The radical bands that scared “the shit out of” Pete Townshend: “They’ll play it on the radio in LA”
As far as the older generation was concerned, The Who may as well have been the antichrist of the 1960s, bursting over the airwaves with their abrasive, amphetamine-fueled mod rock rebellion, poisoning the brains of Britain’s youth with sentiments like “I hope I die before I get old.”
Still, Pete Townshend came to understand that moral panic when he became old himself.
To his credit, Townshend’s songwriting stylings continued to evolve after the heady days of the mid-1960s had faded into the rear-view mirror – taking The Who into the age of the rock opera and crafting timeless masterpieces like Quadrophenia, the songwriter succeeded where many of his early contemporaries had failed: the battle to remain relevant.
Nevertheless, by the mid-point of the 1970s, even the most out-of-touch rock fans could see that The Who were no longer the anarchic young mods of their earlier years. They were, in essence, the rock establishment, and that placed Townshend in a rather uncomfortable role.
Nothing exemplified his newfound position as a member of rock’s old guard better than the emergence of punk rock, which made the youthful rebellion of ‘My Generation’ sound like a gentle stroll in the park. Punk was far more abrasive, confrontational, and politically-charged than anything that had gone before it, and its refusal to beat around the bush took the ageing Pete Townshend by surprise.
He spoke about this new generation of rock rebels during a 1980 chat with Rolling Stone, in which he declared, “It touches you, and it scares you – it makes you feel uncomfortable. It’s like somebody saying, ‘The Germans are coming! And there’s no way we’re gonna stop ’em!’ That’s one of the reasons: a lot of new music is harder to listen to.” Certainly, he wasn’t the only member of the old school finding punk a sonic challenge.
Specifically, the songwriter namedropped Joe Strummer and The Clash. “You get a band like The Clash, and they come out with a nifty little song like ‘Clampdown’,” he shared.
“And you can’t hear the words, and they’ll play it on the radio in LA. You read the fucking words, they scare the shit out of you.”
Pete Townshend
While ‘Clampdown’ is among The Clash’s most direct, confrontational criticisms of the political establishment, it speaks both to Townshend’s anxieties and how quickly the rock landscape evolves that the songwriter would actively find its lyrics frightening. Still, that London Calling stand-out was nothing compared to The Pretenders, who also caused Townshend some sleepless nights.
“Chrissie Hynde’s got a sweet voice,” he admitted. “But she writes in double-speak: she’s talking about getting laid by Hell’s Angels on her latest record. And raped. The words are full of the most brutal, head-on feminism that has ever come out of any band, anywhere.” There wasn’t much in the way of head-on feminism in the male-dominated rock landscape that The Who came up in.
Although this bold new class of rock outfits scared Pete Townshend, he was at least more receptive towards the emergence of punk than some of his swinging sixties contemporaries, perhaps due to the fact that The Who’s short, sharp rock anthems played a not-insignificant role in inspiring those abrasive sounds in the first place.
