Pete Townshend had sung of his own ‘Generation’, but as a child of the 1960s, he could see that a new wave was cresting upon the shore of art, and it was every bit as vital as the peace and love of the hippie age. “Three extraordinary artists like The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Elvis Costello under the banner of Punk is really an indication of how categories fail, miserably to attend to what was actually happening,“ he said.
Continuing, he added: “At the time, there was this need for another tidal wave. I suppose that everybody wanted one band to do it like it had happened to The Beatles. It turned out not to be one band but a lot of bands.”(Farout reports)
Townshend had never even been that much of a fan of the Fab Four; however, he recognised that the wave they rode meant something and that every movement needs a spearhead.
For him, in terms of punk, that fell upon one band. “The Sex Pistols were obviously the most significant,“ he said, “Because they were the first and because Malcolm McLaren was organising them and allowing their anarchy.
He gave them the space to play, the space to be anarchic. But also because I think, Paul Cook and Steve Jones in the band are great rock ‘n’ roll players. They say they couldn’t play but they actually could play very, very well. John Lydon is a fucking star! You know, he is a star! He is just one of the world stars, you see him and you know: ‘He is going to be famous’”.
@oobujoobu Paul McCartney talks about working with Phil Collins and Pete Townshend while recording the song Angry. #paulmccartney #philcollins #petetownshend #presstoplay #1986 #oobujoobu ♬ Angry - 1993 Digital Remaster - Paul McCartney
This sentiment was instantly recognised by John Cooper Clarke, too. In his memoir, I Wanna Be Yours, he details the profound impact that the band’s evidently singular swagger had on him. “After reading the reviews, I was expecting ineptitude,” he writes, “That never materialised.
All concerned seemed reasonably proficient in their respective capacities… The Steve Jones I heard was a one-man orchestra, a high-voltage practitioner with no visible equal. In fact, the sonic overload had me scoping around for the other nine hundred and ninety-nine guys. The gig couldn’t have been a better introduction to the punk phenomenon.”
But they weren’t alone; all movements need an army. And Townshend explains that punk was so interesting because of its inherent variety. “The Clash are different because The Clash were kind of a boy’s band. To some extent, like The Who were in the very early days. You know, a gang band. Kind of like a fellowship band. They gathered together people and they kind of went around following them around,” he says.
Of the trio, the windmilling guitarist crowns Costello as the ruling godfather.
“I suppose that Costello was the brains in charge of the whole thing, I don’t know. But that’s a summing up of what happened. It was very, very exciting, challenging and there was a hell of a lot of pain there for Pete, I must say (laughs). Because I kind of welcomed, challenged and wanted it to happen. Then I realised that the person that they wanted to shoot was me,” Townshend concluded. Reeling from the revolution’s desire to do away with anything they considered stilted and old.
Interestingly, the Fab Four themselves were split on the punk movement. While Paul McCartney admired its spirit, John Lennon went as far as to say that the Sex Pistols reminded him of his old gang, George Harrison wasn’t exactly fond of it. Harrison said that most of it was the antithesis of music, telling Rolling Stone, “I don’t think punk was inventing anything except negativity. The old rock ‘n’ roll singers sang fantastically.”
He added, “They had great drummers, great sax players. As far as musicianship goes, the punk bands were just rubbish – no finesse in the drumming, just a lot of noise and nothing.”
Those in parliament begged to differ when they threatened to put the band on trial for tyranny. In truth, the punk’s aim was pretty much to put Harrison’s nose out of joint in the first place, so in some ways, his derision was as good as a pat on the back.
'The death of John Entwistle forced me to become a better guitarist'
The loss of Entwistle's nontraditional bass sound and Keith Moon saw Townshend branch into new sonic territory with The Who, and put greater emphasis on soloing and practicing.
Townshend noted that, upon Entwistle’s passing, a broad sonic space was left in the band – a space that he ultimately had to fill by experimenting and developing new approaches to playing, owing to the bassist’s nontraditional sound, Guitar World reports.
Pete Townshend also said “ Keith Moon and John Entwistle, they were fucking difficult to play with”
Townshend – who also reflected on the sonic space left in the wake of drummer Keith Moon’s death in 1978 – commented, “When John Entwistle died, there was another space left. That was because he was filling up so much of the musical spectrum with his bass sound, which was not a traditional bass sound.
“And so when he was gone, there was suddenly space for me – not so much to try and fill up the void he had left, but a space where I could have a different approach.”
