The one musician Pete Townshend would “sell his soul” for: “This genius”
Pete Townshend wasn’t in the music industry just for the laughs when he picked up a guitar.
He loved the idea of playing rock and roll music, but whereas most people took up playing at the time just to get laid and maybe get a few cool points from their friends, Townshend understood that he had a certain power when he wrote songs that went beyond traditional rock and roll. He knew that music could mean something greater than himself whenever he played, but he felt that some musicians still left him in the dust whenever they went onstage.
Granted, it’s not like most artists were trying to reinvent the wheel when they played rock and roll. The genre was still in its infancy when Townshend was coming up, and even though The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had taken their cues from everyone from The Everly Brothers to Chuck Berry, it made a lot more sense for Townshend to find his inspiration in every single genre that he could think of.
And while The Who didn’t really get the reputation as being an avant-garde band by any stretch, their techniques weren’t exactly normal, either. The Beatles had pioneered feedback on their records, but Townshend was the one who used it as an instrument on its own when ‘My Generation’ came out. They were making the most thunderous music they could, but that didn’t lend itself to everyone taking them seriously.
Everyone might have been calling them protopunk stars when the genre started in 1977, but Townshend had his eye on more sophisticated material. He had to familiarise himself with opera to be able to create a landmark record like Tommy, but in terms of his approach to guitar, he figured that he would use his limitations to emulate the heroes that he had found in the jazz world as well.
The free jazz movement wasn’t that far away from what rock and rollers were doing on guitar, and while Jimi Hendrix was the closest thing that the genre had to a jazz-style technician, Keith Jarrett was the one who truly opened Townshend’s eyes. Here was someone who was in complete control of their musical prowess, and Townshend would have done anything that he could to achieve half the kind of success that he could whenever he hit the stage.
The Who definitely had a lot more fans in the long run, but Jarrett was the first time that Townshend felt he heard a true master performing, saying, “His playing often reduces me to the kind of tears reserved for drunken solitude. I would sell my soul to play like him–and I don’t make that statement lightly. While listening to this genius I was struggling at the upright piano I’d shoehorned into [my girlfriend’s] bedroom, and slowly beginning to find some path of self-expression on the 88 black and white keys.”
All the jazz legends know that it’s more important to find your own sound than try to copy someone else, and while Townshend could look from afar, a lot of the best moments of his career was getting into the same kind of flow that Jarrett could. A lot of those interludes in ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ were about him following the music and letting him guide him some other place, and that’s the kind of art that Jarrett knew like the back of his hand.
While sex, drugs, and rock and roll might be the mantra for everyone that isn’t trying all that hard, Townshend understood that the genre is more about the energy that you can create within every song. People are looking for more than just a bunch of ringing power chords, and when you listen to all of the greatest legends to come out of the genre, you’re hearing people who have surrendered to the music and have let the songs flow through them.
