(Credits: Far Out / Harry Chase / UCLA Library)
Wed 19 November 2025 12:00, UK
Rock and roll is a musical landscape which has stretched across the globe for multiple decades at this point, blanketing countless different subgenres and specialised scenes, each with its own distinctive take on the core principles of rock.
Amid that landscape, though, certain names stand out as trailblazing titans, setting the standards for multiple generations of their rock contemporaries. One such name is The Who.
From their early beginnings on the swinging streets of 1960s London, The Who immediately set themselves apart from the rest of the city’s blossoming rock scene. With Pete Townshend penning a plethora of era-defining anthems, from ‘My Generation’ to the pop art masterpiece ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’, the mod rockers played louder, faster, and with far more aggression than any of their contemporaries, influencing the later explosion of punk and alternative rock in the process.
Even more impressive, though, was Townshend’s tendency to move ahead of the times, refusing to stay in one avenue of sonic inspiration for too long. Before the beat rock sounds of the 1960s had gone stale, the band had already moved on to the expansive and ambitious world of rock opera, penning groundbreaking records in the form of Tommy and Quadrophenia, the shockwaves of which were felt throughout the world of rock and roll.
It is no surprise, then, that in the years following The Who’s emergence onto the landscape, their impact began to be felt in the output of countless other musicians. Not only did they inspire a litany of copycat R&B outfits in the nightclubs and dancehalls of 1960s London, but their inherent spirit was carried forth by a multitude of future songwriters all over the globe, with Bruce Springsteen being only one key example.
Springsteen has always listed The Who as a prevailing influence, even from his early days watching the band perform on television from his home in New Jersey. “As I grew older, The Who’s music seemed to grow with me, the sexual frustration, politics, identity,” Springsteen told the crowd at a MusiCares benefit back in 2015. “These things course through my veins with every concurring Who album. I always found myself there somewhere in their music.”
In a similar vein, Pete Townshend has always been able to identify strands of The Who’s output in the discography of ‘The Boss’. “The Who were just a hard-drinking rock ‘n roll band dealing with the kind of working-class stuff that I think became the essence of what happened later on with Bruce Springsteen,” the guitarist once told Billboard.
Adding, “Bruce used to come watch our band in the early days quite a lot. I’m not saying he was studying or copying, but there was definitely a resonance.”
The Who, along with some of their early contemporaries – The Kinks being the prevailing example – were certainly ahead of the curve when it came to incorporating working-class stories and attitudes within their work, something that had been absent during the days when record companies would hire out professional songwriters for their artists.
It is worth noting, though, that Townshend wasn’t the only songwriter to hold an influence over Springsteen, with a myriad of folk artists like Bob Dylan also inspiring ‘The Boss’ and his unwavering focus on the romanticism and reality of ordinary people and ordinary lives. Either way, there is no denying that Springsteen remains a dedicated devotee of The Who to this very day.
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