he was all of 18 or 19, after attending art college. Fame in England followed almost immediately for the group with the release of their second single, the hit “I Can’t Explain.”

Townshend would go on to become one of rock’s most singular guitarists, both with his rhythm guitar work — both with electric and acoustic guitars — and his onstage antics, including destroying guitars, making creative use of feedback and windmilling his strumming arm.

Despite the fact that he seems made for fame, Townshend says it was never a goal.

“A rock star is something I didn’t really want to happen,” he says. “[‘I Can’t Explain’] was bigger and better than the art stuff that I was a student for. So I ended up as a rock star — and I think I’m not really good at it,” he added with a laugh.

The group’s final jaunt comes amid some controversy with their drum chair. Their long-time drummer Zak Starkey was fired on April 16, 2025, then rehired, only to be let go again on May 18, 2025, stating it was time for a change after many years of his work.

Starkey has since explained that his fallout with the band began when Daltrey lost his place during the Who’s performance of “The Song Is Over” last March at the Royal Albert Hall, due to the drummer’s bass drum being too loud in Daltrey’s mix. Starkey told The Telegraph in a June interview, “What happened was I got it right and Roger got it wrong,” and blamed the error on a lack of rehearsal and proper planning.

Daltrey fired back, accusing the drummer of something akin to “character assassination.”

Townshend seems to be taking it all in stride. “It looked like Roger made a mistake, but something technical went wrong,” he says. “[Zak’s] handling of it, was, I suppose, light-hearted, but you know Roger.”

Indeed, Townshend and the singer have their own issues even after all these years together.

“We don’t communicate very well,” he says. “He and I are very different and we have different needs as performers,” stemming largely these days from Daltrey’s near deafness. “He got upset because he felt I had sometimes given the impression of having left the building. Roger complained about the fact that he is deaf. He’s a singer, and he has to be 100 percent fit in order to do his job.”

As for the future, Townshend expects he’ll do more solo work, including the release of an album built around his 2019 debut novel, The Age of Anxiety. He adds that he’ll do solo shows and that he and Daltrey might even do shows for charity or special projects.

“Together we represent all aspects of the Who legacy. You know, I’m the songwriter and creator, but Roger’s been the driving force, meaning keeping The Who band and his brand on track. Even with his solo work, we’ll continue to work together, even if we rarely socialize.”

Years before he scored international hits in the 1970s with Canada’s Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Randy Bachman made his mark in the 1960s with the Guess Who. Unfortunately, the group’s name caused some confusion with another hit-making quartet: the English group the Who.

The similarity in their names stemmed from a publicity stunt created by the Canadian label of Bachman’s previous group, Chad Allan and the Expressions. The band scored a hit in 1965 with its cover of Johnny Kidd & the Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over,” which went to number 22 in the U.S. and topped the charts in Canada.

However, the group’s Canadian label, Quality Records, decided to credit the single to “Guess Who?” In an attempt to create publicity for the band. When the record became a success, the band had to add Guess Who? to its name. By the following year, they shortened it to the Guess Who.

As Bachman tells Classic Rock, it was around this same time that the Who began to gain popularity in North America with songs like “My Generation” (a number three hit in Canada) and “Happy Jack” (a chart topper in that country). The Guess Who were afraid the British act’s success would create problems for them and decided to take the matter into their own hands.

“We found out about this English band called the Who and were determined to force them to change their name,” he says. “So we were in London and the Who were playing at the Marquee club. Down we went to confront them.

“They were being filmed for German TV at that show, so we had to wait around for about four hours.

“Eventually, we get to meet them and say, ‘Look, we were here before you. So change your name. It’s confusing people.’

“Pete Townshend looked at us and replied, ‘There’s the Yardbirds and the Byrds. Nobody’s confused by that. So bugger off!’”

Townshend’s declaration charmed Bachman and his bandmates, and the two groups “became great friends,” he says. “And that phrase ‘bugger off’ was our in-joke. We’d check into a hotel and find out the Who were there, so we’d call up one of the guys at 3 a.m. and when they answered we would say, ‘Bugger off!’ then hang up. They’d do the same to us.”

Bachman said the similarity caused confusion from time to time. In a 2023 Facebook posted, in which he shared a photo of himself with Townshend, Bachman said both bands were occasionally mistaken for the other back in the day.

“Neither band minded and sometimes even played a song or two of each other's during shows,” he wrote. “We crossed paths all the time over the years, most recently was when I saw Pete Townshend at the premiere of Tommy at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. He's a great guy.”

However, he went to explain that the confusion has been a curse at times. Who drummer Keith Moon was known for destroying rooms, blowing up toilets and tossing TV sets into the pools of the hotels the group stayed in. As Bachman explains, his antics caused the Guess Who trouble when they tried to book rooms at the Continental Hyatt House in Los Angeles, also known as the Riot House for the many bands who trashed its rooms.

“We were refused because we could not convince them we were quiet Canadians, a different band altogether from the Who,” Bachman wrote.

“Finally, we were shown to the suite. Keith Moon had made a terrible mess there previously but everything had been redone. While I was sitting at the little desk making a phone call from my room, I tried to slide out the chair but it caught on the shag rug. I'm a big guy. I stumbled backwards and fell over, breaking the chair in two.

“You can imagine the look on the staff's faces when I brought broken furniture down half an hour after checking in!”

After scoring hits with the Guess Who, including “Undun” and “American Woman,” Bachman launched Bachman-Turner Overdrive in the 1970s and went on to craft more chart toppers with “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” each written and performed with his 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins electric guitar.

In recent years, Bachman has made a virtual side career from discussing his experiences with a variety of musicians, including Bo Diddley, Steven Tyler, Frank Sinatra and Neil Young, whom he befriended while the two guitarists were growing up in Winnipeg. It was through Young that he met his guitar idol Stephen Stills, resulting in a humorous exchange when Bachman told Stills “You have no idea how many ideas I’ve stolen from you.”

Following years of acrimony, Bachman and his Guess Who bandmate Burton Cummings have settled their differences recently and plan to embark on a Guess Who tour in 2026.

“We can’t wait,” Bachman says. “The response from fans has been overwhelming, like ‘Go, go, go!’ We’ve got so many great songs to play — talk about overwhelming.”

One of the the early 1970s’ most iconic rock images is of Pete Townshend in a white jumpsuit playing a cherry-red Gibson SG Special. The Who were rock’s newly christened gods in 1970, thanks to the success of Tommy, which brought them widespread acclaim and a reputation as one of the greatest live acts of the day.

Rock concerts had been growing both in size and audio-visual sophistication since the Rolling Stones’ 1969 U.S. tour. The Who proved themselves capable of filling the larger venues and generating both the volume and visual excitement required.

While Townshend’s habit of trashing his electric guitars was a frequent highlight of the Who’s stage shows, what’s often overlooked is the sheer physicality he brought to his performance on the instrument. From his windmilling right arm to his incredible stage leaps, Townshend made guitar playing an acrobatic workout.

Along with it, between 1968 and 1972, he developed an entirely new style of playing after he became enamored of the Gibson SG Special. Although the model was introduced in 1961, when Townshend adopted it in 1968 he preferred models made from 1966 onward, with a narrower nut width, larger batwing pickguard, and the neck join at the 19th fret rather than 22nd fret as on the earlier guitars.

While it’s often thought Townshend liked the SG Special because it broke easily, with wood-splintering results, he was actually drawn to its lightweight and somewhat pliant design. With 22 frets, the guitar could be easily flexed, particularly by a someone with as physical a playing style as Townshend.

“I got into this thing also of temper tuning the guitar,” by tuning the third string slightly flat and “pulling back slightly on the guitar all the time to bring it into pitch,” he told Sound International in a 1980 interview.

He found the tuning could also be modulated by grabbing the guitar and giving it a good jostling.

“That’s when I started to develop that technique, because you didn’t need a tremolo arm. You could do it by just shaking the guitar.”

His choice of heavy strings added a bit of fight to the execution, and possibly better pitch stability — although that’s debatable given Townshend’s rough handling.

“I’ve never used light-gauge strings. I’ve always used heavy strings,” he said. “The top string is an .012 downwards, and I use two Bs instead of a B and a G string.

“I can’t stand light strings; you don’t have to struggle for it.”

As he pointed out, he developed these techniques in response to the SG. He had originally begun playing Fender Stratocasters onstage in 1966 because they could stand up to his abuse. But the Strat’s tone proved unsuitable to him around the middle of 1968.

“The first time I started to use the Gibson SG model guitar is when I got fed up with Fenders, because they were too clean,” he told Guitar Player in 1972.

“So I went to the manager and said, ‘I really need an alternative to this,’ and he said, ‘I think you'd like the newest SG,’ and I looked at it. I played it and it rang, it sang to me.”

But having adopted the SG and put himself through these paces, Townshend found himself in trouble when Gibson changed the SG’s design in the early 1970s. By the time of his 1972 interview with Guitar Player, Gibson’s owner, Norlin, has begun introducing variations on the SG and reintroduced the Special as the SG Pro, with a join at the 18th neck, and the bridge pickup moved closer to the bridge, among other controversial design changes.

It didn't pass muster with Townshend.

“That thing I do with the neck — bending it back to stretch the strings as the chord rings — you don't need any strength to make the whole guitar bend, because it's made out of such a lightweight wood. But the factory stopped making those particular SGs.”

Townshend asked Gibson to make him custom SGs for the Who’s Next tour in 1971, but he was unhappy with what he received. “We had four of them made for the beginning of the tour. They brought them up to us but the guitars were totally different. The pickups were in a different position, and on and on, so we said, ‘Forget it.’”

In desperation, Townshend put out a call to find SGs made between 1966 and 1970.

“They took the old SG off the market like about a year ago, so we used up every old SG in the country. I raided every music store in the country practically, looking for old SGs.”

He eventually gave up. Townshend reportedly last used a red-finished SG Special of his preferred vintage at the Who’s gig in Paris on September 9, 1972, and began playing pre-1965 Specials in Polaris White. At the time of his Guitar Player interview, he was making the move to the Les Paul Deluxe and working on ideas for modifying its pickups.

“My favorite guitar now for the stage is the Les Paul Deluxe with the small Epiphone pickups that you can buy on the shelf for $50,” he said. “They're like a humbucking, but they're small, like what you have on Epiphones, and they're really loud. I like those. I think that's what I'll probably end up using. Either that or I quite like those Dan Armstrong pickups.”

Eddie Van Halen’s love of Eric Clapton’s Cream-era guitar playing is well known. The guitarist talked in depth about learning Clapton’s licks and solos note for note in his first-ever interview, with Jas Obrecht, in Guitar Player’s July 1978 issue.

What’s less well known is that Eddie had also learned the Who’s Live at Leeds album down to each of Pete Townshend’s riffs and solos.

In a new interview with Professor of Rock, former Van Halen bass guitarist Michael Anthony recalled his first jams with Eddie and his brother Alex, saying he was particularly impressed by Eddie’s ability to perform Townshend’s parts perfectly.

“When I jammed with Eddie and Alex that first time, they played some of their original stuff,” Anthony explains. “They were going through these time changes, and I’m like, ‘Whoa! What a trip!’

What's more, says Anthony, “He could play the whole Live at Leeds album, playing it note for note. It was just as good, if not better than Townshend!”

Released in 1970, Live at Leeds is celebrated as one of rock’s great live albums, and one that marked a turning point for the Who. By the dawn of the '70s, they’d become known as one of rock’s greatest performance acts, but they had yet to release a live album. They were also concerned that the success of 1969’s Tommy rock opera had boxed them in as an art-rock group.

The time was right for the Who to make a live album. They had recorded some shows from the Tommy tour but were unhappy with the sound. Early in 1970, they booked a pair of shows with the intent of recording them for an album. They included a February 14 concert at Leeds University and another the following day at Hull City Hall.

By this point Townshend’s stage gear consisted of 1968/’69 Gibson SG Specials in Cherry finish and a pair of customized master-volume Hiwatt CP103 “Super Who 100” heads, as well as a Shaftesbury Duo fuzz pedal. A WEM Copycat tape echo was applied to his guitar at the soundboard. Townshend would switch to using SG Specials in Polaris White finish in 1972. The SG would remain his main electric guitar until 1973, when he switched to the Les Paul Deluxe.

Townshend talent for coaxing a wide range of tones from such a simple rig was impressive. And, as it turns out, Van Halen wasn’t the only famous guitarist moved by Townshend’s work on Live at Leeds. Joe Satriani was blown away by the sound he was able to achieve from his gear, and picked the disc as one of the 10 albums that changed his life. He added that it would be his sole pick if he could choose only one.

“Pete Townshend, to me, is another one of those amazing musicians who put so much energy and originality into his playing,” Satch said. “He risks everything for the performance and the expression, which is another thing that I love dearly. When I see a performer just go crazy like that — and the fact that his rhythm playing is just unbelievable — I’m blown away. And his choices for guitar sounds are just unbelievable.

“It's the whole thing with him. He’s such an original. So if I had to pick one album, it would be Live at Leeds because I can’t even fathom the fact that he’s got the guitar on the right side and the reverb and the tape echo in the center. It’s just the craziest thing. I still don’t understand how that band, with those three guys playing, made such a beautiful sound where you didn’t want for another instrument. I still can’t understand it. It’s pure magic.”

Forty years ago on July 13, the Live Aid concerts kicked off at London’s Wembley Stadium with the British rock group Status Quo. Armed with Telecasters and described by organizer Bob Geldof as “ordinary blokes with long hair and denims,” the group opened the day’s festivities with the 12-bar rock of John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World.” It sent an unintentional but perceptible message that, even in the synth-saturated mid 1980s, “the boys and girls with guitars” — as Geldof described them — would rule the day.

Live Aid did rule, on that day and through 40 years of memories (as well as 20 years for its follow-up event, Live 8). True to Fogerty’s anthem, the benefit for African famine relief was a global event, ping-ponging between Wembley and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium, as well as locales in Europe, Australia and Japan. Styled as a “global jukebox,” Live Aid presented most of the biggest acts at the time to nearly two billion viewers in 169 countries. Along the way it raised about $140 million for the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which Geldof launched with the all-star “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” single released eight months prior.

Live Aid’s 20 or so hours of music played out as a day for guitar heroics that were at times notable, notorious, triumphant and tepid. The players came from the worlds of rock, metal, blues and jazz, and nearly three dozen of them went on to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Four decades later, we still remember these most notable guitar stories from Live Day.

Led Zeppelin: Like a Lead Balloon

Led Zeppelin grounded itself immediately after drummer John Bonham died in September 1980, with the three surviving members going their own ways. But with Jimmy Page’s the Firm and Robert Plant both on the road, circumstances dictated an ascent back up the stairway to heaven, if just for one day. Plant was the first to sign on and wanted Page to be involved — but not necessarily to get the Led out.

“The original idea was not to do a Robert Plant set as such, but something a little lighter — like the Honeydrippers,” Plant said at the time, referring to an ad hoc all-star band he’d put together to record an EP of rock and R&B oldies in 1984.

“As Jimmy was part of the Honeydrippers I phoned him and said, ‘Would you like to be part of it?’ He did, and as we got to talking about it, we said, ‘While we’re doing it, why not do two of our [Led Zeppelin] songs?’ The whole thing really evolved.”

It ultimately sounded better in discussion than onstage. With former Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones on keyboards rather than bass, Paul Martinez from Plant’s band on bass, and Chic’s Tony Thompson and Phil Collins on drums, the shambolic three-song set felt like a genuine moment for the euphoric crowd at JFK Stadium, but not beyond.

Collins, who had flown in on the Concorde to play at both the London and Philly shows, introduced Zeppelin after playing solo piano renditions of a couple of his hits. He hadn’t rehearsed, and it showed, as did any lack of plan between him and Thompson on songs — “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway to Heaven” — that really weren’t made for two drummers.

Jones also had a small amount of rehearsal on the day of the show, Page — who busted out his Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck electric guitar for the occasion — sounded out of tune at times, and Plant was a bit hoarse from playing the night before in Detroit. To make matters worse, the stage monitors reportedly weren’t working properly. Plant later termed the performance “horrendous.”

The dissatisfaction was evident during a tense post-show interview with MTV’s Alan Hunter, which Collins dominated when the others proved truculent. The drummer later wrote in his 2016 memoir, Not Dead Yet, “If I’d known it was to be a two-drummer band, I would have removed myself from the proceedings long before I got anywhere near Philadelphia.”

Collins, who’d played on Plant’s first two solo albums and toured with him in 1983, also took exception to Page laying blame for the failure on him for “bashing away cluelessly and grinning.” Collins noted, “If you look at the video, you can see Jimmy dribbling [cocaine] onstage, Robert not hitting the notes and me miming, playing the air.”

Not surprisingly, Page, Plant and Jones refused to allow the performance to be included on Live Aid’s subsequent official DVD release. Led Zeppelin would have more satisfying reunions at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary Concert in 1986, its Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1995 and the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, which is, as of now, its final performance.

The Who: Before They Got Old

There are several tellings of how the Who came to be part of Live Aid’s London program, the group’s first time onstage since breaking up after a farewell tour in late 1982. In his memoir, Is That It?, Geldof says Townshend suggested it after he invited the guitarist to take part on his own. That led to a series of protracted negotiations with singer Roger Daltrey, who refused to play with drummer Kenney Jones, and bassist John Entwistle, who refused to not play with Jones.

Townshend, however, subsequently accused Geldof of blackmailing and bullying the band into being part of the show. In his memoir, Who I Am, Townshend wrote, “When Bob sensed I might refuse to appear, he took the gloves off...‘Every pound we make will save a life. Do the fucking math. And do the fucking show!’”

Geldof denies he blackmailed or bullied the guitarist but makes no secret of how important it was for the Who to be part of Live Aid.

“I live, die and swear by this band,” he explained recently. “I really minded that the Who reformed and did it, ’cause it’s significant. I felt that 20 million people would watch that; if five percent of them contribute, we’re home.”

Though Townshend contended that “the Who were out of practice and should probably have left it to Queen and George Michael, who stole the show,” the four-song evening set — part of a killer chain that included U2, Dire Straits, Queen and David Bowie — was one of the day’s most exciting, despite any flaws — and stage monitor issues. “My Generation,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Love Reign O’er Me” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” crackled with vintage Who energy. Townshend was in full, furious, windmilling form, while Daltrey opened his shirt, twirled his microphone and jogged around the stage like a marathoner in training.

Even Townshend would acknowledge, perhaps grudgingly, that “we all felt proud to be there” and happily helped Paul McCartney close the show with “Let It Be,” with the two rock icons hoisting Geldof on their shoulders at the end of the song.

Bob Dylan: Too Rolling Stoned

It was another Live Aid collaboration that probably looked good on paper.

Bob Dylan, who’d sung on USA for Africa’s famine relief single “We Are the World,” was chosen to close the show in Philadelphia and in turn recruited Rolling Stones Keith Richards and Ron Wood. The trio, along with Faces/occasional Rolling Stones keyboardist Ian McLagan, gathered at Wood’s New York home to rehearse, with Dylan ultimately choosing two deep cuts — “Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “When the Ship Comes In” — along with the iconic “Blowin’ in the Wind” to play on the night.

There was undoubtably tension in the air at JFK Stadium, not only because of the occasion but also because the trio was directly following Mick Jagger’s explosive performance — backed by Daryl Hall & John Oates, and with Tina Turner guesting — at a time when Jagger and Richards were on the outs.

What’s more, Dylan’s performance was followed by a group performance of the hit “We Are the World” that would close the event.

“The sound guys had no idea we were going on,” Richards recalled the following year. “Here’s three guys with acoustic guitars and they were getting ready for [sings] ‘We Are the World’ with 50 people behind us.

“They were tuning up and we were trying to play,” Richards explained a few years later. “It was like, ‘shut ’em up, Bill Graham, or we’ll shoot the lot of them!’ Bob and I kept looking at each other like, ‘Where’s the blindfolds and the last cigarettes?’ But it was all for a good cause, so what the hell?”

Their performance was plagued by problems. The stage curtain had fallen in front of the stage amplifiers, preventing Dylan, Richards and Wood from hearing each other and causing them to play out of sync. When, early on, a string broke on Dylan’s guitar, Wood gave him his and used a cheap instrument a crew member handed him. The new guitar was out of tune. Wood wound up playing slide on only one of the strings.

Dylan, meanwhile, caused a stir when he suggested that, “I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people in Africa, maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe one or two million, maybe, and use it...to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmers here owe to banks.” While Live Aid did eventually spawn the charity Farm Aid, Dylan’s comment showed he had no grasp of the event’s purpose. “Something so simplistic and crowd-pleasing was beyond belief,” Geldof wrote. “[Dylan] displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid.”

Seven other notable guitar moments...

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, on hiatus after his sophomore solo album About Face in 1984, played with Bryan Ferry’s band during the Roxy Music frontman’s four-song set in London.

Five of B.B. King’s songs from his set at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, Netherlands, including “Why I Sing the Blues” and “Rock Me Baby,” were carried as part of the global telecast.

Dire Straits, which was in the midst of its own 12-show run at Wembley Arena next door, was joined by Sting to recreate his guest vocal on “Money for Nothing.”

David Bowie tapped Kevin Armstrong, who had played on the Absolute Beginners soundtrack, as his guitarist for Wembley Stadium. Bowie subsequently asked Armstrong to be a fifth member in Tin Machine after he played on the group’s debut album (he turned it down), while Armstrong co-wrote the title track to Bowie’s Outside album in 1992.

Pat Metheny sat in with Santana for its five-song set in Philadelphia, which included “Brotherhood,” “Open Invitation” and “Right Now” (verify song title — may need clarification).

Chic was on hiatus but Nile Rodgers brought his guitar to Philadelphia to play with Madonna (“Love Makes the World Go Round”), and the two of them joined Thompson Twins for a rendition of the Beatles’ “Revolution.”

After landing in Philadelphia, Phil Collins first got onstage with Eric Clapton for his set, which included Cream’s “White Room,” Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” and “She’s Waiting” from the Collins-produced Behind the Sun album

Tear-jerking isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when Oasis’ name is mentioned, but Pete Townshend has revealed the one song by the Manchester indie legends that has him bawling — and he wasn't embarrassed to admit it.

The Gallagher brothers and company have reunited for their first shows together since 2009. The Manchester group's Oasis Live '25 tour kicks off July 4 and 5 at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium ahead of three massive shows in their hometown next week. Their return comes almost a full 31 years after their seminal debut album, Definitely Maybe.

The single that has the Who guitarist weeping, however, didn’t actually make the cut for the record. It was originally releasing as a B-side to the swaggering, Beatles-esque stomp of “Whatever.” Written by Noel Gallagher, who assumes lead vocals on the track, the acoustic guitar affair left its mark on Townshend.

“The thing that got me about Oasis was Liam’s voice, not so much the attitude,” he tells The Times. “It took me a while to get used to the attitude, and I felt Noel was the one with the most edge.

“Liam used to come to Who gigs with his girlfriend, and he was always charming,” he reveals. “And despite the fact that it was intended to be threatening and to have no emotion, it was loaded with emotion.”

Through their tough-guy demeanor, Townshend could see the band’s musical DNA clear as glass, and it wasn’t just the Fab Four, from nearby rival city Liverpool, who Oasis were drawing influence from.

“The songs were inspired not just by the Beatles, the Who and the Kinks but also had this feeling of coming from an entirely new place, and I don’t really know where it is,” he muses, “I feel a bit exposed, talking about it now, but the song that brought me to tears is ['Half the World Away'].

“I’ve heard it again and again because I’m such a fan of The Royle Family [the British sitcom, which picked the track for its theme song], and it moves me. Beyond the swagger is an incredible view of normal British life they seem to tap into.”

Even without “Half the World Away” on it, Definitely Maybe has gone down as a timeless indie classic. It’s certified Platinum in the U.S. and nine times Platinum in the U.K., and it launched the band’s career with serious fireworks.

By their third album, Be Here Now, the group were kings of the rock world, but the hangover from that album — no doubt literal and metaphorical considering their reputation — Noel Gallagher kicked his Marshalls to the curb as he overhauled his gear.

“No disrespect to Marshalls, but they have one sound, and that's just about it,” he explained to GP at the time. “They're either really loud or really quiet. In the past, I would just have a couple of 100-watt Marshalls, a Les Paul, and my Epiphone Casino, and that would be it.”

In related news, Liam Gallagher has issued a hilarious response to a fan trolling Green Day by playing “Wonderwall” on stage in Luxembourg instead of their 1997 hit, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”.

Side-splitting quips aren’t exclusive to Liam, however. Noel has revealed what he said when his son asked him why he couldn’t shred like the guitar slingers on Instagram, and it's brilliant.

And despite their ticket site-crashing comeback, there's no Rock Hall spot for Oasis this year, after being shunned once again. The White Stripes, Soundgarden, and esteemed session player Carol Kaye, who isn't best pleased about her impending induction, are set to be inducted alongside Bad Company, meaning Oasis miss out despite nominations across two consecutive years.

Feedback was once a problem to be avoided like the plague — that is until a few inventive guitarists began to use it effectively in their stage shows and even in their recordings.

Some, like Pete Townshend, discovered how to harness its power by searching for new guitar techniques.

“I'm afraid I was an arty little sod and I was actually experimenting,” he told Guitar Player when asked if his early innovations were the result of genius or dumb luck. “It shows that radical experimentation really is worth pursuing, because even though it might feel stupid and pretentious if you do discover something new, it's your property and you're identified with it forever.”

For others, feedback was a happy accident. That includes the Beatles, who chanced upon feedback in the studio when Paul McCartney's bass note caused John Lennon's Gibson J-160e electric-acoustic guitar to vibrate and generate feedback through the amplifier it was connected to. The result became the introduction to their hit 1964 single "I Feel Fine."

And then there's blues legend Buddy Guy, who learned about feedback while playing electric blues in Chicago in the 1950s.

“In Chicago then, we didn't have stages,” the 88-year-old tells NPR. “We'd always go in a corner and play. They had jukeboxes during their breaks, and they would play tunes. And that's how I learnt, by listening to other people, greats — Muddy Waters, [Howlin’] Wolf and so on.”

It was during this period that the guitarist's lightbulb moment came.

While on a break, Guy left his Fender Strat still plugged into an amp that was still turned on. As he says, there was no stage, so his electric guitar was exposed to the venue’s audience.

“A lady passed by, and her dress tail hit the G string, and it just stayed there with distortion for about 20 minutes,” he recalls. “We were just in the corner playing. And she got up from her table to probably go get a drink or use the bathroom or something like that. And I said, ‘Wow, I forgot to cut my guitar off.’

“It was right in tune with the particular tune that was playing on the jukebox. I'll never forget that. I went up, and it worked with me, and I've been doing it ever since.”

In that moment, his mindset switched, and feedback became a tool in the arsenal; something to embrace and utilize, particularly when it came to guitar solos. He’s expressive with it, taming it like a lion under his command.

“After I found out it would stay and distort that long, I just went up one day and played and stood right there where it was, and it worked,” he concludes.

Jimi Hendrix, in particular, would take great inspiration from Guy’s use of feedback as did many others, including Jeff Beck, Robert Fripp, and My Bloody Valentine, have followed in their wake.

Derek Trucks is one such player to have learned a great deal from Guy, and he says playing with him in blues clubs before he hit his teens proved a vast education.

“What I remember about Buddy Guy is that when he wanted to, he would bring the band down to a whisper," Trucks recalled last year. “I could hear the amps humming.

“I remember that discipline and that use of dynamics just being a huge thing that went off in my head. It’s powerful when you can bring things down to that level, but still hold the intensity. Then, when you take the lid off of it, it’s a big trip that you've taken.”

Guy has also been dishing out his best blues guitar tips to Guitar Player and revealed the one question he's sick of being asked by interviewers, delivering feedback of a very different kind.

If Pete Townshend initially felt awkward onstage, he quickly found his comfort zone. By the early years of the Who’s existence, Townshend had developed a repertoire of stage moves that made him one of the most dynamic guitar players to grace a stage in the 1960s and ’70s.

Equipment trashing was saved for the end of the shows, but long before then fans would have seen the guitarist perform his signature moves: the flying leap, the feedback pose and — perhaps most famous of all — the windmill, an arm-swinging acrobatic display in which he strikes the strikes the strings of his electric guitar with a sweeping motion from above or below.

Townshend uses the move like physical punctuation, emphasizing a downbeat or adding drama to a sustained chord. And while it’s associated with him and no one else, he’s never taken credit for creatingn it. Rather, he says Keith Richards did it first around 1964, in one of the Rolling Stones’ earliest performances.

“[The Who] supported the Stones for two shows,” Townshend explained in 2012 in an interview with David Letterman. “They were young, they were brand new and they had one hit, with a Chuck Berry song called ‘Come On.’ I met them backstage and they were all very charming.

"As the curtain opened, Keith Richards is doing this,” Townshend said, standing up to demonstrate the windmilling motion. "I was thinking, Wow, that’s so cool! I thought it was part of his thing.

“A couple of weeks later, we supported them again in a club in south London. I’m watching carefully, waiting, and he didn’t do it.”

At the first chance, Townshend asked Richards why he didn't perform the windmill.

“He went, ‘What?’” Townshend recalled. “I can’t tell you what exactly what he said, but the inference was, ‘I’m Keith Richards. Do you really think I’m gonna do ballet?’ That was the inference.”

Richards had actually addressed the matter some 30 years earlier in our April 1983 issue.

“I never took credit for this. but apparently he said that he lifted that arm swing he does from seeing me,” Keef said. “I don't recall doing it, but I guess if he says so, he did. It's something I've never been aware of.”

Of course, pnce Richards denied performing the move, Townshend felt free to adopt it for himself. After years of working at it, he had the windmill perfected by the time the Who became a global touring act in the 1970s. By then he was saving the move for the big downbeat at the top of “Baba O’Riley” to bring the audience to its feet. Townshend made it look powerful and athletic, and even easy.

But as he told Guitar Player in our October 1989 issue, the antic is fraught with danger

“As soon as we'd hit ‘Baba O'Riley,’ I'd go djaaang, swing, swing, all my fingernails would just get broken off across,” he said. “And from then on I would be in absolute agony for the rest of the tour. I wouldn't be able to sleep. You know, at night my hand would be throbbing.

“And the other thing is, when you swing your arm and you've got a cut finger, blood pours out of it at a great rate, and it goes all over your strings.

“I’ve seen a lot of people do arm swings,” he added, “and I've never seen anybody do it right.”

Townshend explained that most guitarists who imitate the move splay their fingers out and use them to strum the guitar at the critical point of contact. That’s doing it wrong.

“The right method is to bleed, you know?” he said. “Your hand and the pick have to connect with the fucking strings.

“You don't open your fingers up and just sort of slap.

“And you have to be able to do it in a downward direction as well as an upward direction. Doing it from the top is right easy, but coming up from below...you know, you're going around, the string catches under your fingernail, carves it back, pulls it out and then goes poing, backwards. If you get it wrong.”

Townshend had decided by the time of our interview he was finished with the windmill. Like his habit of playing loudly — which resulted in deafening tinnitus — the windmill was destined to become a relic of his past.

“I just don't want to do that anymore. It's another example of the way that I developed a way of working which is disabling.”

Of course, he could hardly stop himself. The guitarist continues to perform the windmill in concert to this day — just quite a bit more carefully.

The Who have announced the group will play its last U.S. shows in August and September this year. However, despite his recent admission that playing live doesn’t “fill my soul” anymore, Townshend has offered hints that the band may take to stages again outside of the U.S.

Woodstock is remembered as three days of peace, love and music. But for every person who attended — and for every performer who played — the 1969 festival would come to mean something entirely personal.

For Who guitarist Pete Townshend, it was a dispiriting tragedy. The group’s set in the early morning hours of August 17 featured a performance of their then-new groundbreaking rock opera, Tommy. It was the Who’s breakthrough album, a smash hit that secured them a place in America some two years after their debut performance at 1967’s Monterey Pop festival, where the Jimi Hendrix Experience had also made their U.S. premiere.

But unlike Monterey Pop, Woodstock looked to Townshend like a disorganized mess. The sight of roughly half a million fans camped out on the muddy fields of Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York was bad enough. To make it worse, delays caused the Who’s set to move from late Saturday night to five o’clock on Sunday morning, August 17.

Taking the stage, Townshend was dismayed to deliver his rock opera to thousands of stoned and sleeping attendees. The Who should have been celebrating their place as one of rock’s foremost groups. But all Townshend could think was that he was losing his audience.

“I find myself in sort of a class of one having the courage to admit that I hated Woodstock and that it was actually quite horrible to be up to your neck in mud,” he told Guitar Player in the October 1989 issue.

“And in a sense, what people were looking for was just something to hang on to. Tommy actually filled a need. There were people out there with a spiritual hole in their life, which they filled up and partly created by using psychedelic drugs. Everybody was using psychedelic drugs.

“And the people who weren't were using strong hallucinogenics — even though they didn't know it — in the shape of marijuana. You know, where if you took six joints in a row you were in the first stages of a psychedelic experience anyway. And that was just rampant.

“And Woodstock… well, the whole audience was on LSD. It's really quite a grotesque idea that you're actually there with a million mad people.”

Among them was a man who was, if not “mad,” then truly angry: Abbie Hoffman. One of the 1960s most influential political activists, Hoffman was the founder of the antiwar Youth International Party, whose members were known colloquially as Yippies.

At the time of Woodstock, Hoffman was preparing to stand trial as one of the Chicago Seven, who were charged in 1967 with crimes for activities associated with protests against the Vietnam War. That trial would begin in September 1969.

But in August 1969, Hoffman was preoccupied with a different trial, that of John Sinclair. A poet from Flint, Michigan who managed the MC5 and founded the militant anti-racism White Panther party, Sinclair was busted for offering two joints to an undercover officer. He was given nine and half to 10 years in prison.

Hoffman and Sinclair were cut from the same cloth politically, and Hoffman was outraged at the harsh punishment his friend had received. Disgusted by the blissed-out hordes at Woodstock, he chose the middle of the Who’s set as the moment to vent his anger.

As the final chord of “Pinball Wizard” rang out, Hoffman ran onstage and commandeered a microphone. Footage of the moment doesn’t exist, but the audio recording captures it in detail:

“I think this is a pile of shit, while John Sinclair rots in prison,” Hoffman sneers.

A chorus of boos cries out from the audience..

Almost immediately, Townshend can be heard responding off mic.

“Fuck off!” He demands.

Hoffman utters something that sounds like “What?” — a response to Townshend, or possibly a continuation of his diatribe. But before he can utter another word, Townshend cuts him off.

“Fuck off my fucking stage!” he roars.

There’s the sound of guitar noise, some fiddling on the bass guitar by John Entwistle, and then deafening cheers from the crowd as Townshend goes after Hoffman, reportedly hitting him in the back with his Gibson SG Special to drive him offstage.

The video returns almost immediately, revealing Townshend, scowling, as he takes his position at the microphone.

“I can dig it,” he says mockingly.

The band continues on, playing Tommy’s “Uncle Ernie,” but Townshend is distracted by his guitar, which is now out of tune following his assault on Hoffman. As the verse ends, he immediately runs his pick down each string to check his tuning before stepping up to the microphone.

“The next fucking person that walks across this stage is gonna get fucking killed,” he announces to cheers and applause.

So much for peace and love.

“You can laugh,” Townshend says, although no one is heard laughing. “I mean it!”

Townshend would later say he had no idea who Hoffman was. Ironically, he not only agreed with him about Sinclair’s imprisonment — he harbored the same feelings about Woodstock’s wasted teens.

In the end, the Who’s set would be seen as one of the festival’s standout performances. Tommy had demonstrated that Townshend was a songwriter and musical innovator, and that the Who were a powerhouse act. But Woodstock proved that they were one of the era’s greatest performing acts.

As a one-two punch, Tommy and Woodstock was an unbeatable combination that made superstars of the group. But all Townshend saw was how the event — both in its size and recreational drug use — was creating a rift between him and his audience.

“What ultimately alienated us from our fans was the way Woodstock turned us into superstars,” he told me in 2000. “In some ways that was wonderful. We went from being a band with a predominantly male following to one where Roger [Daltrey] seemed to be like a new kind of rock sun god. And we had a few women in the audience for a change.

“But in other ways it was disarming, because the actual natural, easy connection between me, as the writer, and the audience was broken.”

It was also at Woodstock that Townshend began to fear the 1960s teen culture revolution had lulled itself — and pop music — into irrelevance.

As the sun rose that Sunday morning, he saw not the 1960s’ promised nirvana but the “teenage wasteland” he would evoke in the Who's 1971 hit “Baba O’Riley.”

“‘Baba O’Riley’ is about the absolute devastation of teenagers at Woodstock,” he said, “where everybody was smacked out on acid and 20 people, or whatever, had brain damage. The contradiction was that it became a celebration: ‘Teenage wasteland! Yes! We’re all wasted!’”

Devastation had influenced Townshend before. Seeing the guitar talents of Jimi Hendrix in 1967 wrecked his confidence and convinced him he was outgunned. In response, he put his focus on songwriting. The result was Tommy.

Now, disillusioned with the wasted youth of Woodstock, Townshend would respond with a new rock opera called Lifehouse, about a populace that whiles its life away in state-assisted slumber. The project would overwhelm him and push him to verge of suicide before he abandoned it.

But from its ashes, he and the Who would create Who’s Next, the 1971 studio follow-up to Tommy that firmly established them as one of rock and roll’s biggest acts and Pete Townshend as one of rock’s most visionary talents.

As the Who’s guitarist and main songwriter, Pete Townshend has shaped the group’s sound and musical style over its now 61-year history.

But from the beginning, Townshend’s role in the band has itself been transformed by his push-pull dynamic with singer Roger Daltrey.

The guitarist says that, from the very start, Daltrey’s role in the Who impacted him in ways not obvious to outsiders. Townshend has credited the singer with bringing him out to the forefront of the band and not allowing him to hide in the back as he preferred.

At the same time, the guitarist says his growing familiarity with Daltrey’s intellect allowed him to compose songs he didn’t dare write when the group was getting its start in London in 1964.

Even before the Who formed, Townshend says, he was content to be a sideman, like his father, Cliff, a professional alto saxophonist in the Royal Air Force's dance band the Squadronaires

“When I first started, as a kid, I didn't really want to be in a successful band,” Townshend told Guitar Player in our March 1995 issue. “I think it's been one of the things that I've had great psycho-neurotic difficulty with.

“I just wanted to be like my dad. You know, I worshipped him. He was a magnificent player and a fantastic man.

“Although I wanted to work in a different kind of music, I still wanted to be a sideman rather than a frontman.”

He achieved his wish, albeit briefly, in the Detours, the band he performed in with Daltrey and bass guitarist John Entwistle in the early 1960s. Daltrey, who preceded Townshend in the band, was the lead guitarist, but after they went through a run of frontmen, Daltrey decided he was going to take over as singer.

More significantly, he decided he would quit playing guitar. That move forced Townshend — who suffered from insecurities about his looks — closer to the band’s frontline.

“Roger was the one who really pushed me into the front,” Townshend explained. “You know, he decided that he didn't want to be the lead guitar player anymore and he wanted to be a singer, partly because he was frustrated with his own guitar playing, but also partly because he wanted more attention and more central visual control.

“I thought he was a very good guitar player — he had a kind of fairly clumsy style, but it was extremely attractive.”

Townshend, for that matter, was uncomfortable with his lead guitar abilities. He saw himself as a rhythm guitarist, something he continued to feel has been his strength throughout his career,

“I'd already forged a very strong characteristic rhythm style of my own, because I started as a banjo player when I was 11,” he continued. “So my whole kind of flourishing guitar style had started on the banjo — trad-jazz, Dixieland, and stuff.

"I was happy there.”

Daltrey’s decision challenged Townshend to up his game, which he did by the time the group released their second single, “I Can’t Explain,” in 1964. Although it was long thought that Jimmy Page — then a session guitarist — played the song’s electric guitar solo, Page himself has said he was hired for the recording as a rhythm guitarist, and credited Townshend with the solo, performed on his Fireglo 1964 Rickenbacker 360/12.

But performance was just one aspect of change Townshend had to deal with. He also had to develop as a songwriter when the Who began looking for a recording contract. Up until then, they had played covers.

“When we went in for our first record deal, the guy said, ‘You're a great band and we'd sign you, but you've got to write your own material.’

“We didn't have any. And there was nobody in the band who could write, except me.”

Townshend may have had talents as a songwriter, but he realized early on he would need to write material that not only made the most of Daltrey’s powerful vocal talents and range but also suited his cocky, macho personality. Townshend responded with songs that expressed defiance, sexual power and independence.

But it wasn’t easy.

“I found it quite difficult to write for Roger,” he said “Songs like ‘My Generation,’ ‘I Can't Explain,’ ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,’ and lots of songs I wrote that never actually made that period, which I've got on demos, are embarrassingly macho, because I was trying to find things that he would feel comfortable singing.”

Townshend’s own preference was for songs about insecure characters who endure life's harsh realities or rise above its difficulties: the protagonist of “Happy Jack,” who suffers cruelty by letting it slide off his back, or the young brothers in “Tattoo” who get inked as a way to prove their masculinity, only to be beaten by their irate parents.

To his great surprise, Daltrey was happy to take on songs others might have found emasculating.

“I liked singing stuff like ‘Happy Jack,’ ‘Pictures of Lily’ and ‘I’m a Boy,’ which I was later delighted to discover that Roger was happy to sing, too," Townshend declares. "I thought, How could Roger Daltrey, this tough Shepherd's Bush guy, possibly sing about a boy who was brought up as a girl, wearing girls' clothes?

“And he was quite comfortable with it. Maybe he didn't understand it, I don't know. I think he did, but by that time he just felt certain enough of his own masculinity not to worry about it. That was my idea of fun.”

It apparently became Daltrey’s as well. By the time Townshend composed Tommy, the group’s groundbreaking rock opera, in 1969, the singer was onboard with the guitarist’s increasingly introspective, narrative style of songwriting and the range of characters, with their quirks and insecurities, who populated it.

In related news, Daltrey was awarded knighted by England’s King Charles III on June 14 for his services to charity. He has been a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust for 25 years, during which time he’s directed its annual concert series at the Royal Albert Hall.

“It is a wonderful honor for me and especially for Teenage Cancer Trust,” Daltrey said in a statement shared in Instagram.

“I accept this award not only for myself but on behalf of all the unsung heroes who have given their energy towards making the Teenage Cancer Trust the success it has become.”

Townshend and Daltrey — the Who’s only remaining original members — have announced the group will play its last U.S. shows in August and September this year.

However, despite his recent admission that playing live doesn’t “fill my soul” anymore, Townshend has offered hints that the band may take to stages again outside of the U.S.

The electric guitar has had some iconic silver screen moments. Steve Vai's virtuoso performance as a guitar-touting devil in Crossroads and Steve Cropper's Blues Brothers spot immediately spring to mind.

But few have proven as influential as the climactic scene in 1985's highest-grossing film, Back to the Future.

Michael J. Fox’s protagonist, Marty McFly, flummoxed audiences with a rousing take of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” at the Enchantment Under the Sea school dance. Comically, the song he played wouldn’t actually be released for another three years, leading to the iconic line, “I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet... but your kids are gonna love it.”

21st-century guitar hero John Mayer says he took up the guitar because of the film. It prompted Coldplay’s Chris Martin to form his chart-smashing group, and there are likely thousands of similar tales beyond theirs, including a few people currently within Gibson's ranks.

However, the cherry red Gibson ES-345 used for the shoot hasn’t been seen in the 40 years since. The people behind the sequel had failed to track it down for use in the follow-up film, and decades later, the guitar world is none the wiser as to where it went.

Gibson is now imploring fans who have any clues to its whereabouts to step forward.

The guitar was rented from Norman Harris, of Norman’s Rare Guitars fame. Against Norm's advice, the film's prop master chose a different guitar than what was agreed upon after a last-minute change of heart.

“The propmaster originally came in and said, ‘We want something red with a whammy bar. It’s 1955.’ So I said, ‘Well, maybe a Stratocaster, or certain Gretsch guitars that have Bigsbys.,’ Harris says (via Guitar.com).

“They came in and the art director chose another guitar – an ES-5. Then the day that they were gonna shoot, whoever was in charge said, ‘Wait a sec! I want a red guitar with a vibrato on…’ So they ran back to us, brought back the ES-5, and took this ES-345.

“I said, ‘Look, they didn’t come out with these guitars until 1958. I just wanna warn you…’ They said, ‘We’re taking artistic liberty!’ Back then, they figured, ‘It’s a guitar, who’s gonna know?’”

So the guitar used in Back to the Future was actually from the future. It's quite poetic.

But where it went afterward remains a mystery. Logically, it was likely sold, but Gibson is determined to track it down and retrace the steps it has since made.

“I started searching for this guitar back in 2009 on my first day on the job at Norman’s Rare Guitars,” says Mark Agnesi, who is now the director of brand experience at Gibson.

“After 16 years of searching, I’m so excited to get the entire guitar community together to help find the guitar that made me and so many other guitarists of my generation want to learn to play.”

“This is one of the most exciting moments at Gibson for me,” adds Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian. “Back to he Future is one of the most significant movies of my life, and the Enchantment Under the Sea school dance scene marked me musically in a profound way. To everyone out there who is as passionate as I am about this iconic film, please help us find it!”

Bob Gale, whose film script changed the lives of many, says he was “astonished to learn this beloved cinematic artifact had apparently disappeared into the space-time continuum.

“Since we don’t have a functioning time machine,” he continues, “this effort is probably our best chance to solve a decades-long mystery.”

Michael J. Fox, a guitar player in his own right, took great care to ensure the scene was as authentic as possible. He even took the time to study some of his guitar-slinging heroes.

“Guitar has always been a big part of my life,” he says. “When we talked about the Enchantment Under the Sea scene, I sat down with the cinematographer and choreographer and said, 'I want to riff through all of my favorite guitarists, like doing Jimi Hendrix behind the head, Pete Townshend doing a windmill, and the Eddie Van Halen hammer thing.' It was so cool that they were open to that, and we laid it all out there.

“I’m really happy with the scene because it was an expression of my love for guitar and all the great players,” he continues. “I didn’t realize the influence the scene had on people.”

The search for the guitar is set to be documented in a new film, Lost to the Future, which will see those involved with the making of the sci-fi smash hit, including Fox, Gale and Christopher Lloyd search every corner of the earth for the cherished guitar.

The film Gibson Films production will be directed by Doc Crotzer (Glee, Sons of Anarchy) and will “guide viewers in the global hunt for this legendary instrument from long-forgotten film prop warehouses, fascinating vintage guitar shops, auction houses, and shadowy back alleys.”

Fans with information regarding the guitar's websites can contact Gibson, via LostToTheFuture.com, or call 1-855-345-1955.

As is so often the case with some of rock's biggest names, the end isn't always the end. For evidence, you only need to look at Kiss's impending Las Vegas unmasked show in the wake of their extravagant farewell tour (which wasn't their first), or Ozzy Osbourne's 1992 No More Tours retirement jaunt, which has since been succeeded by a pair of road stints (including No More Tours 2).

Considering Pete Townshend's new, cryptic comments on the Who's future, that group may soon be added to the list of long goodbyes that never were..

The band, which formed in 1964 and carries on with original members Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey, will play its last U.S. shows in August and September this year.

“Well, all good things must come to an end. It is a poignant time,” Townshend said ahead of the tour (via Louder). “For me, playing to American audiences and those in Canada has always been incredible.

“The warmth and engagement of those audiences began back in 1967, with hippies smoking dope, sitting on their blankets, and listening deeply and intensely. Music was everywhere. We all felt equal. Today, Roger and I still carry the banner for the late Keith Moon, John Entwistle, and of course, all of our long-time Who fans.”

However, despite his recent admission that playing live doesn’t “fill my soul” anymore, Townshend has offered hints that the band may take to stages again outside of the U.S.

Guesting on BBC Radio 4's My Cultural Life program, Townshend was asked the inevitable: Is this really the end?

“It’s certainly the end of touring in America,” he replied. “I asked Roger if it’s the end of touring Europe, and he said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’”

According to Far Out, Daltrey was asked a similar question at a press conference announcing the U.S. tour. “Let’s see if we survive this one,” he replied.

Townshend shows a clear intention to carry on, even if touring is off the table. In a chat with BBC Radio 4, he said the “suffering” he endured as a child shaped him as a musician.

“I'm a dangerous fucker,” he quipped. “There’s no question. When I work, I am charged, and I feel that came from the time with my grandmother when I had to build up some level of resistance.”

The Who's career has spanned decades and several music milestones, starting with the 1969 rock opera Tommy, which Townshend was inspired to create after Jimi Hendrix dethroned him as Britain's most outrageous showman.

He subsequently claimed Hendrix “wasn't creative” and stated rhythm guitar was the one thing in his trick bag that no one could beat him at.

His rhythm comments were especially meaningful, considering that he told Guitar Player in 1972 he'd “never be able to play the kind of leads I want.”

As far as Townshend was concerned, the Who's lead guitar player wasn't him but John Entwistle, whose bass parts often saw him assuming that role.

Whatever happens with the Who after the final U.S. jaunt remains to be seen. But if we’ve learned anything from the past decades, it’s that farewell tours are rarely the swan songs they’re made out to be.

The Liverpool Cavern Club was famous as the spot where the Beatles found local fame in the early 1960s. It was there that Brian Epstein first saw the group on Thursday, February 9, 1961, and got the idea to manage the band, which led to their signing with George Martin’s Parlophone label the following year.

The club was such an important part of Beatles history and so beloved by the locals that in 1973, Liverpool officials allowed the Cavern to be purchased by the Merseyrail underground railway to create a ventilation shaft. When that proved unnecessary or infeasible, the property was turned into a parking lot. (Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?)

A new Cavern Club was built across the street, and it was there, on December 14, 1999, that original Beatle Paul McCartney made an appearance to promote his new album, Run Devil Run. For the occasion, he brought with him not one but two fellow legends: former Deep Purple drummer and founder Ian Paice, and guitar legend David Gilmour.

Paice and Gilmour had good reason to be on hand. Both had participated in the recording of Run Devil Run, an album that saw McCartney cover a dozen rock and roll classics and three originals. The album’s creation followed a year of mourning for McCartney’s wife and Wings partner, Linda.

McCartney wanted to cut the album quickly, just as the Beatles’ first albums had been made. To that end, he enlisted Chris Thomas — who had helped engineer the Beatles’ 1968 White Album and played keyboards on four of its cuts — to produce the album in Abbey Road’s Studio Two, where much of the Beatles catalog was tracked.

Gilmour, who played electric guitar and lap steel on the album, was certainly no stranger to McCartney, having played guitar solos on tracks from his albums Give My Regards to Broad Street, from 1984, and Flowers in the Dirt, from 1989. Even before then, Gilmour had been among the many guitarists — including Pete Townshend, Hank Marvin, Laurence Juber and Denny Laine — who performed on McCartney and Wings’ star-studded “Rockestra Theme,” from that group’s final album, 1979’s Back to the Egg.

The guitarist’s work on Run Devil Run occurred during a quiet period in his career. Pink Floyd had put out their 14th studio album, The Division Bell, in 1994, and would not release another until their final record, 2014’s The Endless River. All was likewise quiet on Gilmour’s solo career front.

In fact, two public performances were the main activities in Gilmour’s career following The Division Bell: They comprised McCartney’s 1999 Run Devil Run promotion and an appearance with the Who at their 1996 concert in London’s Hyde Park, a celebration of the group’s return to the stage after a seven-year hiatus. Gilmour performed on a pair of tunes from Quadrophenia, singing "The Dirty Jobs" and playing guitar on "Love Reign O'er Me.”

The guitarist’s performance with McCartney — during which he played a rather well-worn blonde Fender Telecaster — came close to satisfying a desire he’d had for years to play with the Beatles.

“I really wish I had been in the Beatles,” Gilmour told Mojo in 2016. “[They] taught me how to play guitar; I learnt everything. The bass parts, the lead, the rhythm, everything. They were fantastic.”

Recalling his participation in Run Devil Run, Gilmour told the magazine the experiencing brought him back to his childhood.

“I’m a kid, really,” he said. “You get into Studio Two at Abbey Road, you’re sitting there with Paul McCartney, and your guitar is plugged in. You think that’s an ordinary day’s work, but of course, it isn’t; it’s magical!”

And as Gilmour revealed in that same interview, it was he who convinced McCartney to perform a Beatles song at the Run Devil Run promotion at the Cavern: “I Saw Her Standing There,” the first song on the the first Beatles album, 1963’s Please Please Me.

“Managing to persuade him to sing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ at the Cavern, with me doing the John Lennon parts, was absolutely fantastic,” he said.

“I’ve been in the Who, I’ve been in the Beatles, and I’ve been in Pink Floyd,” Gilmour concluded. “Top that, motherfucker!”

The performance was released as a DVD, Live at the Cavern Club, in 1999.

Patrick Simmons knows better than to even try to guesstimate how many gigs he’s played — 55 years of ’em, of course, as part of the Doobie Brothers.

It’s a tally that’s only being added to as well; Simmons and his Brothers hit the road again starting June 6 in New York City — to celebrate the release of a new album, Walk This Road — and continuing through Sept. 18 in the U.K. and North America.

Walk This Road is the follow-up to 2021’s Liberte, and the first to include keyboardist and singer Michael McDonald since One Step Closer in 1980. More strikingly, it marks the first time since 1976’s Takin’ It to the Streets that Simmons, co-founder Tom Johnston and McDonald, who joined the Doobies in 1975, have worked together on an album.

“Mike was just kind of brought in as a sideman to sing backgrounds and play keyboards,” Simmons tells us.

At the time McDonald joined, in late 1975, Johnston was dealing with a bleeding ulcer that kept him off the road. McDonald was enlisted at the suggestion of Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who had worked with the singer while recording with Steely Dan.

“There was the expectation that Tom would return and Mike might stay on," Simmons explains, "but not that he would be as influential in the band as he became."

McDonald, of course, led the Doobies to their greatest fame with songs like "Takin' It to the Streets," "Minute by Minute" and "What a Fool Believes."

“I love what Mike does and what he brought to the band. We never really got to make one with everybody involved like this. I had incredible expectations; and in the end they were more than fulfilled.”

McDonald, of course, has been back and touring with the Doobies — which also includes multi-instrumentalist John McFee since 1979 — since 2019, in time for the group’s 50th anniversary tour and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2020. And with Walk This Road, produced by John Shanks, Simmons promises that the concert repertoire will be expanding — with the Mavis Staples–featuring title track and beyond.

“Probably the biggest perk is having a chance to add some new tunes and challenge ourselves to do something different,” Simmons explains. “We’ve been performing ‘Walk This Road’ for awhile now, but I think we’re gonna try to bring two or three more into the mix. It’ll be nice to have that opportunity, and we’re just happy to have it come out and hopeful people will like it.”

And with the road looming again, it seemed an opportune time to ask Simmons about what have been the best and worst gigs from all these decades of Doobies concerts. Simmons has two of those, both of which involve special guests.

The Best: Pete Townshend
“Way back, probably 1971 or something like that, we were playing a place called North Beach Revival in San Francisco. It was a cabaret, so the night started at midnight or one o’clock in the morning, and then you’d play all night.

“We would play there with all these incredible people. Neal Schon had a band back then, and the Tubes — they weren’t the Tubes at the time but it was Fee Waybill and those guys — they’d do a set, then we’d do our set and play late.

“One night we were playing and in walks Peter Townshend. He walks over and goes, ‘Hey guys, I just got done playing at the Oakland Coliseum,’ or wherever, ‘and I was looking for somewhere to jam.’ Tommy had a Gibson SG, which was the electric guitar that Townshend was playing at the time. He goes, ‘Oh man, you got an SG there. Can I play that?’

“So he sat in and we started playing. But even before he picked up a guitar, he just came up and stood there next to us onstage. We were banging out some hard rock thing and Pete was, like, banging his head on John Harman, the drummer’s, cymbal. Then he took Tommy’s guitar and starts blasting away, and we were all turned up to 11. So that was a great moment.

“Another time, the same era, we were playing this place in downtown San Francisco called Keystone Corners, and we were opening for John Lee Hooker. We played night after night with John Lee. And one night we were playing and in walks Johnny Winter. So John Lee is on stage introduces Winter, and he steps up and straps on a guitar. Then John Lee looks at us, ’cause we were just standing there, watching, and he goes, ‘Come on you guys, get up here. We’re gonna jam!’

“So I’m up there onstage with Johnny Winter, and then in walks Elvin Bishop. He grabs a guitar and steps up, so it’s me, Tommy, Elvin Bishop, John Lee Hooker, Johnny Winter… all the guys onstage, and John Lee’s band is up there and we’re all jamming, playing the blues together. That’s one I’ll never forget.”

The Worst: The "Hot Girl" Signal
“I would say the worst night I ever had was Tommy’s last gig with the band of 1975. We were playing a big show [at Chicago Stadium, on September 19] and getting ready to go onstage when the word comes back that Tommy’s not here, and he’s not coming. He was in the hospital downtown. Something was happening with his ulcer, and he wasn't gonna make the gig.’

“We had, like, eight or nine thousand people waiting for us to go onstage, and I say, ‘Well, we can’t do the gig. Tom’s not here. I don’t know how we’re gonna do this.’

"The road manager is telling me, ‘These people are here. They bought tickets,’ but I go, ‘Well, we’re gonna have to go make an announcement that we’re not gonna be able to play the gig.’ I was just tied up in knots.

“Then Jeff Baxter walks up to me and goes, ‘Pat, we can do this.’

"I said, ‘Jeff, you’re out of your mind,’ and he goes, ‘No, you sing the songs, I’ll play whatever solos. Just give me the "hot girl" signal.’

"This was the 70s, and we used to have this signal: If one of us saw a hot girl, we’d blow out our cheeks and everybody would look.

“So I’m telling Jeff, ‘You’re crazy,’ and he says, ‘No, seriously, we can do this. You’ve got this.’

“I’m thinking, Oh my God…’

“So we go out on stage and I get up to the microphone and go, ‘Tom isn’t gonna be here tonight. We were gonna cancel the gig but we felt we should come out here and play. Anybody that wants their money back, just let ’em know at the box office’ — we had already talked to the promoter about that — ‘but if you want to stay, we’re gonna do our best to perform.’

“So we went up there and played the set. There were a few moments where I probably had to make up some lyrics, but I knew most of Tommy’s songs.

“And whenever it came to a solo I would look over at Jeff and puff my cheeks out and he would take the solo.

“We got to the end of it, and I would say 99 percent of the audience stayed for the show and gave us this incredible response at the end. We left the stage and they all stood there, applauding, and they wouldn’t leave. We came back, did an encore, then left again and they stood there still standing and gave us a second encore. I think we played a song we’d already played ’cause we ran out of material we had rehearsed.

“So it was the worst night ever, because it was just horrible, scary, frightening. In the end it turned out good, but I’ll never forget. Even now, telling you about it, I’ve got PTSD.”

It’s been ages since Pete Townshend smashed a guitar onstage. The last time was 2007, when a Gibson acoustic guitar sadly met its fate in his hands when it proved impossible to tune.

Townshend had actually intended to give up the habit on July 24, 2004, during the Who’s show in Yokohama, Japan, when he destroyed a guitar during a medley from Tommy.

But as the Who prepare to launch The Song Is Over North American Farewell Tour on August 16, it remains to be seen if he’ll do it again for old times' sake.

If his recent comments are any indication, all bets are off.

At the Who's May 8 London press conference to announce the tour, Townshend was asked what he thinks about the instrument upon which he's built his career and reputation. His answer was anything but sentimental.

“I’m not the person to talk to about guitars,” he replied. “I don’t have a relationship with the guitar. It’s a tool.

“Quite a few famous guitar players have spoken about the guitar as a tool. We’re in an era now where some guitars have been made for hundreds of years, like Stradivarius violins.

"They become incredibly valuable because they’re old and they’re collectable and rich people will pay huge amounts of money for them.

“But they’re still a slab of wood with strings.”

Townshend's not entirely passionless about the instrument. He says he can appreciate quality when he encounters it. He revealed that he recently purchased two guitars “that blew me away” — a Paul Reed Smith and a Jackson, he said, without elaborating on the models.

But don’t expect to see either onstage when the tour gets underway in August.

“Onstage, I have to go back to something which is proven and isn’t going to fall apart in my hands," he says. "Because I’m pretty brutal.”

Although fans have always enjoyed Townshend’s guitar-smashing antics, they’ve rarely gone over as well with Who singer Roger Daltrey. As he revealed in 2024, he doesn’t have Townshend’s appetite for it.

“I’ve only ever smashed one guitar, and I’m really sorry I did it,” Daltrey told Shawn Keaveny’s Daily Grind podcast in March 2024. I don’t know why, just this thing came over me.

“I’ve always regretted it. I thought, I shouldn’t have done that. That was like killing the wife.”

In that same interview, Daltrey lamented the cost and spectacle of Townshend destroying his guitars at the end of the group’s sets.

“[Fans] never came to hear the music,” he said. “They came to see the guitar being broken.

“The trouble is the guitar was worth 50 gigs.”

Daltrey grieved about the destruction in his 2018 memoir, Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite: My Story, calling it “heartbreaking,” particularly when he recalled how he “struggled” to buy his own first guitar.

“It was like watching an animal being slaughtered. An expensive animal that we’d have to replace with another expensive animal before the next gig,” he wrote.

The cost went up whenever the damage extended to the venue, as when Townshend broke his first guitar, accidentally, in September 1964. The episode occurred when he raised his 1964 Rickenbacker Rose Morris 1998 too high and hit the low ceiling during a performance at the Railway Tavern.

“And we had to pay for the hole in the ceiling,” Daltrey wrote. “From then on, the audience expected us to break our instruments. It was our thing.”

Although Townshend seemingly destroyed dozens of instruments — one report claims he clobbered more than 35 in 1967 — he was careful to break each instrument so that it could be repaired for the next day’s show.

“It was costly in glue because as fast as we were smashing it — we had four sets of gear — it then got glued. And by the time we got to smash it again, the glue had set,” Daltrey told the How to Wow podcast in 2020.

“They weren’t prop guitars. They were real guitars, but we worked out very cleverly. Very rarely did the neck break. As long as the neck didn’t break, you could glue the body back.

"Even with holes in it, it didn’t matter, as long as the distance between the bridge and the nut of the guitar was the same, you could make it work.”

As Townshend explained in a 1968 interview, the guitar destruction was part of an effort to cover up for the Who’s rather unglamorous looks. The guitarist was particularly sensitive about the size of his nose, which he explained was entirely the reason he began playing guitar in the first place — in order to be admired.

Despite his efforts, he never mastered guitar soloing. “I’ll never be able to play the kind of leads that I want,” he griped to Guitar Player in the magazine's May 1972 issue.

His inability led him to claim the Who’s real lead guitarist was bassist John Entwistle, whose clear and resonant bass guitar tones became more prominent on the band’s records.

In related news, the Who announced on May 19 that drummer Zak Starkey has been fired from the band for a second time. Starkey was sacked a month ago and quickly reinstated.

Townshend announced his departure on Instagram. Starkey, the son of former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, has been the Who’s drummer since 1996.

He will be replaced by Scott Devours, who has performed on Daltrey’s solo shows.

“After many years of great work on drums from Zak the time has come for a change,” Townshend wrote. “A poignant time. Zak has lots of new projects in hand and I wish him the best.'

He added in a second post, “The Who are heading for retirement, whereas Zak is 20yrs younger and has a great future with his new band and other exciting projects. He needs to devote all his energy into making it all a success. We both wish him all the luck in the world.

When the film Rock Around the Clock arrived in England in 1956, Pete Townshend was among the youngsters who filled theaters eager for the sight and sounds of the era’s new rock and roll artists. Townshend, then all of 11, saw the film repeatedly and even went to see its star attraction, Bill Haley and the Comets, when they toured the U.K.

But the future guitarist for the Who had his eyes set on becoming a journalist, not a musician. How he came to pick up a guitar in the first place is a story of two gifts he never asked for: an acoustic guitar.... and a very large nose.

Appearances have always been important in the world of pop. The Beatles are perhaps the epitome of 1960s rock and roll glamor and fashion, with their matching haircuts and suits made by master tailors Beno Dorn and Douglas Millings.

The Who certainly knew the importance of appearances. From the start, the group cut a figure with their mod clothes and the highly physical performance style of both Townshend and drummer Keith Moon.

They soon became a group to watch closely when Townshend and Moon began destroying their instruments at the end of sets. Meanwhile, singer Roger Daltrey made a signature move out of swinging his microphone over his head. Even bass guitar player John Entwistle became a figure of note, if only because he barely moved an inch in contrast with his three bandmates.

But as Townshend revealed in a 1968 TV interview, the group's stage antics were done in part to distract audiences from the group’s rough appearance.

“Our group’s probably one of the most unglamorous on the stage today,” he said. “I mean, this was one our big problems — and probably still is. The group didn’t have enough glamor. It was all clothes and smashing things up.”

But of the four, Townshend was beset by a unique problem: his unusually large nose. It was Daltrey who, upon meeting Townshend, dubbed the rail-thin guitarist “a nose on a stick.”

“I was very embarrassed and self-conscious about my nose for quite a while,” Townshend admitted to Playboy. “I got obsessed with it.”

It didn’t help matters that his parents were both very attractive. “My mother was no help,” he told Playboy. “She seemed to think that anybody who wasn’t beautiful couldn’t be any good. She was gorgeous, of course. My father was very good-looking, too. How they spawned me I’ll never know.”

School was especially difficult, as Townshend revealed to Rolling Stone in September 1968.

“When I was in school the geezers that were snappy dressers — and got chicks like years before I ever even thought they existed — would always like to talk about my nose. This seemed to be the biggest thing in my life: my fucking nose, man.”

Townshend says not a day went by that he didn’t obsess over his outsized proboscis. He soon realized the only solution was to “distract attention from my nose to my body and make people look at my body instead of at my face — turn my body into a machine.”

He found his solution in the guitar.

“At that time, it was the reason I did everything. It’s the reason I played the guitar — because of my nose,” he said. “The reason I wrote songs was because of my nose.”

For Christmas 1956, 11-year-old Pete received a guitar from his grandmother. His father showed him a few chords, but otherwise Pete was self taught, pushed along by his desire to do something unique — something that the bullies who taunted him about his nose couldn’t do.

“I knew down inside that the only way I was really gonna become confident was to become something everybody could respect,” he told Playboy. “So I labored at the guitar, trying my best to be incredible within a few weeks.” It was an unreasonable demand to place upon himself, but he pushed himself forward anyway.

“And when it didn’t happen, it destroyed me,” he said.

It’s safe to say his deep insecurities about his appearance as well as his social awkwardness defined Townshend’s early songs and the teenage characters who inhabited them, who often dealt with social anxieties, physical impairments and limited social status. He stitched his protagonists together as he himself began to make his own sense of self whole.

“As soon as I started to write, I really came together in one piece for the first time,” he said. “Even in the early years of the Who, I suffered that frustration of searching for my niche. That’s why my first songs were so screwed-up and indecisive.”

And yet, remarkably, Townshend had been correct from the very beginning when he said guitar would prove his worthiness. Although not particularly talented as a lead guitarist in the group’s early days, he was a remarkable rhythm guitarist who had developed a signature style. And he proved as well to be an original and gifted composer.

By 1968, some four years into the Who’s run, he had enough success to feel comfortable discussing his insecurities with the press and, in doing so, revealing his deep insights into his psychology.

“What is interesting is the fact that it was me versus society,” he told Rolling Stone, “until I could convince them that there was more to me than what they thought.”

By then, however, Townshend would be dealing with new insecurities about his guitar playing brought about by the arrival of Jimi Hendrix. Townshend was dismayed not only by Hendrix’s remarkable electric guitar talents but by his stage show, which was even more physical and outlandish than the Who’s.

Eventually, this too would pass when Townshend reinvented himself as rock and roll’s greatest story teller with Tommy, the Who’s groundbreaking 1969 rock opera.

“I suppose I went away and got very confused for a bit, he told Guitar Player of Hendrix’s arrival. “I just sort of felt that I hadn't the emotional equipment, really, the physical equipment, the natural psychic genius of somebody like Jimi, and realized that what I had was a bunch of gimmicks which he had come and taken away from me…

“The weirdest thing of the lot is that, although people really, really value those early years, the Who was not a particularly important band at that time. We were at the end of an era; under normal circumstances the band should have just disappeared. But because he came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside, I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.”

Townshend and Daltrey continue on today as the Who's only surviving members. And while they continue to tour, Townshend has recently revealed that he prefers to work alone and offstage these days.

One month after suggesting that AI could be used to create new music for nostalgic Who fans longing to relive the band’s heyday, Pete Townshend has revealed that he doesn’t actually enjoy being onstage.

His comments come as he continues to promote the forthcoming Quadrophenia ballet. Townshend says he far prefers working behind the scenes rather than performing in front of a crowd.

“Most musicians are not like me,” he told Spanish radio station RockFM (via Blabbermouth). “Most musicians do two things that I don’t really do, or don’t enjoy doing. One is they love performing. I don’t love performing. I don’t like being on a stage.

“I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t fill my soul in the way that you see some performers — just their soul is filled through being on the stage. That’s not me.

“The other thing,” he continues, “is they love to collaborate with other musicians. I think that, for me, collaboration is something that I find very difficult. If I was in a studio with a really great musician, or with a group of really great musicians, I think I would find it very hard.

“I find it difficult to collaborate. I find it very difficult looking in the eyes of another musician. I find myself looking to my own energy to express myself.”

The new ballet, which is set to be staged in Plymouth, Edinburgh, Southampton, London, and Salford in the U.K. this summer, is an exception to the rule. The project, he says, isn’t collaborative in the traditional sense.

“On the other hand, of course, I really admire the process of collaboration. I admire the process of dance and music. Quadrophenia is currently being turned into a ballet. We had our first rehearsal on Monday. It’s gonna be fantastic.

“But I think one of the things about that is that that kind of collaboration is an exploration of the human body, of dancing. With music, I find myself wanting to stay in my box for a while.”

It’s a mindset that stands in stark contrast to the wild young guitarist who once fought loudness wars with the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood and regularly smashed guitars with freewheeling abandon. But it reflects how Townshend’s relationship with music — and performance — has evolved over time.

Last year, he opened the Townshend Studio, a new teaching and creative center at the University of West London in Ealing. While his solo career continues, live shows have become increasingly rare.

Pressed by RockFM to name other notable collaborations, Townshend highlighted two legendary players.

“I loved working with David Gilmour on my White City album, and we co-wrote some songs, but that was an uneasy collaboration,” he says. “I actually made it clear I’m not a natural collaborator.

“And I really enjoyed working with Eric Clapton back in 1973 when we did the Rainbow Concert together,” he concludes. “I think it’s interesting, ‘cause so many new musicians that I really respect want to work with me, and I wish I was more open to it. I could have fun with some of the greatest musicians in the world.”

In related news, Townshend recently spoke about the one part of his guitar playing he believes no one can best — and discussed how Jimi Hendrix, who he controversially claimed “wasn’t creative,” inspired the creation of "Tommy".

Few songs can claim to be ground zero for heavy metal. Black Sabbath’s eponymous 1969 album opener is largely accepted as the genre’s starting point, but Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues," released in January 1968, also bears substantial sonic weight.

And then there's "Helter Skelter," the Beatles dark and savage hard rocker from 1968's White Album. While it was recorded and released after Blue Cheer's disc, it enjoyed a much larger audience and had more staying power and influence over the long haul.

With its driving rhythms and erratically performed vocals, "Helter Skelter" is primal enough to be considered a metal song. But, oddly, the Beatles couldn't have explored such musical depths were it not for another group of rockers: the Who.

Paul McCartney, the song’s chief songwriter, regularly looked outward for inspiration. His 1965 composition “Michelle,” for instance, was written as an imitation of French cabaret, while “Got to Get You into My Life,” from 1966's Revolver, was steeped in Motown flavors.

For “Helter Skelter,” he looked to the Who, a band that was proving violent and rambunctious in the studio and on the stage.

In fact, McCartney was a little jealous of how animalistic Pete Townshend and company would get. As he once revealed, he “read a review [of a Who record] which said, ‘And this group really got us wild, there’s echo on everything, they’re screaming their heads off.’

“I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, it’d be great to do one. Pity they’ve done it. Must be great— [a] really screaming record.’

"And then I heard their record, and it was quite straight, and it was very sort of sophisticated.”

Considering that the "Helter Skelter" recording began in May 1968, it's possible McCartney is referring to The Who Sell Out, which was released in late 1967. The most likely candidate from that album is the hit single "I Can See for Miles."

Either way, the surprisingly classy record, to McCartney at least, left the door wide open for the Beatles to deliver the kind of song he’d expected it to be full of.

"Helter Skelter" started life as a bluesy jam on acoustic guitar, which the band toyed with while preparing to record "Blackbird" at Abbey Road. It would go through several iterations of heaviness before landing the right punch. The initial jams took place on July 18, 1968, with McCartney on guitar and John Lennon on bass. The longest jam captured that day is said to have lasted over 27 minutes.

They returned to the recording on September 9 and 10. In his 1994 memoir, Many Years From Now, McCartney reflected on how the song was tracked “in total madness and hysterics”.

“We got the engineers and [the producer] to hike up the drum sound and really get it as loud and horrible as it could,” he said. “We tried everything we could to dirty it up, and in the end, you can hear Ringo say, ‘I’ve got blisters on my fingers!’ That wasn’t a joke put-on: His hands were actually bleeding at the end of the take, he’d been drumming so ferociously.”

The band never produced anything as frantic and maniacal again, and on an album that also offered songs as delicate as “Blackbird," it shows the quartet’s creativity and versatility in spades.

Whether the song is heavy metal remains up for debate, but the Who, and a perhaps slightly verbose music journalist, can be credited for inspiring a wildcard Beatles’ hit.

Meanwhile, Guitar Player has recently explored the White Album song that nearly landed the Beatles in hot political water and how a candid moment caught on camera led to the final Beatles song ever recorded. In related news, Pete Townshend has suggested he may turn to AI to silence the Who fans that want him to repeatedly relive his '70s heyday.

Pete Townshend says he's fed up with fans who continue to request Who songs at his solo shows and suggests AI may provide a solution.

Speaking to The Times, Townshend suggested he could turn to AI to create faux Who songs. The guitarist, whose music often draws inspiration from his background in art school, says doing so would allow him to focus on his myriad current projects while satisfying fans who desire his earlier musical styles

“I have a solo career,” he stresses. “I have all this art school stuff going on. It is a tremendous irritation to Who fans that I don’t just stick to the old catalog and do it until I die.

“If I told AI, ‘Write a load of Pete Townshend songs like he used to in 1973,’ a lot of Who fans would be really pleased.”

As evidence, he points to the Beatles' success using AI to turn an old John Lennon demo it “Now and Then,” which claimed Best Rock Performance at this year’s Grammys. It should be noted, however, that former Beatle Paul McCartney said AI was used simply to extract Lennon's voice from his demo for the song, which remained unfinished at his death.

Of course, AI has been used to create original recordings in the styles of various artists and genres. Alex Van Halen has expressed an interest in using the technology to create songs from demos and audio clips Eddie Van Halen left unfinished.

Townshend recently saw his Quadrophenia opus made over as Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet, with orchestrations by his wife, Rachel Fuller He told The Times the new ballet gets closer to expressing the message of his 1973 creation with the Who, which is, he says, "about spiritual resolve, about tryinh to get back to being a young person."

"What nobody noticed was the spiritual message of Quadrophenia," he says. "So I’ll be honest and say that when it came to the first workshop of the ballet, I wasn’t expecting much.

"Then I saw it: no rock and roll bullshit, no drummer whiting out halfway through the show, the original message of the piece embodied by the movement of these young dancers. It meant Quadrophenia had another life.”

However, he was adamant that the story's ending and the fate of its hero, Jimmy, should remain ambiguous.

“I’ve been accused of having a dramaturgical failing by not ending my stories,” he says. “I’ve always thought, That’s not my job. That’s your job. You end the story.”

Of course Townshend is no stranger to merging rock and roll with the classical arts. His 1969 creation Tommy was a rock opera that he was inspired to make after realizing he could never compete as a guitarist at the level of his late-1960s contemporaries Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

“I suppose I went away and got very confused for a bit," he said of that era. "I asked my wife to marry me before it was too late [laughs], and started work on Tommy a bit later. I did actually feel stripped, to some extent, and I took refuge in my writing.”

The Who have just wrapped up two more shows at their annual charity bash for the Teenage Cancer Trust at London’s Royal Albert Hall – their first live appearances since last year’s frivolities. But the band are by no means a done deal – even if he admits his devotion to the Who isn't as “absolute” as vocalist Roger Daltrey's.

Rather, he’s got plenty to keep him occupied. He’s just turned the band’s landmark rock opera “Quadrophenia” into a ballet, having opened the Townshend Studio, a new teaching and creative center at the University of West London in Ealing last autumn. His solo career still has life in it too. As such, he’s growing tired of fans focusing solely on the former glories of his parent band.

When GP asked Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera to name the 10 albums that changed his life, he laughed.

“How long have you got?”

Of course, time wasn’t an issue, which is a good thing, as Manzanera, who, in addition to Roxy Music, has collaborated with everyone from good pal David Gilmour to John Cale, along with embarking on a lengthy solo career. Along the way, he's become famous for playing the Cardinal Red Gibson Firebird VII electric guitar that's been a constant companion since his days with Roxy.

To that end, if you dug into Manzanera’s records, you know that his influences run the gamut, meaning they’re not strictly guitar-based. “I love Mozart,” he says. “It’s like rock and roll — it has a great beat. I’ve always been attracted to music with a strong feel and pulse to it.”

But that doesn’t mean Manzanera — who recently shared with us the stories behind his top five tracks — isn’t into guitar music, too. He holds a special place for Jeff Beck, who, like Manzanera, was never content to just be a strummer.

“Without a shadow of a doubt, Jeff Beck was the best British guitarist ever,” he says. “He could do things that nobody else could do. And technically, his sense of pitch was extraordinary.”

Before revealing his 10 choices, Manzanera continues, saying, “I can keep going. I could go on forever. There’s just so many great albums in so many different genres. There’s just been so much great music over the last 50 years. I love all different kinds of stuff.”

Revolver — The Beatles (1966)

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when Brian Eno and I had a chance to do an experimental record called 801 Live with our band 801, we chose ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ It’s a track you should never attempt live, because it’s an amazing construction made in the studio using tape loops. But we did it a live version anyway and made it the first track on the album.

“Revolver was important as the first album where the Beatles used the studio as an instrument. It showed what was possible.”

Are You Experienced — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1967)

“You have to remember, there was nothing like him when he arrived. It was just a mind-blowing thing to guitarists. When I first saw him on Top of the Pops in England, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was just so incredibly exciting. He was doing things that defied anything that I’d seen before or read about in any ‘teach yourself guitar’ books. He showed us all what could be done.”

My Generation — The Who (1965)

“Roxy Music was an art rock band, and at the time of this album, the Who made their statement that they were the first art-rock band. Pete Townshend played with feedback, and what he did was a statement of art that really appealed to me. The interesting thing was the person who taught him at art school was the same person who taught Brian Eno when he was in art school. What they got from it was a way of thinking and a sort of attitude toward music.

“But, obviously, the great thing about Pete is that he could write amazing songs and lyrics as well as put them across with the real strength of the sound of his guitar playing. And it was also at this time that you get the arrival of the big Marshall 4x12 speaker cabinets, as well as Pete Townshend, Clapton, and soon after, Hendrix. These were all guitarists who were able to control feedback from their guitars.

"And My Generation is where it started. It really wasn’t much in evidence before they unleashed sonic experience.”

In a Silent Way — Miles Davis (1969)

“The thing that I took from Miles was his sonority, his idea of what pitch was. It’s a different kind of in-between-the-cracks kind of attitude, with space and improvisation. It’s not as if you stuck a tuner on his trumpet said, ‘That’s out of tune’ — because it’s not. And as far as I know, with those sessions, he would just play and then choose the bits he liked and stick it all together.

“I was thinking about this the other day: You can give any title to an album you like, but it doesn’t describe that album. And that’s true here, especially the title track itself. There’s a sort of calmness about it, and with beauty; it’s very much like a sort of painting. The sounds Miles painted are the absolute essence of less is more and are about tone and texture. That’s what I took from him.”

Sketches of Spain — Miles Davis (1960)

“Sketches of Spain is based on Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Miles didn’t just copy what Rodrigo wrote but did an impressionistic version of it, so you almost get abstract art. In that period, with how things worked in the ’60s, there was a lot of improvisation and experimentation of sound — and that’s what I love about it all.

“Funnily enough, that’s what we’ve returned to now with my new project with Andy Mackay. It’s about 80 percent of his input, though it’s not jazz. It’s about sound, texture and space, and it’s about being in the moment. So we don’t expect big audiences for that, but we’re very happy to get small again, make it intimate, and connect with the audience.”

Canciones de Mi Padre — Linda Ronstadt (1987)

“I love this album, which is Linda Ronstadt singing in Spanish, and it was beautiful. I had no idea of her Mexican background and no idea that she could speak Spanish. So in a lot of those songs — and remember, the title of the album is ‘Concerning songs of my father’ — they’re like classic, evergreen songs, and she does them so incredibly well. And those are songs that I grew up listening to and knowing while in Cuba. I come back to this album a lot, actually. I love her voice.”

Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin (1969)

“Jimmy Page’s playing on the first Led Zeppelin album — we just hadn’t heard someone let loose like that. And John Paul Jones and the power trio, with, of course, Robert Plant, whose voice was just absolutely, well, you just can’t do a three-piece without having an incredible singer.

“Those guys had so much experience, meaning John Paul Jones and Page playing sessions, and they could really play. It’s not easy to play those twelve-string parts on double-neck guitars, and the way they looked was just exciting, and it was a very exciting kind of music. I mean, you could say that about Jeff Beck with Rod Stewart, too. That was a little bit like what they could have been like.”

Pablo Honey — Radiohead (1993)

“Some of the guitar playing was just jaw-dropping. They’re doing these crazy things, and you’re thinking, How did you do that? That is very, very rare. You could hear people making technically brilliant sounds and things like that, but the combination of this sort of very advanced level musicianship and the songs they brought to a musical environment was great. They were definitely a unique band.”

Fresh Garbage — Spirit (1968)

“I loved the band Spirit from the West Coast of America. I love Randy California’s guitar playing and the way he seemed to be able to play with harmony. It still baffles me how he did it. One of my friends came back from being over in LA, saw them, and came back raving about them. But for me, with Spirit, the most important album was Fresh Garbage, which was just fantastic.”

The Soft Machine — The Soft Machine (1968)

“The first Soft Machine album was fantastic. I loved the way that Mike Ratledge played the Hammond organ through a fuzz box so that it sounded a bit like a guitar. And in the end, it sounded like the guitar playing that Robert Fripp ended up doing. So that was my ultimate ambition: to sound like the organ playing of Mike Ratledge on Soft Machine’s albums.”

Phil Manzanera's memoir, Revolución to Roxy, was published in 2024 and is available for purchase.

Jimi Hendrix’s arrival in London in September 1966 was a storm no one had forecast. Within months, he had assembled the Jimi Hendrix Experience and released three top-10 singles. In doing so, he reshaped England's rock and roll hierarchy, which until then had been dominated by players like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend

As Townshend told Guitar Player in his September 1989 cover feature, Hendrix forced guitarists like him and Eric Clapton to find new relevance and re-think their approach to music.

“It did shift my emphasis,” he told us. “I suppose like a lot of people — like Eric — for a while there I think we gave up. And then we started again.”

The result would lead Townshend to craft Tommy, his first of several rock masterpieces and the Who's critical and commercial breakthrough in the U.K. and America.

But long before that happened, Townshend was reeling from the impact of the Hendrix juggernaut. He and Clapton weren’t the only electric guitar heroes of the day floored by the American guitarist. Jeff Beck also revealed how Hendrix “swept us all aside and put us in a bin.”

Townshend’s circumstances were unique, however. For a start, Hendrix was too close for comfort. Literally.

“We were on the same record label,” Townshend told Guitar Player. “He was discovered by [Animals bassist] Chas Chandler and brought over and went onto Track, which we co-owned at the time. So he was actually on our record label!”

Moreover, Townshend — unlike Clapton and Beck — had developed his own highly physical guitar style: windmilling his strumming arm, stalking the stage and destroying his guitars and amps at the end of a show. Hendrix put all these to use in his performance, and went further by setting his Fender Stratocaster on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. In doing so, he co-opted the key elements of Townshend’s identity as a performer.

While Townshend recognized that Hendrix was “dealing in other people's ideas, old blues things and tricks” and employing “the pyrotechnic things that he had caught off watching me,” the effect on him was devastating.

“It destroyed me,” Townshend said. “Absolutely, completely destroyed me.”

But it was Hendrix’s impact on the music itself that affected Townshend most. As successful white artists playing music inspired by Black musicians, the Who — like other British Invasion acts — had built entire careers and identities. Hendrix reclaimed the music inspired by Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and other Black rock and roll originators, leaving Townshend feeling like a pale imitation.

“I mean, I was glad to be alive, but it was horrifying. Because he took back Black music,” Townshend said. “He took R&B back. He came and stole it back. He made it very evident that that's what he was doing. He'd been out on the road with people like Little Richard, had done that hard work, and then he'd come over to the U.K. And when he took his music back, he took a lot of the trimmings back, too.”

Those trimmings — the physicality and equipment destruction — had until then been Townshend's alone. Seeing a guitarist as skilled as Hendrix come along and claim it all for himself caused Townshend to retreat and recalibrate, as it did Clapton and Beck.

“It was very strange for Eric and me,” he says. “We went and watched Jimi at about 10 London shows together, and [Clapton] wasn't with a girl at the time, so it was just me, my wife-to-be Karen, and Eric, going to see this monstrous man."

Townshend was further intimidated by Hendrix's obvious love for Clapton, and his apparent disregard for him.

"It got to the point where Eric would go up to pay his respects every night, and one day I got up to pay my respects, and he was hugging Eric, but not me — he was kind of giving me a limp handshake — just because Eric was capable of making the right kind of approach to him. It was a difficult time.”

If Hendrix intended to demoralize Townshend, he didn’t need to try. Jimi’s innate confidence left other men feeling inadequate.

“You have to remember the other thing about him, that he was astonishingly sexual,” Townshend said, “and I was there with my wife, you know, the girl I loved. And you could just sense this whole thing in the room where every woman would just [claps] at a snap of a finger. I mean, there were situations sometimes where Jimi would do it. He wasn't particularly in control of his ego at the time. There was this slightly prince-like quality about him, this kind of imp at work. I found him very charming, very easy, a very sweet guy.

“You know, I just kept hearing stories. I mean, one story I've heard — I think I might have been there — was the night that he went up to Marianne Faithfull when she was there with Mick [Jagger], and said in her ear, ‘What are you doing with this asshole?’ There were moments like that when he would be very, very attracted to somebody and felt that he would actually be able to get them, and he just couldn't resist trying. There were no boundaries, and that really scared me.

“And slowly but surely, Jimi became sure of himself. I'm talking about the first two weeks he was in London. You know, it was a new band, and they were just taking London by fucking storm! You can't believe it. You'd look around and the audience was just full of record company people and music business people.”

Eventually, Hendrix’s effect on Townshend cut to his core, impacting his identity as a man and creator, and even his psyche.

“I suppose I went away and got very confused for a bit. I kind of groped around, I had a lot of spiritual problems. I asked my wife to marry me before it was too late [laughs], and started work on Tommy a bit later. I just sort of felt that I hadn't the emotional equipment, really, the physical equipment, the natural psychic genius of somebody like Jimi, and realized that what I had was a bunch of gimmicks which he had come and taken away from me and attached to not only the black R&B from whence they came, but also added a whole new dimension. I did actually feel stripped, to some extent, and I took refuge in my writing.

“The weirdest thing of the lot is that, although people really, really value those early years, the Who was not a particularly important band at that time. We were at the end of an era; under normal circumstances the band should have just disappeared. But because he came along and, kind of like in early punk, just swept everything aside, I had to learn to write, and it became like a new art, from a new angle.”

But Hendrix’s success in England and, eventually, America would also help pave the way for the Who to find success in the States. Both acts made their debut at Monterey Pop in June 1967, after which they went on to become established recording artists in America. For the Who, it began shortly after Monterey with the September 1967 release of "I Can See for Miles," Townshend's psychedelic-rock masterpiece and the group's first top-10 single in the U.S. Townshend understood that, as much as Hendrix stripped him of the music and trappings he used in the Who’s first era, he also laid a way for the group to move on and build a new audience.

“And what that actually did was provide me with records that sold in America, somehow,” Townshend said. “I don't know why that is.”

“I’m no great guitarist technically,” Leslie West once said, “but you wanna know why people remember me? If you take a hundred players and put them in a room, 99 of ’em are gonna sound the same.

“The one who plays different…that’s the one you’re gonna remember. I learned that you should think about the song, think about the chords you’re playing behind. Most of my solos come right out of those chords. You play the notes within the chords and try to pick a melody from there.”

Long before Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads and Michael Schenker arrived on the guitar scene, each of these three transformative rock guitarists was tuned into West’s guitar work. The Mountain guitarist was a singular force in early 1970s rock, with a style and tone all his own. It even made fans of his contemporaries like Pete Townshend, who at one point enlisted West to help on early sessions for the Who’s 1972 album, Who’s Next. Like the best electric guitar stylists rooted in the blues, West peeled off economical single-note lines as memorable as any melody, using his picking technique and frequent use of pinch harmonics to add interest or drive home the tail end of a line or solo.

West arrived on the blues-rock scene in 1969 with his solo album, Mountain, a long-player created with the help of bassist and producer Felix Pappalardi, who was fresh from his years producing Cream. West and Pappalardi would use Mountain as the springboard and name for their own band, which would go on to create such timeless tracks as “Mississippi Queen,” “Theme for an Imaginary Western” and “Nantucket Sleighride.”

While Mountain’s music was a yin-yang mix of West’s gutbucket blues rock and Pappalardi’s prog-inspired balladry, what was common to all of it was West’s guitar, overdriven and snarling as he unloaded lines and solos unmistakable from any other guitarist's, giving each track never more than it needed while imbuing each note with plenty of heart and soul.

What made West’s guitar lines so memorable was not only his note choices but his distinct way of picking and articulating them. As he explained to Guitar Player in our April 1972 issue, his stinging lead tone and frequent use of natural harmonics came down to his method of picking.

“When I use a pick — and I use one most of the time — I try to bury it between my thumb and my first finger and just let a little bit of the corner stick out,” he explained. “I can make a string jump harmonics that way. Albert King does that without using a pick; he uses his thumb.

"It really is a great sound, because if I'm playing along like, say, on the B string and all of a sudden I want a note that will really stick out and be an important part of the phrase, I can make a note jump an octave, and it is really effective."

A good example of West's ringing harmonic technique is the last note of his solo in the middle section of "Theme for an Imaginary Western,” from the album Climbing! West would rest the side of his right hand's palm on the bridge or on the strings he wasn't picking, but his technique seldom allowed his hand to remain stationary for long. Along with the pick, he occasionally used his third finger for double picking.

In his early years with Mountain, West’s main studio guitar was a single-cutaway Les Paul Junior with a single P90 pickup. (For performances, he also used a Gibson Flying V and a Dan Armstrong Plexi set up for slide.) As West said of the Junior, the space provided by having just one pickup was useful for his pinch harmonics. “You gotta have the Junior to do ’em right, because of the single pickup,” he explained once while demonstrating his technique. “See the way the strings can bend down when you hit ’em? If there was a neck pickup, it’d be in the way. You bury the pick with your thumb and you have all the room you need.”

Unable to find extra-light string sets in those early years of rock guitar's dominance, West strung his guitars with standard sets of La Bella strings, substituting a .010-gauge banjo A string for the high E and moving the other five strings down one position.

West was also adept at bringing other techniques into his playing. For the instrumental prelude to Mountain's “Pride and Passion,” from Flowers of Evil, he used a hammering technique with his left hand that produced a "violin sound — like what Segovia does,” he said. “You can do it in rock and roll too." To demonstrate for the interviewer, he hammered on a string and then turned up the volume of the guitar. As he explained, the metallic sound of the string rattling against the fretboard was never amplified, and West could control the intensity of the sound by adjusting the guitar's volume knob.

For the prelude to "Pride and Passion," West tuned every string to the same note, or that note's octave, and then played the instrument bottleneck-style through an echo unit. "It sounds like a string section," he said. "I figured that if I can make a guitar sound like a violin, why not make it sound like a couple of violins." The same technique on the low strings would allow him to produce a cello-like sound.

West would also use his "harmonic jump” technique with his guitar at full volume to produce seemingly infinite sustain, as he did during the guitar solo of "Dream Sequence" on Flowers of Evil.

"The note catches, man," he told Guitar Player. "There is a feeling you get; you can feel as soon as you hit the note if it is going to go into that sustain. You can hold it for days if your guitar is wide open."

Notably, West hadn't used a fuzz tone in four years when he spoke with Guitar Player in 1972, preferring to use his amp volume and hands to get all the dirt and sustain he required.

Combining that with his sweet, smooth finger vibrato, West created a guitar voice like none other. "Vibrato is all in control; it's like a voice, you know.," he explained. "Some opera singers control their voice to get that slow vibrato. Eric Clapton has got about the best vibrato I ever heard in my life. Hendrix and Mick Taylor have beautiful vibratos too. I'd take these guys over anybody else because they control the whole thing. Some guitar players hit a note and go into a vibrato that's really fast and intense with no control, and it sounds like an opera singer with a bad voice."

Perhaps the ultimate proof of West’s power is not that he influenced guitarists at the peak of his early fame but that he continues to years after his death on December 23, 2020. Consider Grace Bowers: Just 18, the gifted guitarist cited Mountain’s Climbing! as one of the 10 records that changed her life, calling out West’s guitar solo on “Theme for an Imaginary Western” as “one of the most perfectly crafted guitar solos ever. His tone — not even just on this album, his tone in general — was so good. He's one of those players you can recognize right away. It's that distinct.” If young players like Bowers are tuning into him, there is perhaps no greater proof of Leslie West’s indelible power and influence in guitar.

Pete Townshend has been known to give journalists juicy soundbites throughout his now-60-plus-year career. He once said “Jimi Hendrix was a great player, but he wasn't really creative.” Meanwhile, in a 1980 interview with Sound International, the Who guitarist said he regretted that he’s “said some really shitty things about Jeff Beck.”

In that same interview, Townshend fired off a shot at Keith Richards when he claimed that he was a better rhythm guitarist than the Rolling Stones co-founder. While he was quick to point at Richards’ legacy, he said his work surpasses Keef’s by a fair distance.

“I think my biggest influence in that area was Keith Richards," Townshend offered. "And I still really like the way he plays, but in that particular area, I don’t think I’m topped. There’s nobody to touch me.

“What’s really strange is I don’t think there’s many people who have actually heard me play rhythm in the function of a rhythm guitar. That’s where I really get off very well.”

It's a bit of an odd claim, considering that by the time of the Sound interview Townshend's right hand had been celebrated for its remarkable strumming technique, as well as speed, on Who tracks like "Pinball Wizard," "Going Mobile" and "Quadrophenia," to name a few. While Townshend is no slouch when it comes to soloing, it's obvious that rhythm guitar is his love, something which he admits to in the Sound article.

“I wouldn’t object at all to having a[nother] guitar player in the Who so that I could just concentrate on rhythm," he explained, "because I love it. It’s a physical thing, it’s like a dancing thing. There’s a strong syncopation element in it.

“There’s no guitar player that I’ve ever worked with that hasn’t said it — Jimi Hendrix, Stephen Stills, Eric Clapton,” he continued. “They’ve all said ‘It was great to play with you.’ I suppose it’s what it must feel like to be a drummer or a bass player: why do they do it and not want to be in the front light? And that’s something I feel when I’m playing rhythm with somebody else.

“One of the anomalies of the Who is I’m doing that kind of thing, but I’m also out front doing it,” Townshend continued, noting that bassist John Entwistle ostensibly served the role of lead guitarist in the band. “John is the lead guitar player, and ... he does produce a hell of a lot of the lead work. It’s really funny to this day when you get a song like 'Dreaming From the Waist' [from The Who by Numbers] when John is doing this blinding bass solo and making Alvin Lee look like he plays in slow motion, and I’m just standing there strumming a chord.”

Moreover, Townshend said the fact Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon would so regularly vie for the limelight made him double down on his rhythm parts.

“I think that’s why my style has been formally rhythmic,” he mused. “I put down the beat and John and Keith worked around it. I mean, John is not that syncopated all the time. I used to play almost with Keith’s bass drum and John used to play with the top kit. Normally it’s the other way around. I think it’s one of the interesting things about the Who’s sound. I think I would work with any drummer that way.”

On the flip side, in a 1972 chat with GP, Townshend moaned that kind of rhythmic focus was harming his lead chops. “I’ll never be able to play the kind of leads I want," he complained. And he wasn’t averse to his egotistical moments, either, admitting to his loudness war with Ronnie Wood as the pair pushed their amplifiers to their limits in the mid-’60s.

In related news, Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey are getting ready to hit the road for the Who's 2025 tour, which begins in England this April.

Whether smashing guitars or popularizing the concept album, the Who’s Pete Townshend has always done things differently. In a newly resurfaced 1990 interview with Guitarist magazine, he sheds light on his change-making use of feedback. At the same time, Townshend takes the opportunity to point out that Jimi Hendrix wasn't doing anything with guitar that he and Eric Clapton hadn't already made part of their repertoires.

Townshend credits three factors for influencing his use of amplifier feedback during his early playing days. The most relevant force was the sheer volume of the British group's stage show, which was in part an effort to impress his art school peers.

“I'm afraid I was an arty little sod and I was actually experimenting,” he said when asked if his feedback shenanigans were calculated or a happy accident. “I was at art school, surrounded by real intellectuals, people that were experimenting all the time. I was greatly impressed by all this and wanted to please these people.

“A lot of it was posing, trying to drag something out of the band that it was resisting. As I got louder, [bassist] John Entwistle got louder by inventing the 4x12 speaker cabinet, which he did with somebody up at Marshall. Then I got a 4x12 cabinet and put it on a chair, so then he invented the 8x12 cabinet, to get louder than me, and I invented the stack by getting two 4x12s and stacking them up."

But there was more to it than a volume war. Townshend says it was also a way to drown out the loudmouths in their audience.

“Our experimentations were all to do with our irritation with the audience, who heckled if you played a rhythm-and-blues song that they didn't know," he says. "You'd get blokes in the back with their pints of beer shouting, 'What's all this rubbish? Play some Shane Fenton!' And we just got louder as a result."

The upside to it all is that Townshend and the Who became known as rock's loudest band, a label that served them well as bands moved from clubs to arenas to stadiums in the 1970s and '80s.

“It shows that radical experimentation really is worth pursuing," he says. "Because even though it might feel stupid and pretentious if you do discover something new, it's your property and you're identified with it forever.”

Townshend accepts he wasn’t the only player who found feedback worth embracing, although not all players can agree on who got there first. Some point out that John Lennon was perhaps the first to use it intentionally and creatively when he employed it on the opening of his 1964 Beatles song "I Feel Fine." But Townshend says the use of feedback was gaining popularity with bands as early as 1963, when Jeff Beck used it with the Tridents, two years before he joined the Yardbirds.

“Other people stumbled on feedback at the same time as me,” Townshend says. “Jeff Beck was using it when Roger [Daltrey] went to see the Tridents rehearsing.

“He said, 'There's a shit-hot guitar player down the road and he's making sounds like you.' Then later, when we supported the Kinks, Dave Davies was adamant: 'I invented it, it wasn't John Lennon and it wasn't you!' ”

But Townshend pours cold water on Davies’ claim.

“I believe it was something people were discovering all over London. These big amps that Marshall were turning out — you couldn't stop the guitars feeding back!”

The origin of using feedback as a tactful play is admittedly blurry. But one thing Davies and Townshend can agree on is how their use of it differed. Davies was more animalistic. Townshend’s art school background, meanwhile, saw him longing for a more musical application.

“On 'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,' during the solo, on the note A I would flick a harmonic, get it feeding back, and then go 'dit-dit-dit-dar-dar' with the switch. And by standing at certain angles I could get incredible sounds out of it, some of which were just characteristics of the Rickenbacker body, which I stuffed with paper.

"You could control it and it could be very musical,” he goes on. “Certainly that sort of thing where you hit an open A chord and then take your fingers off the strings... the A string is still banging away but you're hearing the finger-off harmonics in the feedback.

"Then the vibrating A starts to stimulate harmonics in other strings, and it's just an extraordinary sound, like an enormous plane. It's a wonderful, optimistic sound and that was something that happened because I was posing — I'd put my arms out, let go of the chord then find that the resulting noise was better.”

The interview also saw Townshend discussing Jimi Hendrix’s talents. His fellow feedback-loving guitarist Jeff Beck said Jimi's arrival on the scene nearly ended his career. While Townshend was impressed by his chops, he didn't find him to be an original when it came to his more blues-based guitar playing and some of his stage antics, which included destroying his instruments as Townshend had been doing for years.

“Hendrix was a great player,” he says, “but he wasn't really creative. He was dealing in other people's ideas, old blues things and tricks that were either borrowed from Eric Clapton or the pyrotechnic things that he had caught off watching me.

“He used to follow the band around, watching, and then he suddenly appeared on stage doing all this stuff. But it was something else that made it extraordinary. Talk to the women who came in contact with him — he literally enchanted them. He was a pretty unremarkable kind of gnarled-looking guy, but he was a real enchanter.”

Myles Kennedy may be a PRS signature artist today, but he says there was a time when the guitar maker's wares were “unattainable" for him.

In a bizarre twist, the 54-year-old singer for Alter Bridge and Slash — who has just released his third solo album, The Art of Letting Go — says his first time playing a PRS guitar went horribly wrong. As he tells Ultimate Guitar, the incident happened in 1998 while he was performing with the Mayfield Four, the band he played in before joining Mark Tremonti in Alter Bridge.

“I used to work in a music store, and occasionally, one would come to the store, and all those guitar nerds would just drool,” he recalls. “But it seemed kind of unattainable. It was just such a nice instrument. And at the time, I could barely rub two pennies together. So that seemed totally out of reach.”

That changed in 1996, when the Mayfield Four signed a major-label deal, which led to them releasing two albums. To mark the occasion, Kennedy says, their manager decided to treat himself to a brand-new PRS guitar with "a beautiful red top."

“We were playing at CBGBs in New York, and our manager went down the street and bought a PRS McCarty,” Kennedy explains. “He was just over the moon, and he was, like, 'Hey, do want to play it tonight for the show?' And I was, like, 'Absolutely.’"

Unfortunately, Kennedy was wearing a ring on his strumming hand. “And at the end of the night, I did the Pete Townshend windmill and dinged up the entire top," he says. "It was never the same. It was a mess after that one show."

The guitarist was wracked with guilt and knew of only one way to make amends.

"I ended up writing him a check the next day with my hard-earned advance that I got from the record label and bought that guitar.

"I still have that guitar to this day," he adds. "I still use it."

Kennedy went on to play the guitar in Alter Bridge on their 2004 album, Open Your Eyes, alongside Tremonti, who was by then a PRS signature artist. In 2007, Kennedy became enamored of the PRS SC 245 while recording Blackbird with Alter Bridge, and it became his go-to PRS guitar, until 2023, when he himself became a PRS signature artist.

Kennedy hailed his “six-string Swiss army knife” signature PRS when telling Guitar Player about the instrument last year. Featuring some choice tweaks, and the injection of elements from some of his favorite vintage guitars, the guitar has tonal diversity courtesy of its two PRS Narrowfield MK humbuckers. The firm's next-generation pickup system — which is now available in its SE line in the triple humbucker-equipped, Strat-style SE NF3— marries single-coil tones with full-bodied and hum-free humbucker characteristics.

As Kennedy recalls, he was overjoyed upon receiving his signature model and hearing the Narrowfield pickups for the first time. "I was doing cartwheels in the living room," he says, "because, to me, it was like a great-sounding vintage single-coil, but it also had elements of a P-90, and this midrange and cut that I didn’t expect them to achieve initially. They just hit it out of the park."

And considering how his journey with PRS guitars began, that sounds like quite a happy ending.

In other PRS-related news, Tremonti recently recalled setting his eyes on his PRS signature guitar for the first time and being gifted a guitar by Eddie Van Halen.

London's Brixton Academy has hosted its fair share of epic events in its history as a live music venue. However, few of those featured two generation-defining guitarists sharing the same stage — which is exactly what happened in November 1985 when Pete Townshend and David Gilmour came together for what would be known as Deep End Live.

The project, billed initially as Pete Townshend with Dave Gilmour and Deep End, played two nights (the second of which thankfully was captured on film) at the U.K. venue in support of Townshend's Double "O" charity, aiding those with drug and alcohol issues, and victims of domestic violence, as well as providing support for underprivileged musicians.

The Deep End band, which included Townshend, Gilmour and a whopping 16 other members, featured session greats such as Simon Phillips on drums and Chucho Merchán on bass, as well as a full brass section.

Highlights of the nearly 90-minute performance include Townshend's version of “After the Fire,” originally written for Roger Daltrey's album Under a Raging Moon, Screamin' Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” the Who anthem “Won't Get Fooled Again” and the Townshend solo tune “Give Blood” — the latter, driven by the intricately cascading assault of Gilmour's looping riff. Townshend and crew never sounded better performing this underrated classic, which closes the show on a high.

A third show was expected to take place in Brixton, with talk of a potential tour that included international dates. But surprisingly poor ticket sales led to those plans being axed.

In an interview with David Letterman just weeks after the shows took place, Townshend explained how the project freed him up creatively. "I played anything I wanted to play,” Townshend said of the show's eclectic set list. "I did ‘Put a Spell on You,'… I did a Miles Davis song called ‘Walking.’ I did old blues things, and I did kind of early Who things. I had such a good time. It reminded me that music first has to be fun."

Gilmour was armed on the night with a couple of 1984 reissues, including his now iconic EMG SA single-coil–loaded Candy Apple Red Strat (which would go on to sell at auction in 2019 for $615,000), which he played through a combination of two Fender Twin Reverbs and Mesa/Boogie Mark I. His effects included a Boss HM-2, CE-2 Chorus and DD-2 Delays, as well as his famous MXR rack-mounted Digital Delays.

Townshend kept it simple with a pair of thinline Washburn acoustics, which he occasionally swapped out for a Takamine EN-10C, now housed within London's Hard Rock Cafe Vault.

Deep End wasn't the first time the pair had worked together, as just the year prior, Townshend had penned lyrics for the tracks “Love on the Air" and “All Lovers Are Deranged” from Gilmour's second studio album, About Face. Gilmour would return the favor by lending guitar parts to tracks on Townshend's fifth solo record, White City: A Novel.

Had this project been a success, you can't help but wonder what might have been — particularly as both Gilmour and Townshend were in transitional periods with Pink Floyd and the Who, respectively. Luckily, we have this performance captured for us to enjoy.

Earlier this month, David Gilmour released his sixth solo studio album, Luck and Strange, with tour dates kicking off next month that include stops at the Circo Massimo in Italy, the Intuit Dome, Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and London's Royal Albert Hall.

Meanwhile, Townshend celebrated 60 years of the Who in 2024 and expects more shows from the band in the future. He recently dropped a solo collection Live In Concert 1985–2001, a 14-CD box set which features even more cuts from the Deep End shows, including a fun performance of the Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup–penned track (later made famous by Elvis Presley), That's All Right, Mama.

Though often overshadowed by other electric guitar greats that got their start in London in the mid-'60s – your Jeff Becks, Jimmy Pages, and Eric Claptons – Ronnie Wood was right there with them, coming to notice via his guitar work with the Birds (not the Byrds).

Wood's diaries of that formative time, published in 2015 as How Can It Be? A Rock and Roll Diary, make it clear just how enmeshed in the booming London scene he was. One entry – featured in a 2015 Guitar Aficionado article – read “Discovered first second-hand news about Eric leaving Yardbirds.” Dated February 24, 1965, it shows that Wood heard about Clapton's departure from the popular group weeks before it was known to the general public.

Among other fascinating windows into that time, How Can It Be? also features anecdotes about the early days of Marshall, and how it transformed from humble beginnings into perhaps the most iconic guitar amp manufacturer of all time. 

Alongside the aforementioned budding British guitar heroes of the day, Wood – via Marshall – was pushing the boundaries of amplification. “Me and Pete Townshend had a sort of rivalry back then to see who could get the loudest,” Wood told Guitar Aficionado in 2015. “We kept on pushing Jim Marshall to make amps with more watts and volume controls that went up to 12!”

In another 1965 entry, Wood takes note of receiving a 100-watt head and 8×12 speaker cabinet from the Marshall shop. Significantly, Wood later claimed that he was the first to suggest a cabinet with eight speakers to Jim Marshall, and was subsequently the first to receive one. 

“Pete Townshend came in [to the shop] and went, ‘You bastard!’” Wood later wryly noted. 

Though they never reached the commercial heights or influence of some of their contemporaries – the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Small Faces, and the Yardbirds, for instance – the Birds were well-respected, and indeed, Wood garnered enough of a reputation with his playing to later join the Small Faces' successor group, the Faces, and the Stones, of whom he remains a member to this day. 

“The Birds were very busy and trying to get better all the time,” Wood told Guitar Aficionado. “We’d gather in the gig wagon and off we’d go to play shows almost every night of the week. I kept my journal to sum up how the audiences were, how we played, and how much money we made. It was a sliding scale that kept rising. We went from making 50 pounds to 75 pounds to 100 pounds. 

“We always would compare what we were making to the Stones, who were making 250 pounds a night back then. We kept going, ‘We’re getting there!’”

Guitar-smashing is and has always been a source of controversy. To some, it represents a cathartic act of destruction that goes along with the force of their music; to others, it's a waste of an instrument that might've had a long and happy life in the hands of someone else.

Rock's most famous guitar-smasher, Pete Townshend, (mostly) abandoned that particular act over 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean he's wracked with guilt over his innumerable six-string (and not to mention guitar amp) beatings. 

In a recent interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the Who guitarist cited his dislike of – and subsequent lack of bond with – his first guitar as the possible source of his cavalier attitude. 

“Young kids that buy their first really good guitar end up in a love relationship with it – I've never had that,” Townshend told Fallon. “I think a lot of people struggle to buy their first instruments and they build up a relationship with them.

“In those days,” he went on, “Every kid wanted to be Elvis Presley and they wanted the cheap guitars [that he'd play]. They were trash guitars – the kind of guitars your grandmother would buy you for Christmas – they'd be unplayable.”

Townshend said that he asked his father, a professional musician, to buy him his first guitar. His father, however, deferred to the guitarist's grandmother.

“My grandmother bought me my first guitar from off the wall of the Greek restaurant in Eeling where we lived. No one's gonna tell me that that hunk of wood with some strings stretched across it is sacred. Not to me.”

The climactic bursts of destruction were so important to the Who's stage act, that they're actually what kept Townshend firmly in the Stratocaster camp for longer than he intended. 

Though he'd later return to the Strat, the Who guitarist was all Gibson when he sat down with Guitar Player for an interview in 1972. 

Asked why he'd switched to SGs, Townshend said, “I got fed up with Fenders because they were too clean, but I liked them because they were tough. In my guitar-smashing days, the Fender would last two or three shows, and if I wanted to smash it up, it took ten minutes. But, they were fuzz-box numbers – clean until you hit the fuzz box.”