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"Can You See the Real Me?: Pete Townshend" Besides being one of the greatest guitar players to ever string up a Rickenbacker (much less smash one through a Marshall stack), Pete Townshend is the lyrical and musical genius behind 99% of the material produced by the Who during their thirty years of Maximum R&B. He has been credited as the first to let the guitar feed back, and he invented the power chord and the rock opera. Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend was born May 19, 1945 and raised in Ealing, West London. Pete's parents were big band musicians, his father a saxophonist and his mother a vocalist. Pete's first instrument was the harmonica, but he switched to guitar at the age of 11. His father gave him some basic instruction, but Pete taught himself how to play. He has never learned how to read music even though he studied chords and harmony from books(Gill 132). "I really wish that I had learned how to read music," Townshend remarks. "As a composer I can't communicate properly with other writers, collaborators, and players. I can write charts, but I can't read them. I find it difficult, even to read stuff that I've written. If I had learned how to read music, I think I would feel very differently about life and my work" (Gill 132). Pete was listening to a wide variety of music during his teen age years, including jazz, pop, and rock `n' roll. "My idol in England was Mickey Green (of Johnny Kid & the Pirates)," he told Michael Brooks in Guitar Player. "He was the first big note bender." Townshend's early influence on guitar include James Burton, Link Wray, Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, and jazz guitarists Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, Kenny Burton, Johnny Smith, and Charlie Christian (Gill 132). While attending Ealing Art School, Pete entered a social circle that introduced him to the blues, rhythm and blues, modern jazz, and marijuana. He was exposed to the music of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, and Jimmy Smith. He found R&B as a way to pull his jazz and pop influences together. His favorite guitarists from this era include John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Freddie King, Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf, and Steve Cropper. He also enjoys the music of folk artists Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Pete had been a member of several short-lived bands with his schoolmate John Entwistle. From the Confederates, a trad jazz band, they evolved into the Aristocats, who became the Scorpions, until John teamed up with Roger Daltrey and a group called The Detours. Roger heard Pete play and convinced him to join by telling him that they had a real Vox amplifier. In the beginning, Roger was making all of the guitars and amps. "In them days it was all psychological warfare being in a group, so we hit on the idea of having the biggest cabinets you've ever seen ...yet inside we'd have this 12-inch speaker. It looked like a bloody side board... people would come in and see us and say, 'Hey they must be good, look at the size of their gear'" (Barnes 18-19). They achieved local club success in 1963, after they adopted the name The High Numbers along with the generally aggressive and nihilistic Mod ideas, which after a time gave way to "Pop Art" clothes (e.g. Union Jack Jackets, target sweatshirts), which in turn were put aside when in 1965 they reverted to the name The Who and "renounced" flower-power fashions by adopting work suits and Doc Marten boots. They were a highly visual group - Keith Moon continually twirling and hurling drumsticks as he played. Townshend spinning his arm like a windmill smashing at the strings, and Daltrey swinging his mike around like a lasso. It had been described as like seeing a piece of pure energy, pure raw energy. Experimentation with legal, recreational, an psychoactive drugs fueled the frantic nature of Townshend and the Who. The Who's pure energy combination of drugs, adrenaline, loud music, and a rebellious psyche produced a climax of destruction. Pete commented that"We never let the music get in the way of our stage act. `Stage Act' means we are committed to one another and the audience, and `music' means we are committed to the way we play. It means that we are committed to our limitations." (Guitar Player June 1972) The smashing of equipment came about after they had been performing at a place called the Railway Hotel for about six months and were fed up with the temporary stage extension that they had to set up out of beer crates and table tops every time they played. So they paid for a proper wooden stage to be built by some carpenters. However, between the new stage being higher up than the original stage and the low ceilings, Pete banged his guitar against the ceiling during one performance and smashed a hole in the plaster and breaking of the head of the guitar. Some people Pete knew from Ealing were in the front row, laughing at him. Pete became enraged and smashed what was left of the guitar to smithereens. He proceeded to pick up a Rickenbacker he had recently purchased, plugged in, and continued to play as if he'd planned to do it. The next week when they played there again there was a whole crowd waiting to see this lunatic break his guitar. Pete didn't break his guitar at that show (it the only one he had left) but after the gig was finished Keith smashed up his drumset. At the next show, they both smashed up their equipment. Keith was able to repair his drums, but Pete was now without a guitar. Pete resorted to grabbing a Rickenbacker of the wall of a guitar shop and running out with it. The Who's manager, Kit Lambert, loved the publicity and told Pete he would pay for the guitars. In 1968 Pete told Rolling Stone Magazine that "Basically... [guitar smashing is] a gesture which happens at the spur of the moment. I think with guitar smashing, just like performance itself, it's a performance, it's an act, it's an instinct. And it really is meaningless"(Friedlander 120). In the fifties Chuck Berry criticized his era's mores by favoring romance and rock with the adolescent anthem "School Days": Townshend's sixties were a time when rebellion was more outspoken. So to his older generation, Pete cries out "People try to put us down / Just because we get around." And, "Why don't you all f-f-f-f-fade away / Don't try and dig what we all say." Townshend would later comment that "'My Generation' was very much about trying to find a place in society. I was very, very lost." (Wenner 34) "It repulsed those it was supposed to repulse, and it drew a very thick line between the people that dug it and the people that wouldn't dig it." (Fricke 68) Some surely didn't dig the song's exclamation of "Hope I die before I get old." In 1968 Townshend reduced his drug intake and began to follow the teachings of an Eastern mystic, Meher Baba, a man who wrote proficiently but who had not spoken in forty years. Townshend would later say, "I think at the end of the day all religions are based on finding a reason why people should act in a caring, compassionate and humanitarian way. But, most of all, that they should act" (Friedlander 120). With his newfound spirituality and mindset of individual moral responsibility, Townshend set out to write rock and roll that was in some way illuminating to audiences. He sketched out a storyline that worked in both the symbolic and real worlds. Townshend explained: "The thing is, we wanted it to work on lots of levels... We want to turn on the spiritually hip, we want to turn on the fuckers and the street fighters... We want to turn on the opera lovers and we succeeded in turning on a lot of people that weren't reached before (Friedlander 127). Early titles included Amazing Journey and Brain Opera before settling on Tommy, after the central character. The fact that an actual story was being told through song, without accompanying narrative, was then unique in rock music and most closely resembled the opera form. The story begins with young Tommy witnessing the death of his father at the hands of his mother's lover. The father, having been thought dead, had returned years after the war. Tommy is traumatized and becomes deaf, dumb(mute), and blind. But he sure plays a mean pinball. Tommy becomes famous for excelling on pinball machines. And even after he is cured by smashing the mirror into which he has been staring, his Uncle Ernie still tries to make money off of him through summer camps. On a symbolic level Tommy represents a person who through suffering achieves a God-realized state, without senses yet in tune with the cosmic pulse of all life that surrounds us-in this case represented by the electromagnetic impulses of the pinball machine. When the commercialized Tommy and his gifts - rock and roll, spiritual enlightenment, furtherance of humanity-are revealed to have been sold on a fraudulent basis, humanity revolts after being sold on false prophets. "We're Not Gonna Take It!" they cry as a rejected Tommy cries "See me, Hear me,..." still capable of spiritual enlightenment. (Friedlander, 127) In a 1987 interview, Pete Townshend ommented on Tommy: "What was important at the time [Tommy], and continues to be important, is that the human individual accepts the fact that he or she is capable of being spiritually swayed. And in order to make the best of that, they really have to listen to what's being said." (Friedlander 120) In the summer of 1969, Woodstock came to symbolize the idyllic, innocent yearnings of the youth culture of the 1960s, and The Who are an unforgettable part of that event. They took the stage at 3:30 in the morning, and played a set that featured the American performance premiere of much of the music from Tommy. Their set was highlighted by two especially memorable moments. During the performance of "Acid Queen", the yippie leader Abbie Hoffman attempted to steal Townshend's microphone to make a political speech. Townshend would have none of it, and pushed him with his guitar. Shortly thereafter, director/cameraman Mike Wadleigh, whose documentation of the festival has become a perennially popular feature film, showed up on stage. Townshend was, by that time, sick of the delays and interruptions, and hadn't been told that the filmmaker was authorized to be on stage during the band's set. A well-placed kick from one of Townshend's Doc Marten boots sent Wadleigh sprawling off the stage into the photographers pit. Later, just as they were finishing "We're Not Gonna Take It", as Roger Daltrey sang "See me, feel me, touch me, heal me," dawn broke, and as sunlight streamed through the clouds, the crowd went wild and gave The Who an incredible ovation. In 1967, with the release of The Who Sell Out, Townshend and the Who called attention to the tensions of the 'sellout'- going commercial as it were. The album simultaneously ridiculed and flaunted the commercial sellout inherent in mass music. They created a fake radio program, sandwiching songs between genuine and phony advertising. Townshend later outraged many Who fans by allowing some of the groups greatest hits to
be adopted as jingles for television commercials and adopting Busweiser as corporate
sponsor for part of their 1989 tour. His response to a journalist's criticism of it was
blunt: A greatest hits album, Meaty, Beaty, Big & Bouncy, was released by the Who in 1972 as a filler to keep fans contented while Pete worked on Quadrophenia. Quadrophenia chronicled the midsixties Mod experience in England and features a frustrated, inarticulate, confused, and violent young man named Jimmy who feels betrayed by all elements of life. Townshend had always felt that rock's essence was "the music of the frustrated and dissatisfied" and that the Mod subculture represented its purest, working-class audience. (Friedlander 130) Jimmy was represented by four distinct personalities, each with a theme song, that represented characteristics of a member of the band. Roger Daltrey was the tough guy ("Helpless Dancer"); John Entwistle the romantic ("Doctor Jimmy"); Keith Moon the lunatic ("Bell Boy"); and Pete represented the philosopher ("Love Reign O'er Me"). Feeling discouraged and disillusioned, Jimmy returns to the Brighton coast, the scene of past glories from the gang fights between Mods and Rockers. In the final scene Jimmy clings to a rock in the coastal surf in a final reevaluation of life's meaning. Townshend called Quadrophenia "a study in spiritual desperation. The fact that all desperation and frustration leads somebody to the point where the first time in their life they realize that the only important thing is to open their heart. It wasn't about blood and guts the way the film turned out to be." The album was the highest chart success for the band, peaking at #2 in November 1973. The film version, released six years later, didn't receive such high acclaim, mostly because the Mod culture was so particularly British in nature. By the late 70's Pete had emerged as of the greatest guitar players and musical innovators ever. He was the driving force behind one of the greatest rock bands ever, yet still he hasn't acknowledged until recently that he is a very good electric guitar player. He has always preferred the acoustic. This is evident in the music of Tommy and Quadrophenia. One doesn't even notice it unless they are listening for it, but the bulk of the driving, emotional somgs are centered around the acoustic guitar. At the performances of Quadrophenia last year, Pete played acoustic while his brother played electric for the show. For the encore Pete would use a Stratocaster for the classic Who favorites. Pete Townshend may be known best for his flamboyant stage antics, but he is also one of rock's most powerful rhythm guitarists. His experimentation with feedback and sound effects had an impact on Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and many other rock guitarists in the '60s. His influence spans several generations of rock music, and his music has inspired everyone from young punks and mod revisionists to heavy-metal guitar heroes. Works Cited Barnes, Richard. The Who, Maximun R&B. St Martin's Press: New York. 1982. Friedlander, Paul. Rock and Roll: A Social History. Westveiw Press: Boulder, Colorado. 1996. Fricke, David. The Rolling Stone Interviews: 1967-1980. Rolling Stone Press: New York. 1981 Gill, Chris. Guitar Legends: The Definitive Guide to the World's Greatest Guitar Players. Harper Perennial: New York. 1995. Goldman, Albert. Sound Bites. Turtle Bay Books: New York. 1992. Young, Charles M. "Who's Back." Musician. July 1989: 67. Wenner, Jann. The Rolling Stone Interviews: The 1980s. St. Martin's Press/Rolling Stone Press: New York. 1989. |