The musician Pete Townshend said could do anything: “He has that armoury”
As someone whose game has always revolved around revolutionising rhythmic grooves in British rock, Pete Townshend has no time for the more flashy guitar players or the ones who prioritise fast, complex riffs without ever finding their footing in the real world of music.
As he once explained to Loudwire, most of them in the current landscape are too focused on appearing a certain way for bite-sized TikTok audiences and not focused enough on what makes their craft worthwhile or meaningful. In his view, these types of players need to find their place “somewhere other than Instagram”, or any other place that proves they have far more depth than a simple internet fad.
Funnily enough, this scathing observation of the current social media landscape and its impact on today’s musicians drew comparisons to the legendary prodigy himself, Prince. Now, when we think of Prince, most of us think about how he raised the bar not only for blending different styles of music but also for showing people what live music was supposed to be all about.
But in Townshend’s view, while Prince was undoubtedly one of the greatest guitar players in the world, and someone who could “do an extraordinary shred” while playing a soulful track and getting “from one bit of blues to the other”, he was also “a bit flash… Maybe it was just to show he could do it,” said Townshend.
That said, when you look at what the rocker has said about the Purple One in the past, there’s more to his claims than what appears to be simple dismissiveness about Prince’s so-called pretentiousness. In fact, Townshend has previously praised Prince’s multi-instrumentalist approach, essentially arguing that there’s nothing he couldn’t do, so much so that he sits in a lane entirely occupied by himself and no one else.
“Look at somebody like Prince,” Townshend told Guitarist in 1990. “He has that armoury. He can write an orchestral score, sit at a piano and read a part, knock out a fairly good version of the Moonlight Sonata or study Gershwin if he likes.”
He added, “Then you’ve got this impetuous, imp-like character grafting all this intuitive waif-like feel. You come up with that kind of magical quality.”
With this in mind, when you consider his other remark about Prince being “flashy”, it seems more like a reflection from someone who has forgotten just how much of an impact Prince had, not only on the world of rock, but on Townshend himself. After all, Townshend didn’t just praise the way he could pull off literally anything, he also once recalled going to see the movie Purple Rain with Eric Clapton in 1984 and being completely blown away by how he “folded autobiographical references so elegantly into his film”.
He also revealed how Purple Rain ultimately inspired him to make his own location-focused project, encouraging him to immediately start generating ideas around how he could bring to life a film based on his concept album, White City: A Novel. Specifically, Townshend took different elements of Purple Rain, like how Prince had appeared “deliberately romantic and distant”, while striving to make White City appear both entertaining and authentic.
Therefore, it’s clear that his comments about his impact and capabilities were more of an extension of his views on the current music scene, and how often modern guitar players will focus too heavily on image or how things appear rather than venturing beneath the surface and making music or concepts that actually stay with you.
