“I was so struck”: Pete Townshend on his biggest guitar hero
What makes a good guitarist? For many, it’s technical proficiency and good intuitive know-how. In that respect, several names come to mind, like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and so on. However, what about those who took the innovative work of rock originators and injected a clean, forward-thinking feel? According to Pete Townshend, that’s where the real expertise falls.
Growing up, Townshend was more exposed to the power of traditional guitar playing than perhaps anybody else. This gave him a grave understanding of how the instrument was used to create explosive atmospheres, often for nothing other than to incite joy and fun. As he explained during an interview with Apple Music, “I was the child of the guy who played saxophone in a post-war dance band. He knew what his music was for – it was for post-war, and it was for dancing with a woman that you might end up marrying. It was about romance, dreams, fantasy.”
Interestingly, in The Who’s broader legacy, Townshend’s virtuosic guitar playing can often be an overlooked aspect of the package, but that’s easy to reckon with when pinpointing the countless layers his guitar contributions injected into the band’s broader sound. After all, when something appears so heavily ingrained in the wider sonic tapestry, it’s easy to forget it’s even there at all.
Still, Townshend’s guitar playing should never be an overlooked aspect of the band’s expansive palette, not just in terms of his technical and rhythmic prowess but with the way the band experimented with strategies and techniques others had yet to come close to mastering. Take some of their more obvious hits, for instance, like ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘My Generation’—there’s always energy there, whether it’s compounded by aggressive chords or expert over-layering.
Many of these techniques are simple yet executed alongside other strumming or broader arrangements, which is something Townshend and the others borrowed from innovators in the early rock spaces. For instance, many of his techniques are complex, but they each stem from the same kind of emotional and dynamic drive used by the forefathers of rock ‘n’ roll.
This is also why he appreciated those who emerged from the same scene or line of thinking—in his view, to love and understand the originators was to know how to honour the power of the guitar while driving it into new realms. This is also why he gravitated towards Bruce Welch, founder and rhythm guitarist of The Shadows, whose work in the 1950s and 1960s contributed to defining the role of the guitar in the rock genre.
When asked by the New Statesman who his guitar hero is, he recalled being “struck” the first time he heard ‘Apache’, saying, “Bruce Welch [is my hero], the guitarist in the Shadows.”
He added, “I was 15 when I first heard ‘Apache’, and I was so struck by it. Bruce and I had an interview together for a TV show about the Shadows, and he couldn’t accept that he was my hero. I couldn’t emphasise it enough.”
Townshend expanded on his appreciation for Welch in the special documentary The Shadows At Sixty, in which he stated Welch was instrumental in inspiring him to pick up a guitar, with ‘Apache’ being “more pivotal for me than Elvis Presley.” The thing “about ‘Apache’ is, it was us, it was the British,” he continued. “It was our music. It was our band, and we were the glue that knitted this stuff together. It woke me up.”
Apache is consistently lauded, with claims that it is the best instrumental piece in the world, and its impact on Townshend can be heard in many of The Who’s subsequent hits. Ultimately, it demonstrated the power of rhythmic syncopation in rock ‘n’ roll and showed that finger-picking could be both technical and simple while telling a deeply emotional story.
