The one artist Pete Townshend called “the great American guitar player”
It’s hard to think of the legacy of rock guitar without bringing up Pete Townshend.
Despite not having the most technical ability of any other guitarist of his time, he always knew how to get the right amount of attitude out of whatever guitar he was working with, which practically gave birth to hard rock and punk in one go. But even in a post-Hendrix world, Townshend knew that the world had only just begun to figure out what they could do with the six-string.
If you think about it, the amount of ground covered by Townshend was only a drop in the bucket for what the instrument could do. He could certainly harness feedback in a way that no one else could and would occasionally throw in different techniques that were a little avant-garde, but everyone from Jerry Garcia to George Harrison to Jimi Hendrix had been pushing the instrument far further than he ever could.
But when the first followers in The Who started making bands of their own, it wasn’t like they were looking to play with a whole lot of flash. Every single self-respecting punk fan would have considered The Who one of the first unofficial punk acts, but when compared to the rest of the guitar community, it wasn’t like Joe Strummer or Steve Jones were reinventing the wheel when it came to the guitar, even if they had great songs behind them.
When albums like Live At Leeds came out, though, Eddie Van Halen heard something different in Townshend’s playing. He knew that the guitar genius was simply making his own voice on the instrument, and when Eddie started to toy around with his brother’s guitar, he could get the same feeling out of the instrument no matter what came into his head. He was only experimenting, but he probably didn’t expect the amount of followers that came along with him
No one had heard anything like the tapping solos going on in tracks like ‘Eruption’ and ‘Hot For Teacher’, and when people saw it in front of their eyes, they were absolutely transfixed. This was one of the most forward-thinking guitarists since Hendrix, and while Townshend was nowhere near his level of expertise on a technical level, he knew that no other guitarist came close out of America.
Compared to all of his musical successors, Townshend viewed Eddie as in a completely different league, saying after his passing, “Every shredder today has lost their Master Teacher and Guide. As he got older he became more generous and amusing and self-effacing about his enormous gifts. He shared so many tricks through guitar workshops, online and on TV shows. Immense talent. The Great American Guitar Player. I was hoping he might be President one day.”
And while Townshend wasn’t going to be doing any tapping licks or anything, there was some overlap between their styles if you knew where to look for it. Eddie definitely liked turning his amps out as loud as he could the same way that Townshend could, and while their version of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ is far different than what Townshend may have expected, it was all done to praise the legends that came before him.
If nothing else, Eddie was the kind of person who gave artists like Townshend hope for the future. He knew that rock needed to progress forward if it was going to succeed, and whereas everyone copied Eddie a little bit too much, it was only because there was so much ground he covered during his time on this Earth.
