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Sat 17 October 2026 16:00, UK
While there may not have been much crossover between the guitar playing styles of Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix, there was certainly a mutual appreciation.
Having started out as a sideman, earning his stripes as a session guitarist for the likes of Wilson Pickett and Sam Cooke, as well as touring with Little Richard, Hendrix was trying to establish himself as a solo artist in the mid-1960s. However, given how he was unable to garner much attention in the US in the early part of his career, he opted to relocate to London, forming his eponymous Jimi Hendrix Experience alongside Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell in 1966.
His blues-driven and psychedelic style was evidently too far ahead of its time for audiences in his home country, but with the emergence of plenty of British rock acts who were having success with a similar style, it appeared as though he found a far more receptive home among like-minded bands in the UK. Through word of mouth, his live performances began to attract attention from a who’s who of artists on the UK circuit, and Hendrix was soon perceived as a star in the country he found himself in.
One could argue that Townshend also offered something similar in the early days of The Who, but Hendrix’s playing was looser and more fluid, while Townshend’s was built on brute aggression. Though they were evidently going after different things in their work, there were many moments when they crossed paths. Inadvertently, Townshend played an unlikely role in shaping Hendrix’s signature sound.
During a 2020 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Townshend revealed that he provided an essential piece of advice to the legendary guitarist without realising it, and that he unwittingly created one of the signature elements of his style.
“What I did for Jimi, which I always regretted doing for Jimi, was that his manager brought him to meet me at a recording studio when he first arrived, and he asked me what equipment to buy,” Townshend recalled.
Thinking that there would be no harm in offering a helping hand, he duly shared the details of his setup with Michael Jeffery, the manager who had taken a chance on the unproven Hendrix when he moved to London in 1966.
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“I told him that I’d been using a mixture of an amplifier called Sound City, which was a Marshall substitute, with a Marshall, to get this really kind of slabby sound,” he continued.
However, Townshend would be made to rue this decision when The Who found themselves on a bill with Hendrix in June 1967, where the American upstaged every other act, partly thanks to the advice that had been passed on to him. “A couple of weeks later, we did a show with him at the Saville Theatre with him allegedly supporting us,” Townshend added.
“I wish I’d never given him the tip! I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s brilliant enough without being a thousand watts loud!’”
Of course, Townshend shouldn’t be so regretful; he ended up making a legend louder. Regardless of whether he had copied his setup, Hendrix would have floored audiences at any volume.
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