Pete Townshend has given an interview to Classic Album Review, ostensibly about the upcoming reissue of The Who By Numbers. But the 81-year-old guitarist has also shared some interesting thoughts on where The Who stood vis a vis ‘heavy’ music.
Many cite Black Sabbath as being the starting point of metal as we know it today, but The Who were - on their day - as loud and heavy as any band in the late '60s and early 70s. Did they have a part to play in the evolution of the genre, then?
“In a way,” Townsend replies. “But I do think that the difference really was that [for] bands like Black Sabbath and all of the other big heavy metal bands – until Led Zeppelin came along, who combined heavy metal with some softer songwriting and ballads – heavy metal was almost a religious philosophy. It was rooted in a sense of darkness and often irony.”
“No, I don’t necessarily think so,” he decides. “I think Live At Leeds is probably as explosive as it got. For example, at Woodstock we did a good chunk of Tommy and then we did some heavy stuff as well. We did both… The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC.”
“I never really got into Led Zeppelin,” the guitarist admits. “At the time I didn’t like it that they were, in a sense, trying to pinch our audience. I’d been through it before with Jimi Hendrix coming over with his big amplifiers and his distortion and his wah-wah pedal, and having to admit, ‘Wow, here is a guitar genius.’”
And Sabbath? “I don’t know about bands like Black Sabbath and so on because I really didn’t listen to them, despite the fact that I think they were great fun and enjoyable,” Townshend explains. “And I really love the parts of the music business where people don’t take themselves too seriously. That was my issue in my early days – I felt I was carrying a big cross, a big manifesto for rock and roll. I felt that this was important for me to deliver.”
As for new Who activity, Townshend gave no details. We know that he and Roger Daltrey have rehearsed recently with Zak Starkey once again – despite the fact the drummer left the band amid much controversy and to-ing and fro-ing last year – but no dates for 2027 have been announced as yet.
