“I’m not concerned either way”: The rock giants Pete Townshend thought got worse over time
Pete Townshend was always a firm believer in the power of rock and roll. Many people enter the business only for the fame or the money, but Townshend knew that something happened on a visceral level whenever he plugged his guitar into a Marshall stack and felt the energy radiating off of the crowd during every performance of ‘My Generation’. With music that powerful, it was only a matter of time before someone started making something deeper than party music, but the musician knew there was a right and wrong way to go about it.
Yes, people were willing to push the envelope before him, like The Beatles, but Townshend opened up the playing field for what could be done musically. Most people could tolerate the Fab Four making a song with a massive sing-along like ‘Hey Jude’, but Tommy felt like The Who co-founder had finally grasped his idea of a rock opera, to the point where the entire record needed to be heard from start to finish to understand what was happening with this deaf, mute and blind boy.
But there was always a hidden subtext behind every story the songwriter told. It’s easy to look at a record like Tommy or Quadrophenia as a work of fiction about people who are at a crossroads in their lives, but the values he imbues his characters with are also subtle pieces of himself. He may never have known what it was like to be physically disabled, but everyone that has experienced adolescence knows what it’s like to feel uncomfortable in their skin and feel like there’s no way to fix their problems. So, really, Townshend’s songs are a way for him to exorcise his demons.
He knew that was never going to get anywhere trying to be a punk and let out his emotions as a self-destructive person, but in music, he at least had something to show for his troubles, whether that was spiritual on ‘Baba O’Riley’ or his inability to express love on ‘Behind Blue Eyes’.
It’s easy to see music as a form of therapy like that, but Townshend found he had little tolerance for songs that seemed absent-mindedly happy. It’s one thing to face his problems head-on, and when listening to other people tackle philosophy like Jon Anderson, he knew that those empty platitudes were bound to slip right off his brain.
“I don’t like Yes at all. With so many changes in the line-up, Yes is Jon Anderson’s band, and he might be guilty of much of that wishy-washy stuff they churn out.”
Pete Townshend
Despite Yes releasing some fantastic music around the same time The Who were climbing the charts, Townshend found nothing to relate to, saying, “I don’t like Yes at all. I used to like them when Peter Banks was in the line-up, because, apart from being extremely visual, he also played excellent guitar. With so many changes in the line-up, Yes is Jon Anderson’s band, and he might be guilty of much of that wishy-washy stuff they churn out. Maybe he believes in the old mystical work, and maybe poetry moves him along—but I`m not concerned either way.”
Then again, are we all going to ignore the moments when he could get a little bit sappy as well? A song like ‘Wondrous Stories’ might be a bit too lighthearted for fans who were brought up listening to Black Sabbath, but a song like ‘So Sad About Us’ from A Quick One isn’t that far off from some of the diabetic sweetness that Anderson put into many of his finest works.
But it’s all about the delivery, as far as Townshend was concerned. He wanted to make music that shook people and made everyone feel the kind of self-destructive feelings going on inside him every day, but when listening to Yes, someone’s either going to have one of the most transcendent musical experiences of their lives or hear someone talk about how little problems they have with the world.
