The one album Pete Townshend never needed to hear again: “I didn’t want to go back”
Rock and roll had to mean something more when Pete Townshend first started writing music.
He loved the idea of making the catchy three-minute single, but as soon as he hit upon the idea for Tommy with The Who, he wasn’t about to rest on his laurels and continue to make pop-rock songs for the rest of his life. He had dared to dream and won that first gamble, but he felt that some of the biggest names that came to him needed to follow what he said a little more closely if they wanted to keep themselves going.
Because when you look at what Townshend was doing, it was never about the traditional sex, drugs, and rock and roll credence everyone else was talking about. He was more than happy to work on records that focused on themes of love and anger, but some of the finest moments in his career came when he was putting every emotion he could under one roof. Most people could have identified with whatever rock and roll song Kiss was doing around the same time, but they probably didn’t have a song like ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ in them.
And when listening to all of the biggest rock movements that came after Townshend, it’s not like he wasn’t proud of where he stood. Without him playing ‘My Generation’, punk probably wouldn’t have happened in the manner that it did, and even when the biggest arena bands of all time started coming out of the woodwork, it’s not like Bono didn’t consider Townshend a massive influence when he crafted his own ideas.
After all, Townshend was for everything that was righteous about rock and roll, but that didn’t mean that he had to enjoy everything that his Irish descendants were doing. They were clearly on a path to becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, but considering how many times people had talked about them being the second coming of Bowie, Lennon, and Dylan all rolled into one, it’s not like Townshend saw it the same way when he looked at a lot of their greatest works.
Even though The Joshua Tree was a phenomenal record, Townshend said that he could go the rest of his life not having to listen to it again, saying, “I’ve not really jacked into U2 since they became big and famous. I listened to The Joshua Tree once, and I thought it was an impressive record, but I didn’t want to go back to it. It seems to me that what they’re about now is impressing. Around the time of Joshua Tree, I thought, ‘This is a band who are going for the Biggest Band in Rock & Roll mantle – and let them have it.’ I’ve been there, it’s a crock of shit.”
Given how long Townshend had spent in the rock and roll pantheon, it’s not hard to see why he would have become so desensitised to what Bono was doing, though. The rock and roll messiah schtick had already been played out at this point, and given that Townshend had talked about how he saw the inner workings of the music industry on ‘Eminence Front’, it’s not like he was all that thrilled with yet another band that was trying to be one of the biggest names that the music world had ever seen.
But, to their credit, U2 have at least spent the rest of their career making good on their promise as one of the most popular acts in the world. There’s no one that’s considering them to be the biggest punk band in the world or anything, but even if they “sold out” hard in some respects, the fact that they could still wow people with Achtung Baby at the height of grunge showed that they were willing to roll with the punches and take chances that would have almost killed any other rock and roll band.
Because if you’re in this business, you have to be prepared to change on a dime, and even though Bono wasn’t going to give up his persona as a massive presence onstage, he could play with everyone’s expectations when he introduced ‘The Fly’. This was another side of what they could be, and the legacy that they had built with The Joshua Tree had officially been torn down for good.
