{"id":525615,"date":"2026-04-11T18:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T18:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525615\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T18:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T18:44:15","slug":"the-band-pete-townshend-said-picked-up-where-he-left-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525615\/","title":{"rendered":"The band Pete Townshend said picked up where he left off"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pete<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Harry Chase \/ UCLA Library)<\/p>\n

Sat 11 April 2026 13:00, UK <\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2018I Can\u2019t Explain\u2019 or \u2018My Generation\u2019, 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. <\/p>\n

Throughout the late 1960s, in the postmodern masterpiece<\/a> of The Who Sell Out and in the expansive narrative of Tommy, the sheer diversity of The Who\u2019s output was enough to cement them as a major driving force within British rock \u2013 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s most beloved material, but look closer and you will notice that the previously three-minute-long \u2018My Generation\u2019 goes on for almost 15 minutes, and that their version of Eddie Cochran\u2019s \u2018Summertime Blues\u2019 would be enough to shake the bones of that old school rock and roller into dust.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a time in which \u2018heavy metal\u2019 had yet to properly infect the airwaves, and the realm of hard rock was just creeping onto people\u2019s radars, The Who blew the doors wide open<\/a>, and inspired a lot of imitators in their wake \u2013 according to Pete Townshend, at least. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin,\u201d the guitarist once famously told the Toronto Sun. \u201cYou 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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: \u201cCream, with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, they came along in \u201867, same year as Jimi Hendrix, and they kind of stole our mantle in a sense,\u201d he claimed, in reference to their kind of proto-metal sound. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s sound is certainly debatable. <\/p>\n

Clapton\u2019s 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\u2019s subsequent psychedelic explosion. They might have been fans of Pete Townshend\u2019s output, but they certainly weren\u2019t hanging on the coattails of the group, regardless of the guitarist\u2019s various claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Harry Chase \/ UCLA Library) Sat 11 April 2026 13:00, UK A decent band…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19130,96,128,33162,9738,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-525615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-cream","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-pete-townshend","12":"tag-the-who","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}