The painful mistake Pete Townshend made with Jimi Hendrix: “I always regretted”
The Who’s Pete Townshend has been involved in the rock business for 60 years and has witnessed it all. Not only has Townshend contributed to history by performing at legendary events like Woodstock, but he has also seen the emergence and demise of countless figures.
Townshend’s longevity is a testament to his talent and good fortune. As the guitarist knows the hard way, rock ‘n’ roll can be a cruel game, and its life expectancy is much shorter than that of most professions. With The Who, Keith Moon and John Entwistle both sadly died long before their time, which is no anomaly.
One of the greatest tragedies is the death of the great Jimi Hendrix. The American was only 27 when his name was called, and although he was active for just a short number of years, Hendrix created a legacy that will live for eternity. The guitarist’s emergence came in 1966 when he moved to London after being discovered by Chas Chandler. This chance encounter provided him with a platform to make a name for himself, which he grabbed with both hands.
At the time, The Who had recently broken into the mainstream but remained deeply connected to London’s thriving club scene. As a result, they were among the first to witness Hendrix’s extraordinary talent, with Townshend even going out of his way to support London’s newest arrival. Townshend viewed Hendrix as a formidable force and quickly became captivated by his brilliance. However, Townshend harbours one regret from his time with Hendrix: a single piece of advice he offered, which would later have catastrophic consequences.
Unlike Townshend’s usual remorses, this wasn’t related to him speaking out of line. From their first interaction, Townshend greatly respected Hendrix, and his words to the guitarist were wholly positive. Nevertheless, Townshend’s guilt over his comments derives, somewhat selfishly, from how these words of wisdom would come back to slap him in the face.
Admittedly, as The Who had begun to taste the highs of fame, which had dramatically altered their schedules, Townshend and Hendrix’s paths rarely crossed at the beginning. However, Townshend clearly recalls every moment spent in the guitarist’s company.
As well as hanging out at similar haunts in London, they were signed to the same record label. Hendrix looked up to The Who for advice whenever he got a chance to share a bill with them, and Townshend was happy to oblige. “Well, that was a cosmic experience,” Townshend shared with Rolling Stone in 2019 of his first meeting with Hendrix. “It was at Blazes, the nightclub in London. He was pretty amazing. Now I think you have to have seen Jimi Hendrix to understand what he was really about.”
“He was a wonderful player,” Townshend stated. “He wasn’t a great singer but he had a beautiful voice. A smokey voice, a really sexy voice… When you saw him in the live arena he was like a shaman. It’s the only word I can use. I don’t know if it’s the right term. Light seemed to come out of him. He would walk onstage, and suddenly, he would explode into light. He was very graceful.”
Despite all the superlatives he offered up in Hendrix’s direction, one regret looms large over the encounters he shared with the late musician. “What I did for Jimi – which I always regretted doing for Jimi,” he recalled to Ultimate Classic Rock Radio. “His manager brought him to meet me at a recording studio when he first arrived and he asked me what equipment to buy. I told him that I’d been using a mixture of an amplifier called Sound City. Which was a Marshall substitute, with a Marshall, to get this really kind of slabby sound.”
The addition to Hendrix’s set-up provided him with the equipment to match The Who’s immense stage set-up, which they had previously kept a guarded secret in the music industry.
For Townshend, he soon realised Hendrix didn’t need any additional assistance, and he’d just given him the ammunition to make every other live act look like a bunch of amateurs.
The guitarist explained: “Then, a couple of weeks later, we did a show with him at the Saville Theatre with him allegedly supporting us. I wish I’d never given him the tip! I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s brilliant enough without being a thousand watts loud!'”
Even without the equipment, the boundless talent that bled out of Hendrix overshadowed anyone impossibly tasked with performing alongside him on the bill. It’s also the reason for his meteorically fast rise to becoming the most iconic guitarist in the world, and Townshend’s advice only helped Hendrix become more powerful.
