(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Sat 11 April 2026 13:00, UK
A decent band is a constantly evolving beast, refusing to stick around in one avenue of artistic inspiration for too long before moving on; much like The Who during their 1960s heyday, moving swiftly from amphetamine-fueled mod rock anthems to proto-metal, rock opera, and grandiose orchestral compositions in the matter of only a few years.
Pete Townshend was rather trailblazing in his approach to The Who during those early days, back in the mid-1960s. Whereas any other musician of the era, when faced with a single as overwhelmingly successful as ‘I Can’t Explain’ or ‘My Generation’, would do everything in their power to recapture that same success, penning a litany of efforts that sound virtually identical to those early successes. In contrast, Townshend moved on from that sound rather quickly.
Throughout the late 1960s, in the postmodern masterpiece of The Who Sell Out and in the expansive narrative of Tommy, the sheer diversity of The Who’s output was enough to cement them as a major driving force within British rock – arguably, their greatest contribution to the genre came in the new decade, when they made their way to a West Yorkshire canteen to record the proto-metal smash, Live at Leeds.
Take a cursory glance at the tracklisting of that record, and you might not notice anything out of the ordinary. It does, after all, feature a jaunt through some of The Who’s most beloved material, but look closer and you will notice that the previously three-minute-long ‘My Generation’ goes on for almost 15 minutes, and that their version of Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ would be enough to shake the bones of that old school rock and roller into dust.
During a time in which ‘heavy metal’ had yet to properly infect the airwaves, and the realm of hard rock was just creeping onto people’s radars, The Who blew the doors wide open, and inspired a lot of imitators in their wake – according to Pete Townshend, at least.
“We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin,” the guitarist once famously told the Toronto Sun. “You know, heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar and some of those bands, like Jimi Hendrix, for example, did it far better than we did.”
In the mind of Townshend, though, one band in particular stands out as having picked up where The Who left off with their hard rock stylings: “Cream, with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, they came along in ‘67, same year as Jimi Hendrix, and they kind of stole our mantle in a sense,” he claimed, in reference to their kind of proto-metal sound.
While Townshend hardly seemed bitter about that fact, and he was certainly happy enough to move away from the hard rock sound on later records like Quadrophenia, his bold claim that Cream, Hendrix, and Zeppelin were all unshakably indebted to The Who’s sound is certainly debatable.
Clapton’s outfit, for instance, actually emerged in 1966, while The Who were still preoccupied with the mod rock sounds of A Quick One, and blazed a trail for the entirety of the UK’s subsequent psychedelic explosion. They might have been fans of Pete Townshend’s output, but they certainly weren’t hanging on the coattails of the group, regardless of the guitarist’s various claims.
