The 1977 song The Who’s Pete Townshend believed was the “modern ‘My Generation’”
More often than not, musical scenes, like punk, are born as a reaction to feeling a sense of discontent with the state-of-play in popular culture, and kicking out against the status quo.
This story has played out a million times before, whether it be grunge railing against the popularity of hair metal bands who dominated the 1980s, or even post-punk against punk in its traditional form. Music is an evolutionary process which is constantly changing as younger generations put their stamp on sounds and reshape them in a new image.
While The Who were once the band that came kicking and screaming to bring the world ‘My Generation’, it’s hard to keep up with an anti-establishment image once your generation becomes the very establishment that formerly represented the devil.
By the end of the 1970s, bands like The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks were now the old guard, rather than the voice of the voiceless. The days of them playing at The Marquee Club were a lifetime ago, in musical years, leaving a cultural black hole that was eventually filled by punk, with the aim of ripping apart the rock ‘n’ roll ecosystem.
Although The Who’s Pete Townshend was one of the figures that the aggressive new genre wanted to displace, he couldn’t help admiring the scene. Many bands from the punk era appealed to Townshend, but none more so than the Sex Pistols.
They may have made just one studio album, but the Sex Pistols burned bright and remain one of the most influential British bands of all time. Together, they changed the direction of culture and, whether you loved or loathed them, the Pistols made everyone feel something. Similarly, you could say the exact same thing about ‘My Generation’ more than a decade prior.
Looking back on the punk movement in 1995 with Time, once it had been long dead in the water, Townshend reflected: “The Sex Pistols were obviously the most significant because they were the first and because (Malcolm) McLaren was organising them and allowing their anarchy. He gave them the space to play, the space to be anarchic. Also, because Paul Cook and Steve Jones in the band are great rock ‘n’ roll players. They say they couldn’t play, but they actually could play very, very well”.
When punk was very much still alive in 1979, Townshend also gave the Sex Pistols their flowers, explaining why he felt a kinship towards them and that they were a chip of the old block.
“My favourite album of the period was the Sex Pistols album, which was produced by Chris Thomas, Never Mind The Bollocks,” Townshend said, before gifting them the compliment of the highest order, “I think ‘Pretty Vacant’, that track ‘We’re so pretty… we’re so pretty, vacant’, I think it’s like a modern ‘My Generation’.”
Townshend elaborated: “It’s not as obvious as ‘My Generation’. But it’s the same kind of thing. But the amazing thing was that the concerts were so hectic, so violent. Particularly in the first six months of the thing, when bands like The Clash, The Vibrators and the Sex Pistols, I mean the Sex Pistols couldn’t actually play in public, was that bad, they had to play unannounced concerts”.
Townshend was particularly struck by Johnny Rotten, describing him as “a fucking diamond, and so smart”. He even eyed him up for the lead role in Quadrophenia, but ultimately, producers had other ideas, instead opting for the safer bet of Phil Daniels.
While the Sex Pistols were fuelled by a desire to make bands like The Who part of the past, whether they liked it or not, they were both cut from the same cloth. Their work spoke to different generations; only a Rizla paper separated their core message, and the brand of youthful angst that pushed them to notoriety.
