“A bloody shame”: Why did Pete Townshend believe Steve Marriott wasted his potential?
It’s a tale as old as time and a song as old as rhyme, but does success really neuter inspiration? When your tunes have earned you a house the size of a city block, an indoor swimming pool in every closet and five separate Meta Quest 3s for your favourite dog (the cat gets two), can you still string a decent song together? Or is that ability gone with any need or want you might have? As with any pressing question that comes up involving rock stardom, you can at least be sure that a man as neurotic as Pete Townshend has already agonised over it for years.
This particular question would have been an absolute doozy for him, I bet. This was a man who made his name as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s premier angry young men. A poet laureate for deeply sad boys the country over, with no societally acceptable way of expressing that vast well of melancholy other than punching anyone who looks at them funny. In The Who, Townshend took his role as artist incredibly seriously, even in their early days as power-pop hitmakers.
He wanted to imbue his three-minute guitar-pop wonders with genuine meaning, leading to the angry, defiant likes of ‘My Generation’ and ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’. However, this also led to songs of pretty intense self-analysis like ‘Substitute’ and ‘The Kids Are Alright’. Given time and success, he moved on to leading his band into bold new directions. It’s quite remarkable that this journey of artistic discovery began with writing entire rock operas, a place where most other rock musicians would flame out long before getting near.
For Townshend, though, writing ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ and Tommy were just the beginning. He would eventually start developing concepts like Lifehouse, a project so dense and complex that he soon realised no one understood what he was banging on about. The point is, the constantly yearning Townshend was eternally searching for the next way to develop his artistic voice and change the medium of rock ‘n’ roll.
What did Pete Townshend say about artists who didn’t feel this way?
Needless to say, he didn’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about those stuck in the past. You know, the artists who saw rock ‘n’ roll as nothing more than a medium for getting rich, picking up girls, and never growing up. Especially because, in his mind, all of these artists were capable of so much more. For all his creative depths, Townshend didn’t really see himself as more talented or imaginative than the other musicians of his generation; he just pushed himself harder.
We can see this in a typically revealing interview Townshend gave to NME in 1975. The guitarist seems painfully aware that The Who’s glory days may be behind him. After all, he doesn’t seem to believe one can be a rock star when you’re staring down the barrel of your *gasp* 30th birthday. Thus, the people who he believes are still trying to live like kids at their rarefied age get an especially scathing treatment from Townshend, with one peer of his in particular being singled out by name.
He said: “Steve Marriott has chosen to live it like that and, as far as I can see, he’s having a good time. Fair enough—but in my opinion, Marriott’s music falls short of his potential. Which is a bloody shame because everyone knows what he’s really capable of. For me, Ogdens Nut Gone Flake is one of the classic albums of the ’60s and, if it’s the difference between that music and having a good time, I prefer that Steve Marriott suffer, because I want the music.”
As snooty and superior as Townshend sounds here (not exactly a rare occurrence), I don’t think he’s entirely wrong. Never forget that everything becomes a job, even being a rock musician. Not only is it something that one can lose passion for, but it’s something you can measure your success in via money. Here’s to many more musicians like Pete Townshend then, who never lose sight of rock music’s artistic potential and keep striving toward it. Even if it sometimes blows up in their faces.
