The first recording that saw The Who master feedback
Very few could argue against the claim that The Who remain one of the most influential bands of all time. Love or loathe them, in their heyday, they helped push rock music into the future by challenging social and artistic mores with their unapologetic approach, which manifested on record and in the live setting. Whilst the tales of exploding drum kits and Lincoln Continentals diving into swimming pools are those most closely aligned with the narrative of The Who, their disassembling of the status quo is also found coursing throughout their early material.
When speaking to Guitar World in 1997, The Kinks guitarist Dave Davies reflected on the impact of The Who in their prime. The guitarist noted that his fellow Londoners were a different class back then, with it clear to him that they had set “out to rewrite the rules”.
“It didn’t surprise me when they came out with Tommy. Because I’d met them briefly at gigs, and they were a bit more. I hate to say the word intelligent. But more focused than a lot of the other bands back then,” Davies explained. “Most of the bands The Kinks toured with were just in it for the fun. To make money and buy a nice car. But with The Who, you got the feeling that they were out to rewrite the rules. Which attracted me, because I was trying to do the same thing,” Davies added.
The band were so pioneering that their second single, 1965’s ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’, contained a historic guitar performance from Pete Townshend, which would prove to be majorly influential. Whilst the song is noted for its call-and-response vocals and the lyrics celebrating the freedom of the band’s generation, the guitarist’s use of feedback makes it really stand out.
Famously, the song was composed by frontman Roger Daltrey and Townshend, marking it the only time they wrote together. Whilst this is a significant element, the history books also show that the song contains some of the first-ever recorded guitar feedback, establishing a legacy like very others in contemporary music. Whilst the feedback was not the first to be heard on a record, with The Beatles’ beating the Londoners to it with 1964’s ‘I Feel Fine’, Townshend’s use of the noise was much more impactful.
Rather than including a brief flirtation with the sound at the start of the song, like in The Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’, Townshend delved headfirst into the feedback. He weaponised the noise and, by attempting to control it, showed that it could be utilised on a much more expansive scale than earlier tracks that had attempted to do so. In many ways, noise-rock, shoegaze and other genres that rely heavily on feedback can be traced back to Townshend’s performance here.
Reflecting on its impact, Roger Daltrey told Uncut in October 2001: “We were doing this feedback stuff, even before that. We’d be doing blues songs and they’d turn into this freeform, feedbacky, jazzy noise. Pete was getting all these funny noises, banging his guitar against the speakers. Basically, the act that Hendrix is famous for came from Townshend, pre-‘I Can’t Explain.'”
“‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’ was the first song when we attempted to get that noise onto a record and that was a good deal of time before Hendrix had even come to England,” he continued. “The American pressing plant sent it back thinking it was a mistake. We said, ‘No, this is the f—ing noise we want. CUT IT LOUD!'”
