(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Sat 7 March 2026 15:15, UK
The line between inspiration and thievery in music has always been razor-thin. Pete Townshend isn’t exempt: during his six decades writing and recording with The Who, plenty of Townshend’s material has been nabbed by some of his acolytes. Just the same, Townshend himself is responsible for some trickiness when it comes to clear authorship over his songs.
Like many songwriters of the 1960s, Townshend absorbed ideas from the records he loved, often filtering them through The Who’s explosive style until they became something entirely different. In an era when British musicians were voraciously devouring American rhythm and blues, borrowing a groove or lyrical phrase was almost part of the creative process.
‘Substitute’, the 1966 single performed by The Who, was a top-five hit in the UK when it was first released. Townshend cheekily claimed it was the band’s “first number four” before its performance that was captured on tape for the album Live at Leeds. But as it turns out, Townshend can’t claim complete and total authorship over the song, considering how he and some of his bandmates recall the inspiration for the track came from some influential American R&B artists.
Townshend initially became intrigued with the phrase “Substitute” after hearing Smokey Robinson use the phrase in his song with The Miracles, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’. That song has a line that reads “Although she may be cute / She’s just a substitute.” Townshend was so enamoured with the phrase “that I decided to celebrate the word with a song all its own,” as he would later tell Rolling Stone.
However, there were other inspirations to account for as well. While taking part in a Melody Maker feature where songwriters were played songs without knowing who they were by, Townshend first heard ‘Where Is My Girl’ by Robb Storme and The Whisperers. The relatively obscure R&B track from the British impressed Townshend enough for him to take elements of the song for ‘Substitute’.
“The stock, down-beat riff used in the verses I pinched [from Storme and his band],” Townshend would later claim in an interview. “I pinched it, we did it, you bought it.” Still, that wasn’t the end of the speculation. According to bassist John Entwistle, Townshend had yet another R&B group on the brain while composing the song. “‘Substitute’ was [Pete] trying to play a Four Tops song,” Entwistle claimed in a 1994 interview with Johnny Black.
Entwistle didn’t name the specific Four Tops song that might have inspired ‘Substitute’, but by that point, it would have been increasingly difficult to organise all of the potential inspiration behind the song. The ultimate result was neither Smokey Robinson, Robb Storme, or The Four Tops. ‘Substitute’ was instantly an unmistakable romp by The Who and would remain in their setlists throughout their entire career.
Instead, the track became one of the earliest examples of Townshend’s knack for turning outside influences into sharp social commentary. With its biting lyrics about identity and imitation, ‘Substitute’ captured the band’s rebellious spirit while hinting at the themes that would later define much of Townshend’s songwriting.