The song Pete Townshend calls “the ultimate record of all time”
In the golden age of rock, Pete Townshend was never the traditional idea of a guitar hero. When talking about his time in The Who, Townshend would say that he was more interested in pushing the instrument to its limits through raw aggression, inventing the idea of punk guitar playing through the way he abused his instrument. Although Townshend was about creating war whenever he took the stage, his favourite records were about getting into a groove.
While the band may have been one of the premiere rock acts to come out of the British Invasion, Townshend was far more interested in the artistic value of music. Rather than playing the same music that Chuck Berry and Little Richard were accustomed to, songs like ‘My Generation’ were about making something that stood as a statement rather than just a catchy dance song.
It’s that kind of spirit that would eventually drive Townshend to make even more expansive concepts in his following few albums. Compared to the straight-ahead rock and roll of the band’s debut album, The Who Sell Out and Tommy would be the first time Townshend would create a conceptual piece of music, telling a story in the listener’s mind through orchestral arrangements and an expansive storyline.
Aside from traditional rock, Townshend was also heavily into the idea of R&B. Looking back on the band’s debut release, My Generation, many songs tend to follow the same formula that Townshend heard out of the different flavours of music in America, going so far as to cover acts like James Brown on record like ‘Please Please Please’.
As far as his favourite soul act is concerned, though, Townshend always loved Booker T. and the MG’s. Operating out of Stax Records in Memphis, the band brought some of the most prominent soul musicians to life throughout the 1960s while also finding time to create their own masterpieces like ‘Green Onions’.
When talking about their trademark instrumental tune, Townshend thought it was unlike anything else he had ever heard, telling Jann Wenner, “No music gives me as much pleasure as listening to Booker T. ‘Green Onions’ is my ultimate record of all time, and the guitar work is so tasteful; it’s everything that I want to do.”
While guitarist Steve Cropper has been known to become a musical chameleon when working in the studio, his work on the final track is the epitome of taste. While there isn’t much going on with the chords, the way Cropper weaves together melodic lines over the track is unlike anything else that was happening in the scene, going on to be copied by both rockers and the beginnings of neo-soul as well.
Even though Townshend had a completely different approach to playing the guitar, he admitted that even Cropper probably didn’t know how good he truly was, explaining, “They’re so soulful without knowing it. They are playing them straight, and they are playing them off-the-cuff. They just happen to be totally right. They don’t know this, but nobody expects to be totally right”. Whereas The Who were about breaking down people’s expectations, Booker T. and the MG’s were about giving people what they didn’t know they wanted.
