Pete Townshend discusses the “most significant” punk band
The Who guitarist Pete Townshend has seen rock music develop markedly since the band first broke onto the scene in 1965. The genre has taken on many different guises in this time, metamorphosing from a controversial sensation by and for the younger generation to a ubiquitous field with many subcategories. One significant moment in the timeline that Townshend has examined numerous times is punk.
As he admits, Townshend has a somewhat complicated relationship with punk. This is because the cultural tidal wave it caused had bands like The Who and their classic rock peers in its sights, as they no longer represented the youth but the establishment they had railed against years before. Whilst Townshend could see a parallel between The Who in their prime and groups like the Sex Pistols, he was forced to re-evaluate his feelings about the movement after discovering that he was one of their targets. Accordingly, the British Invasion star would go on to describe punk as something akin to living “hell”.
Despite it being an uncomfortable chapter for Pete Townshend, he was still a fan of the music. He revealed this to Time in 1995 when he explained the importance of artists such as Sex Pistols, The Clash and even Elvis Costello. The guitarist was so full of praise for this trio that he described them as “extraordinary” before picking the “most significant” of the lot.
The Who man said: “Three extraordinary artists like the Sex Pistols, The Clash and Elvis Costello under the banner of punk is really an indication of how categories fail, miserably to attend to. What was actually happening at the time was the need for another tidal wave. I suppose that everybody wanted one band to do it like it happened to The Beatles. It turned out not to be one band but a lot of bands.”
Townshend then chose the “most significant” of the lot, and somewhat surprisingly, given their ardent stance against the establishment, this was Sex Pistols. He said: “The Sex Pistols were obviously the most significant because they were the first and because (Malcolm) McLaren was organizing them and allowing their anarchy. He gave them the space to play, the space to be anarchic. But also because I think, Paul Cook and Steve Jones in the band are great rock and roll players. They say they couldn’t play, but they actually could play very, very well. John Lydon is a fucking star! You know, he is a star! He is just one of the world stars, you see him and you know: ‘He is going to be famous'”.
Noting the difference between Sex Pistols and The Clash, he continued: “The Clash are different because The Clash were kind of a boy’s band. To some extent, like The Who were in the very early days. You know, a gang band. Kinda like a fellowship band, they gathered together people, and they kind of went around following them around.”
“I suppose that Costello was the brains in charge of the whole thing, I don’t know,” he added. “But that’s a summing up of what happened. It was very, very exciting, challenging, and there was a hell of a lot of pain there for Pete, I must say (laughs). Because I kind of welcomed, challenged and wanted it to happen. Then I realised that the person that they wanted to shoot was me”.
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