(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Fri 5 September 2025 16:00, UK
When a band only has one guitarist, it’s quite common for them to go the extra mile and pull out all the stops to show that backup isn’t needed, and Pete Townshend is one of the prime examples of this.
The Who were obviously blessed with four musicians beyond compare, with Keith Moon’s erratic drumming, John Entwistle’s slick bass playing and Roger Daltrey’s often booming vocals, but even so, without a second guitarist, Townshend was left to fill a lot of empty space with innovative guitar work. His brilliance was ultimately what drew a number of fans towards the band in the first place, and while the others had their own fans, people were quick to worship the work of this rock guitar god.
Because his playing is so exposed on their records, you’re more likely to become familiar with his idiosyncrasies than you would when you’ve got to decipher which guitarist in another band is doing what at what time, and therefore it’s also easy to pick out the guitarists who have been influenced directly by his work. Considering he was also the primary songwriter for The Who, you can also hear how much of his playing took into consideration the arrangements of the rest of the instruments, and he would intelligently cater his playing style to fit in with what the rest of the band were doing.
However, just because some bands have more than one guitarist within their ranks, that doesn’t make them any less proficient, and in the case of a band like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, where all four of the core members were playing the same instrument a lot of the time, all four of them were technically sublime despite having to constantly compete for the spotlight.
Townshend was a self-confessed fan of the group and said that their compositions and arrangements were some of the best of the era, especially those that were done as a four-piece with the addition of Neil Young. Despite this, out of the four of them, one member stood tall as the true shining light as a guitarist, as far as Townshend was concerned, and he praised him for being the driving force behind their creativity.
In a 1995 interview, Townshend applauded the work of Stephen Stills, who, prior to becoming a vital part of the supergroup, had been a core member of Buffalo Springfield alongside Young. “Stephen Stills is one of the great, great geniuses of guitar, of every style of guitar,” Townshend proclaimed.
But there was one crucial issue: “The problem is that he’s never really had much of an idea on how to deal with that, [and also] with the fact that not everybody in the world has recognised that. Probably somebody else that suffered from the presence of someone like Jimi Hendrix. Maybe took some of his thunder because he was not just a great guitar player but also a great performer.”
While he’s not wrong to single out Stills’ brilliance, you also can’t ignore the greatness that David Crosby and Graham Nash brought to the group, and it was their undeniable chemistry as a trio, with Neil Young as part of the group, that made them such an undeniable force. Stills may be great, but he’s far from being greater than the sum of the parts, and the brilliance of CSNY is all down to how well they complemented each other.
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