Although he’s softened somewhat with age, nothing was off limits during his younger years, especially his own band’s material.
While it could have been easy for Townshend to rest on his laurels or pat himself on the back, he has constantly criticised himself over the decades. (Farout)
The song in question isn’t a throwaway album track, but instead, one of The Who’s most famous songs, ‘Pinball Wizard’. Artists disliking their own songs is nothing new. Famous examples include Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Radiohead’s ‘Creep’.
However, Townshend’s dislike is slightly different from the others mentioned above: in the case of Townshend, he disliked ‘Pinball Wizard’ almost instantly and has since called it an “awful” song. “I’m embarrassed. This sounds like a Music Hall song.”
Originally written as part of The Who’s epic rock opera Tommy from 1969, Townshend later admitted that he wrote the song to impress Nik Cohn, who had given the band some terrible reviews. As well as being an influential music critic, Cohn was also a well-known lover of pinball. With that piece of knowledge in mind, Townshend shamelessly directed a track at the writer in a bid to gain some favourable reviews.
Townshend said: “I knocked it off. I thought, ‘Oh, my God this is awful, the most clumsy piece of writing I’ve ever done. Oh my God, I’m embarrassed. This sounds like a Music Hall song. I scribbled it out and all the verses were the same length and there was no kind of middle eight. It was going to be a complete dud, but I carried on.”
“I attempted the same mock baroque guitar beginning that’s on ‘I’m a Boy’ and then a bit of vigorous kind of flamenco guitar. I was just grabbing at ideas.
I knocked a demo together and took it to the studio, and everyone loved it. Damon Lyon-Shaw (the engineer on Tommy) said ‘Pete, that’s a hit.’ Everybody was really excited, and I suddenly thought, ‘Have I written a hit?’ It was just because the only person that we knew would give us a good review, was a pinball fanatic.”
Daltrey's opinion on Pinball Wizard’ is different. The Who frontman once said of the track to Uncut: “Kit’s production on ‘Pinball Wizard’ is absolutely tremendous. The whole montage of sounds he got in emulating the pinball machine is extraordinary. I don’t think he got enough recognition for his work on that.”
