The Beatles album Pete Townshend called “inconclusive”
Alongside The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, The Who was among the most important rock ‘n’ roll bands to stagger in the Woodstock hangover period. In the mid-1960s, The Who proved to be a vital cog in the British invasion machine, known for their explosive performances that would often end in a scene of all-out destruction, with guitarist Pete Townshend smashing his pricey guitars to splinters.
During their early rise to fame, bands like The Who, The Zombies and The Kinks slipped hit singles into the charts here and there, but The Beatles and The Rolling Stones ruled the canopy. With The Beatles to thank for breaking several barriers during the early years of the British invasion, rivals often harboured mixed feelings about their Liverpudlian rivals.
As The Who’s central creative force, Pete Townshend was often harshly critical of The Beatles. “This afternoon, John [Entwistle] and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles — in which the voices come out of the one side, and the backing track comes out of the other. When you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy,” he said in a 1966 interview.
In 1982, Townshend took another swipe at the Fab Four in an interview with Rolling Stone. When Paul McCartney’s recent album, Tug of War, arose in conversation, the interviewer posited that the release had “virtually nothing to do with rock and roll“. In response, Townshend rhetorically questions whether McCartney “ever really had anything to do with rock?”
“No, he never did,” Townshend added, replying to himself. “You know, I could sit down and have a conversation with Paul about rock and roll, and we’d be talking about two different things.”
Several decades later, the Who guitarist seemed to have softened up in his assessment of The Beatles. “I wasn’t crazy impressed with the Beatles when I first heard them,” he told Rolling Stone in 2019. “But I loved them.”
In retrospect, Townshend seems to appreciate The Beatles’ role as the muzzle of a Trojan horse. Like many of his contemporaries, he often uses the Beatles’ work as a yardstick by which to measure his own successes and failures.
In his 2012 book Who I Am: A Memoir, Townshend discussed his band’s 1967 psychedelic-era album, The Who Sell Out. “The record company had to wait until December to get clearances for the commercial brands mentioned on The Who Sell Out,” he wrote. “Despite its ambition, some poor material — songs that lacked teeth — was included in the half-cooked package.”
Townshend used The Beatles’ film soundtrack for Magical Mystery Tour as a yardstick. “Like The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, our album seemed potentially brilliant but ultimately inconclusive,” he said. “When it was finally released. [The Who Sell Out] was The Who’s slowest-selling record in the UK so far.”
Townshend brought up the psychedelic soundtrack album elsewhere in the book while comparing The Beatles with The Beach Boys. “Brian Wilson went on to attempt a masterwork he called Smile, but lost it to mental disorder and over-ambition,” he wrote. “The Beatles went on to work on the prematurely curtailed Magical Mystery Tour, which we supposed was meant to be the film version of Sgt. Pepper.”
“Both were wonderful, but both made clear that these pop alchemists had failed to produce anything but gold: they hadn’t produced the love or passion of Broadway, nor inspired the humour or hope of Beat poetry, Bebop or Pete Seeger’s Hudson River Peace Boat,” Townshend appraised.
Listen to ‘I Can See For Miles’, from The Who Sell Out and ‘I Am The Walrus’ from Magical Mystery Tour below.
