‘Substitute’: The Who song written as a spoof of a Rolling Stones classic
There was a steady stream of congestion ahead if you were a British rock band motoring towards rebellion in the 1960s. However, Pete Townshend never minded giving way to The Rolling Stones every now and again. “I can’t analyse what I feel about the Stones because I am really an absolute Stones fan, always have been,“ he began as he inducted his buddies into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The windmilling guitarist went on to highlight their talents, citing: “Their early shows were just shocking. Absolutely riveting, stunning, moving, and they changed my life completely. The Beatles were fun, no doubt about that. I’m talking about they’re live shows. I’m not demeaning them in any way. The Stones were really what made me wake up.” So, soon enough, The Who were placing live explosives in Keith Moon’s drum kit and waking anyone else up who was still napping on the British invasion.
If anything, they eclipsed everyone on the rebellious front. As John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin would proclaim, ”There were other bands that were far worse than us. The Who used to blow things up! Most of the towns we played in America in those days everybody went to bed at 10:30.” The Who were an incendiary alternative to that. No hotel room was safe from their hellraising, and among their peers, they were the feared kings of upheaval.
So, when the media often portrayed Townshend’s band as a mere substitute for the Stones, the acerbic rocker was actually more than happy to play into it. As a nod to the recurring rhetoric, he decided to pen a song called ‘Substitute’. To make things even clearer, he ripped off the riff from Keith Richards. “It was written as a spoof of ‘19th Nervous Breakdown,’” Townshend claimed in 1971. “On the demo, I sang with an affected Jagger-like accent.”
He then combined this with one of his favourite anthems at the time, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. The Who would often weave Motown into the mix with Roger Daltrey also a firm fan of the label and singers like Martha of Martha and The Vandellas fame. But it was the sweetness of Smokey that inspired on this occasion.
Townshend had been enamoured with the sritting soul tune since it was released in 1965, and it further sold him on the notion of substitutes thanks to the lyric, “Although she may be cute/She’s just a substitute.” He embraced the catchiness and poetry of the bestowment and went into parody mode to create a song that became one of The Who’s highest-charting singles of all time.
When the band played the song on their Live at Leeds album, Townshend exclaimed, “We’d like to play three hit singles from our past for ya. Three selected hit singles, the three easiest. There’s Substitute’, which we like.” When the crowd cheers, he quips, “Thank you. That was our first number four,” which results in more riotous laughter and perhaps a few people scratching their heads, wondering why they never enjoyed the same commercial success as many of their peers.
Needless to say, they were far from substitutes in reality. As Eddie Vedder appraised, “The Who quite possibly remain the greatest live band ever.” However, one iconic element of their live shows was also lifted from the Stones. As Townshend told David Letterman: “[The Who] supported the Stones for two shows. They were young, they were brand new and they had one hit, with a Chuck Berry song called ‘Come On’. I met them backstage and they were all very charming”.
“As the curtain opened, Keith Richards is doing this,” at which point he rises to his feet and demonstrates what is now his own classic windmill motion. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so cool!’ I thought it was part of his ‘thing.’ A couple of weeks later, we supported them again in a club in south London. I’m watching carefully, waiting, and he didn’t do it.”
When Townshend later approached him to ask why, it quickly became clear that the move was there to be taken. “I can’t tell you what exactly what he said, but the inference was, ‘I’m Keith Richards. Do you really think I’m gonna do ballet?’ That was the inference.” So, there were many ways that the Stones inspired The Who, but such is the way of liberated rock ‘n’ roll; the flipside is also true, leading to a feeding frenzy of ideas that gives the genre its vitality.
Techniques, riffs and chord changes were all exchanged between The Who and The Rolling Stones—but a friendship was formed off the back of this, and music blazed like a roman candle 2000 miles into the future.
