“What a fucking prat”: Why Pete Townshend despised The Who’s rock and roll ways
Rock and roll is a movement built upon adolescent angst. Even in the 1950s, when rock first hit the airwaves, it was the sole preserve of rebellious teenagers looking to ‘stick it to the man’ and distance themselves from the previous generation. During the 1960s, the angsty nature of rock became utterly unavoidable, with groups like The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Who providing a voice to the disenfranchised youth of post-war Britain. Looking back, though, the extent of this attitude brings some regrets for Who songwriter Pete Townshend.
A disciple of rock and roll rebellion from a young age, Townshend initially set his sights on becoming an art student, but the grip of rock was too great to ignore. So, immersing himself in the blossoming mod subculture during the early 1960s, it did not take long before the young songwriter found himself at the forefront of a brand new group, who would later christen themselves The Who. With that group, the songwriter would quickly become one of British rock’s most original and angry young voices.
Songs like ‘My Generation’ became anthems for the youth of the 1960s, who felt no connection to the stuffy ways of their parents, seeking instead to subvert those values and expectations. Along with the songs themselves, The Who’s onstage attitude defined a lot of that 1960s angst, with the band’s habit of destroying their instruments and amplifiers at the end of gigs becoming synonymous with the youth culture of the swinging sixties era.
Townshend and the gang lived the archetypal life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Taking their unique brand of mod rock on tours around the globe, The Who left a trail of destruction in their wake, smashing up hotel rooms and leaving concert venues looking like a teenage wasteland, if you’ll excuse the pun. Although a lot of this destruction came at the hands of The Who’s anarchic drummer, Keith Moon, Townshend threw his fair share of stones, too.
Back in 2019, the elder statesman of British rock reflected on that early period of rock and roll anarchy back in the 1960s. Having matured somewhat since then, the songwriter can only look back with a certain sense of regret. Speaking to The Big Issue, he revealed, “As the television went through the window, I would look at Keith Moon and go, what a fucking prat. What a waste of time.”
Moon might have been the ringleader of The Who’s chaotic lifestyle, but Townshend has certainly been known to throw one or two television sets out of windows throughout his long and illustrious career. What’s more, the guitarist seems to have been the driving force behind The Who’s official policy to smash up their instruments at the end of virtually every gig – the idea being that it would prevent them from having to play encores.
At the time, Townshend attracted some criticism for these end-of-gig finales. “People still say that I should never have smashed instruments,” he shared. While he looks back on the band’s hotel room antics with regret, he also affirms that it was that destructive attitude and persona that made The Who so infamous during their early period. “Fuck off,” he declared. “It’s how I got you to listen to me. I was in it for the art. I felt we should confine our antics to the stage. Getting into auto-destruction was straight out of art college.”
Townshend is most probably correct in his assumption that The Who’s wild antics both on and offstage brought them to a much wider audience, but the group’s appeal was most often found in his songwriting. Even after the initial angst of his 1960s adolescence had settled down, Townshend managed to keep The Who relevant thanks to his own incredible songwriting skill, best exemplified by pioneering rock operas like Tommy or Quadrophenia. You can only get so far by chucking TVs out of windows.
