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.
