“A big-mouth rockstar”: the guitarist Pete Townshend owed an apology to
No matter how personable or pleasant they might seem to be, there seems to be an unavoidable correlation between rock legends reaching the top of their game and becoming gobby so-and-sos, using every opportunity to openly criticise their peers.
Quite often, this is down to there being a sense of rivalry between artists, with both sides vying to be the best in the business, and if you perceive someone to either be doing better than you, or even perhaps ripping off your ideas without giving you the appropriate credit, then there’s always going to be the temptation to start dishing out criticisms of other artists who are guilty of such a thing.
However, while there’s a definite need to be competitive and to advocate for yourself as an artist, there’s less of a need to be slinging insults at those with whom you’re in competition, and quite often, these sorts of accusations will come off as being petulant rather than coming from a place of genuinely trying to fight your own corner.
It’s entirely possible for you to exist in the same space while trying to outdo one another, but to have it remain a friendly battle for attention, but very rarely does it play out in this manner when one artist feels as though they’re being prevented from reaching the top.
There’s no need for barbed comments that come across as disparaging, but that ultimately becomes part of the process, and some of the biggest names in rock music have spent their entire careers exchanging insults in an attempt to save face and establish themselves as the more dominant force.
When some artists get older, wiser and more mature, they realise that apologising and offering an olive branch is for the best, and living in a world where things are a lot more harmonious turns out to be far more pleasurable than slinging mud at one another for eternity. It isn’t commonplace for bridges to be repaired in this manner, but bad blood does have a tendency to be resolved when artists realise they no longer have a good reason to be embroiled in playground-style taunts.
Pete Townshend was no stranger to this, having made several comments about his fellow rock icons at the height of The Who’s popularity, but despite this, he realised that he could manage to get away with it through being the big man and offering an apology later in life, and claimed during a 2022 interview with The Los Angeles Times that while he still stood by some of his remarks, others he felt remorse over having expressed.
“I once said some stuff about Led Zeppelin,” he claimed, “that I’d never heard one of their songs, and about Eric Clapton, that after his experience as an addict, he’d never play as well as when he was a young man, and in every case, I’ve been forgiven. I suppose that’s because people see you as a big-mouth rockstar, and this is what they expect from you – to be full of shit.”
He and Clapton may well be on better terms now, but then again, apologising still appears to be a hard thing for Townshend to do, given how many of his own bandmates he’s managed to upset in more recent times, and how it all but shattered their relationship in advance of their farewell tour. Townshend simply can’t help being outspoken, and if that means he struggles to maintain relationships in a fickle industry, it’s hard to see that really being much of a concern for him.
