{"id":766232,"date":"2026-07-16T12:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/766232\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:30:14","slug":"five-classic-rock-bands-pete-townshend-cant-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/766232\/","title":{"rendered":"Five classic rock bands Pete Townshend can\u2019t stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pete<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Harry Chase \/ UCLA Library<\/p>\n

Thu 16 July 2026 9:55, UK <\/p>\n

\u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll might not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them.\u201d \u2013 Pete Townshend<\/a><\/p>\n

There are some artists who simply shrink into the background. Happy to complete their work and move in the shadows and settle into a country home. Other musicians, however, take the spotlight and use it to devastating effect, rarely allowing the chance to speak their mind to slip away. Pete Townshend has an infamously sharp tongue.<\/p>\n

The Who guitarist and band\u2019s principal songwriter has had a fair few words to share about many of his contemporaries over the decades he\u2019s spent being interviewed, and most of them have an edge. He was renowned for being a tough customer, and, given the chance to speak ill of some of the great acts of the age, Townshend delivered some seriously tough words.<\/p>\n

Known for his scathing retorts and a glaring eye, Townshend quickly earned himself a reputation as the aggressive bite of the British invasion both on and off stage. While The Beatles and the Stones were keen to play the pop game, Townshend always saw fit to disrupt the normalcy of music.<\/p>\n

As he wrote in his memoir, Who Am I, back in 2012, \u201cDo you realise why is it I\u2019m so driven to operate within the Establishment? It\u2019s vengeance. \u2018Hope I die before I get old\u2019 is something I still have to live with, but not for the reason many people think. I have to be very, very vigilant not to become one of those people I despised.\u201d That vigilance has always manifested in the music he makes and weaponised against the music he loathes.<\/p>\n

It may come from the fact that The Who were a searingly powerful quartet, a band capable of matching anyone on talent and ferocity, and Townshend knew it. Not only was he the man in a power stance, thrashing his guitar, but he had Keith Moon reciprocating on the drums, John Entwistle scaling up and down his bass, and Roger Daltrey letting rip with the mic. It gave the guitarist a perhaps somewhat unbalanced view of the music world.<\/p>\n

It also happened that Townshend\u2019s caustic views came at a time when the demand for knowing such perspectives was at its peak. In the 1960s, pop music was extremely tribal, meaning any few short words about a contemporary band instantly gained a few extra column inches and more intrigue. <\/p>\n

While we\u2019re sure that Townshend was always aware of the extra publicity his comments could gain The Who, the real scything words seemed to come straight from his heart. After all, he takes music very seriously, indeed, poetically asserting, \u201cThe music we play has to be tomorrow\u2019s, the things we say have to be today, and the reason for bothering is yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, when you\u2019ve spent most of your life in the public eye, chances are you\u2019re going to be caught out on an off-day, and your comments are tinged with acidity. Perhaps the same can be said for some of Townshend\u2019s comments on other artists. That said, the comments below are all a little bit extra sour. Good old Pete, eh!<\/p>\n

Five bands Pete Townshend hates: \"Paul<\/p>\n

In 1966, The Who were beginning their meteoric ascent to the top of the rock and roll pile. Backed by a thunderous lead single in \u2018My Generation\u2019, the band had carved out a career based on the fervent energy of youth. It secured the group some attention and early TV interviews. One such interview led to Townshend referring to the Fab Four as \u201cflipping lousy\u201d.<\/p>\n

After a conversation around the idea of \u201cmusical quality\u201d, something Townshend shrugs as irrelevant to him and his band, the interviewers suggest that The Beatles have \u201cquality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOoh, that\u2019s a tough question,\u201d the guitarist replied with a sneering smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, this afternoon, John [Entwistle] and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles \u2014 in which the voices come out of the one side and the backing track comes out of the other,\u201d he continued. Townshend delivers his most telling line on the band\u2019s output when he says: \u201cWhen you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they\u2019re flippin\u2019 lousy,\u201d it\u2019s enough to hear an audible gasp from the audience. Whether or not Townshend has softened his view on The Beatles won\u2019t ever really be known, but at that moment, you can tell that the guitarist has no love for the most famous band in the world.<\/p>\n

Later, speaking with Rolling Stone in 1982, Townshend was asked about McCartney\u2019s recent record, Tug of War. Kurt Loder, who is interviewing Townshend, suggested it had \u201cvirtually nothing to do with rock & roll,<\/a>\u201d to which Townshend replied by asking if McCartney \u201cever really had anything to do with rock\u201d.<\/p>\n

He answered his own question. \u201cNo, he never did,\u201d Townshend said before adding: \u201cYou know, I could sit down and have a conversation with Paul about rock and roll, and we\u2019d be talking about two different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Led<\/p>\n

While we can\u2019t be sure whether Townshend harbours genuine hate for The Beatles, we can be pretty certain he\u2019s got a lot of disdain for Led Zeppelin, a band he has accused of copying The Who for years. In fact, it\u2019s been for almost the entirety of their career that the guitarist has kept up this feud.<\/p>\n

The guitarist\u2019s staunch views have always seen him come under fire from Zepheads everywhere, and perhaps, rightfully so. Still, this isn\u2019t something that he regrets, a topic he has spoken so strongly about in the past and in the press run for their 2019 record, WHO, he couldn\u2019t help himself from having another swipe at Zep.<\/p>\n

Townshend was speaking to the Toronto Sun when he was asked about the deviation from the band\u2019s early sound to the sonic nature of their most recent effort. Instead of answering the question straight, Townshend saw this as the perfect opportunity to squeeze in a jab at Zeppelin: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t sound like The Who from those early heavy metal years. We sort of invented heavy metal with (our first live album) Live at Leeds (1970). We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin, you know heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar,\u201d said Townshend, aiming at the iconic quartet.<\/p>\n

In 1995, Townshend was far more cutting of the record-breaking quartet: \u201cI don\u2019t like a single thing that they have done, I hate the fact that I\u2019m ever even slightly compared to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued through gritted teeth: \u201cI just never ever liked them. It\u2019s a real problem to me cause as people I think they are really really great guys. Just never liked the band. And I don\u2019t know if I have a problem, block too, because they, well that became so much bigger than The Who in so many ways, in their chosen field, I\u2019ve never liked them.\u201d<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Harry Chase \/ UCLA Library Thu 16 July 2026 9:55, UK \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 Roll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,41759,19810,216,24218,13979,72176,35357],"class_list":["post-766232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-jimi-hendrix","tag-led-zeppelin","tag-music","tag-pete-townshend","tag-the-beatles","tag-the-police","tag-the-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}