The concert Pete Townshend described as a “cosmic experience”
There are many similarities between Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend. Both are heroes of their time, countercultural legends who helped bring the world forward via their virtuosity as guitarists and relentless creativity. Added to their skill as guitar heroes, both were among the most electrifying performers of their day. Townshend had a predilection for destroying his amps and guitars, with Hendrix also notoriously setting his guitar on fire.
Not only was he their resident guitar hero, but Pete Townshend was also the main creative driving force behind English heroes The Who. Despite the brilliance of the other band members, vocalist Roger Daltrey, drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle, it was he who masterminded all of their best moments. His role in the band is akin to Jimmy Page’s in Led Zeppelin, and without him, they would not be the cultural powerhouse we all know and love today.
As for Jimi Hendrix, his reputation precedes him. Arguably the greatest guitarist of all time, he was both the ice-cool and the anger of the counterculture personified, and from ‘Purple Haze’ to his cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, he produced numerous iconic moments over his short career. It’s a testament to his life and work that they remain as influential as they were over 50 years ago.
Famously, when Hendrix arrived on the scene, he caught all of the most lauded guitarists of the day off guard, including Townshend, and showed them that the time for complacency was over and that the future had arrived. Genuine innovation and a disdain for the mundane were now the name of the game, as popular music took itself to the next level.
Although Hendrix and Townshend share many evident similarities, when speaking on the How to How podcast in 2020, Roger Daltrey claimed that Hendrix lifted much of his performance style from Townshend.
He said: “Jimi was an absolutely amazing performer. But what people don’t realise is that a lot of Jimi’s showmanship, when he started digging his guitar into the amps and the feedback and all that, most of that he copied from Townshend. So by the time we got to Monterey in ’67, Pete’s going, ‘Well, that’s my whole show!’ And it was always a great finale”.
Despite Daltrey’s protestation, Townshend was a great admirer of his late peer, and in one interview, he described watching Jimi Hendrix live for the first time as a “cosmic experience” and showered much praise on the ‘Purple Haze’ musician.
“Well, that was a cosmic experience,” he told Rolling Stone about that life-changing experience. “It was at Blazes, the nightclub in London. He was pretty amazing. Now I think you have to have seen Jimi Hendrix to understand what he was really about”.
He continued: “He was a wonderful player. He wasn’t a great singer but he had a beautiful voice. A smokey voice, a really sexy voice… When you saw him in the live arena he was like a shaman. It’s the only word I can use. I don’t know if it’s the right term. Light seemed to come out of him. He would walk onstage and suddenly he would explode into light. He was very graceful”.
