Pete Townshend names the artist who has made the most beautiful songs
To Pete Townshend, there are certain stars that are used as “buzzword names”. By that, he means names that are heard so often as they’re talked about, rightfully, as the best of the best. But how many people know the name but not the music? When it comes to one well-known name in particular, Townshend is demanding more attention be paid to his songwriting.
Of course, he makes a good point. There are some artists whose names become a household commodity. They become merely part of the furniture of musical history, yet somehow, in their lofty popularity, their talent gets lost.
“In some cases, we need musicians of the Joni Mitchell and Neil Young era, the Stones, the Beatles, the Who, and everybody to remember that there are loads of people that just haven’t heard anything that they’ve done,” Townshend explained. “They are buzzword names. They don’t know.”
This point is a good one. It would be tough to find someone who has never heard of The Beatles, but it would be easy to find someone who has never heard ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ or ‘A Day In The Life’ or any number of their best works beyond the top hits. The same goes for Joni Mitchell. Her name is known worldwide, but how many people have delved deeper than ‘A Case Of You’ or have even hit play on Blue at all?
For Townshend, that isn’t enough. It’s not enough for a person’s name to be well known while their music is slowly forgotten or lost to time. He argues that celebrity isn’t an equivalent of actual appreciation and that these names deserve not only notoriety but genuine admiration, respect, and celebration.
In particular, he wants that for Neil Young. As Young gets older and his voice admittedly fades to a shell of its former glory, Townshend implores people to dig deeper into his discography and get to know his work on a level beyond the top line.
“If you go on YouTube, you’re likely to hear Neil Young at the Bridge School wailing away with his old Gretsch with a voice like an old lady,” he said, talking about his role in the annual Bridge School Benefit, which he helped organise between 1986 and 2016. As he helped, year upon year, to bring together some of the biggest names in musical history for a charitable weekend, it furthered awareness of Young’s name. But The Who’s guitarist wants to make sure that it’s not just the name that’s remembered.
“What we don’t know is that he’s written some of the most beautiful songs that have ever been written, and also some of the most rocking,” he said, honouring Young as one of the best songwriters in history and a firm favourite of his.
To Townshend, Young has always stood out as a truly special and authentic star as he once counted him in a short list of the only true rockstars when he said, “There are very few people truly authentic to the cause: David Byrne. Mick Jagger. Neil Young. Joni Mitchell. Deborah Harry.” But he’s passionate about reminding people that what makes a true artist is not notoriety or their name but the quality of the work they put out, demanding that more people pay attention to Young’s efforts rather than his status.
