The one guitarist Pete Townshend knew he could never match: “That I could ever come close”
Rock music is supercharged with brutal braggadocio. Look at every guitarist, drummer, singer, and perhaps even the odd bassist, who has been considered an icon, and see within their eyes a flicker of ego, of desire to be the best, to be remembered, to create a legacy. It burned in the eyes of Pete Townshend from the first moment he set foot on stage.
A working-class lad with a talent for songwriting, Townshend picked up his guitar and used it like a weapon. He used riffs to slash through the monotony of life and create a band that would become world-beating legends. The Who were an outfit built on the back of Townshend and his talent, but even that wasn’t quite enough to topple one of the scene’s legendary kings.
At the dawn of the British Invasion, Townshend was known for taking rock into previously unknown areas. Although The Who may have roots deep in the sounds of rock and R&B at the time, the sheer volume behind Townshend’s amplifiers was enough to make people pay attention to what they were doing, culminating in a spectacle whenever he broke his guitar. Although Townshend loved making rock more than background noise, he knew he was living in the shadow of one guitarist.
When looking at the way that Townshend played guitar, though, it would never be the same thing twice in the band’s early days. Inspired by the various art experiments he was getting into at school, Townshend thought that the guitar could mean more than just notes on a page, making the most out of distortion and feedback.
In an attempt to wake fans up from their usual state, songs like ‘My Generation’ would become ground zero for punk artists years later, focused as much on nastiness as it was on melody. Although Townshend was already making a name for himself by the time the psychedelic movement kicked in, no one was prepared for what happened once Jimi Hendrix came on the scene.
Decked out in the most colourful psychedelic garb, Hendrix would reinvent how most fans thought of the electric guitar in a rock context. Putting together influences from soul, rock, and funk, Hendrix’s playing was always from the heart, almost like he was taking bits and pieces of songs out of the air and turning them into timeless works of art onstage.
Looking at his stage presentation, a few tricks were vaguely reminiscent of The Who, including his penchant for turning his guitar into an extension of himself. Regardless of traditional rock and roll etiquette, Hendrix was known to play with his teeth and often held the guitar behind his head to play his leads, turning the rock show from a concert into a borderline circus performance.
Even though Townshend would often find himself competing with Hendrix on the circuit, he knew that he would never be able to match his talent behind the fretboard, telling Rolling Stone, “With Jimi, I didn’t have any envy; I never had any sense that I could ever come close. I remember feeling quite sorry for Eric [Clapton], who thought that he might actually be able to emulate Jimi”.
Despite Townshend using his instrument as an expression of anger, he admitted that Hendrix was the first guitarist he saw who could extract beauty from his instrument, making the simple blues tunes of his youth sound like the most emotionally heartbreaking thing in the world. That beauty would also show itself whenever Hendrix took to the stage.
While The Who had been known for lighting up the stage with Townshend smashing his guitar, Hendrix’s famous guitar burning at the Monterey Pop Festival became known as one of the greatest moments in rock music, Townshend may have wanted to find the meaning behind the music in his prime, but Hendrix was setting his guitar alight to surrender to the musical gods.
Of course, to compare the two men is a pointless act. While rock music is certainly competitive, Hendrix and Townshend would have happily agreed that their styles were different, their visions even more so and that, without question, that was the very purpose of music.
