Credit: Far Out / Raph_PH / Biha
Sat 3 October 2026 15:00, UK
George Harrison famously said that “all things must pass”. But rockers like Alice Cooper and Brian May might not necessarily agree.
After all, both of them were a part of rock and roll’s class of the 1970s, and it would be impossible to ignore the rapture of the decade that had come before them. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Animals, and most pertinently of all, The Who: each and every one of them made an unignorable mark on the rest of the world and the future of the rock-and-roll lineage.
You could see how each of those outfits exerted their influence on both May and Cooper at various points in time, but it was particularly when it came to The Who that they were stopped in their tracks. In their eyes, rock music would not have its roar if The Who had not been talking about their generation all the way back in 1965.
In Cooper’s world, the influence of that one fateful song was pivotal to the way in which he processed sound as a medium. “I think ‘My Generation’ was maybe the first anthem,” he gushed to Classic Rock, before adding, “and that was the birth of the power chord, right there.” If nothing else, you know for a fact that his band picked up those power chords for their own sound and ran with them.
But there was a point to be made in what Cooper said about the song, demonstrating that the era was at its most unstoppable peak. “And then you saw The Who performing it, and you saw [Pete Townshend] smashing into his amps, and you started going, ‘Is there any end to this British invasion? I mean, who else is going to come up?’”
Acts of the ‘70s would no doubt have killed for a British invasion of their own kind, but those days had gone, and their chance at jumping on the bandwagon had long since passed. All they could do, like May, was watch in awe. The Queen guitarist summed it up best when he said, “I can’t imagine rock guitar without Pete Townshend. Looking back, it seems to me he basically invented it! I was lucky enough to be there watching. My playing owes so much to him.”
It goes without saying at this point that ‘My Generation’ came as his top recommendation from the scores of The Who’s songbook, but there were naturally so many others that you could also pick from. ‘My Generation’ simply screamed from the rooftops that times were changing, and they were changing fast.
Further reading: From The Vault
In terms of The Who’s legacy, there was no greater blueprint on creating a debut album than theirs. It proved once and for all that the 1960s were a decade split in two: the first where the British invasion was merely a burgeoning pipe dream, and the second where it exploded into its full technicolour glory.
For the then-hopefuls who would begin to make good on their rock-and-roll dreams within a few short years, it perhaps seemed like the era was bound to last forever. They might have been wrong on that front, but they made sure that what came after was every bit as bright and blazing as what came before.
