The 1969 The Who classic that Pete Townshend will always regret: “I’m embarrassed”
It doesn’t take an encyclopedic knowledge of The Who’s Pete Townshend to be familiar with the guitarist’s reputation for sharing his unfiltered opinions. Although he’s softened somewhat with age, nothing was off limits during his younger years, especially his own band’s material.
He even has disdain for being in the band full spot. “Immediately I started to realise it wasn’t a job that I like. I didn’t like the travelling. I didn’t like being on stage,” he told Rolling Stone. Thoughts about quitting the classic rock giants arose from “pretty much day one”. With that level of vocational frustration, it is little wonder the gloves were always off.
Townshend is never afraid to unleash a barrage of barbed comments when he sees fit to prestigious bands, including The Beatles or Led Zeppelin. Nevertheless, more often than not, the target within his crosshairs was his own band despite being their principal songwriter.
While it could have been easy for Townshend to rest on his laurels or pat himself on the back, he has constantly criticised himself over the decades. Although it’s an attribute that has prevented him from celebrating his successes, it has allowed Townshend to stay grounded and not let his ego spiral out of control. Furthermore, it’s likely a key reason he’s reached musical greatness.
However, there’s no denying that Townshend has crossed the line on several occasions. Whether it was his horrific comments (that he later retracted) about the two members of the band no longer with us, Keith Moon and John Entwistle, or indeed his fractious relationship with the band’s singer, Roger Daltrey. It’s more than fair to say that Townshend doesn’t suffer fools gladly and is more than willing to let rip about his own work. He’s even gone as far as to pick out The Who songs he hates, with one, in particular, acting as quite a shock.
“I knocked it off. I thought, ‘Oh, my God this is awful, the most clumsy piece of writing I’ve ever done. Oh my God, I’m embarrassed.”
Pete Townshend
The song in question isn’t a throwaway album track, but instead, one of The Who’s most famous songs, ‘Pinball Wizard’. Artists disliking their own songs is nothing new. Famous examples include Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Radiohead’s ‘Creep’.
However, Townshend’s dislike is slightly different from the others mentioned above. The previous artists mentioned all grew to detest their songs after they became monster hits. Much to their frustration, these tracks grew to define them as an act when they believed it wasn’t their best musical representation. Therefore, it’s understandable why they became sick of their own creation.
Yet, in the case of Townshend, he disliked ‘Pinball Wizard’ almost instantly and has since called it an “awful” song. He also wrote in the album’s liner notes, supposedly meant to provide insight into the creative process: “I’m embarrassed. This sounds like a Music Hall song.”
Considering Townshend never liked ‘Pinball Wizard’ in the first place, it’s peculiar that it was ever selected to be on an album by The Who. Originally written as part of The Who’s epic rock opera Tommy from 1969, Townshend later admitted that he wrote the song to impress Nik Cohn, who had given the band some terrible reviews.
As well as being an influential music critic, Cohn was also a well-known lover of pinball. With that piece of knowledge in mind, Townshend shamelessly directed a track at the writer in a bid to gain some favourable reviews.
The track debuted live in 1969 and has been played at nearly every Who concert since, likely adding to Townshend’s misery. While it fits into the opera very neatly, with Tommy, the main character in the film who is deaf, dumb and blind, being able to pick up the vibrations of the pinball machine, there’s no doubt that the song’s origination came from such a contrived place.
When describing the writing of the song, Townshend said: “I knocked it off. I thought, ‘Oh, my God this is awful, the most clumsy piece of writing I’ve ever done. Oh my God, I’m embarrassed. This sounds like a Music Hall song’.” As the son of a music hall musician, Townshend knew what those sounded like all too well.
Yet, he was hungry for approval with the lauded likes of Sgt Pepper still ringing in his ears. “I scribbled it out and all the verses were the same length and there was no kind of middle eight,” he explained. “It was going to be a complete dud, but I carried on.”
He continued, “I attempted the same mock baroque guitar beginning that’s on ‘I’m a Boy’ and then a bit of vigorous kind of flamenco guitar. I was just grabbing at ideas. I knocked a demo together and took it to the studio, and everyone loved it.” Suddenly, it seemed like he might have accidentally written an important song for The Who.
As he continued, “Damon Lyon-Shaw (the engineer on Tommy) said ‘Pete, that’s a hit.’ Everybody was really excited, and I suddenly thought, ‘Have I written a hit?’ It was just because the only person that we knew would give us a good review, was a pinball fanatic.”
On a positive note, it impressed Cohn and was a hit with fans, too, making it one of The Who’s most beloved songs. While artists are typically advised to write solely to impress themselves, Townshend’s tale of penning ‘Pinball Wizard’ suggests that’s not the only successful approach. It quickly rose to fourth in the UK charts and 19th in the US, along the way, further establishing The Who’s conceptual, story-driven style.
Additionally, Townshend’s opinion on the track doesn’t align with Daltrey. The two rarely see eye-to-eye, and ‘Pinball Wizard’ is no different. The Who’s shirtless frontman once said of the track to Uncut: “Kit’s production on ‘Pinball Wizard’ is absolutely tremendous. The whole montage of sounds he got in emulating the pinball machine is extraordinary. I don’t think he got enough recognition for his work on that.”
For Townshend, it may not be a song that fills him with immense pride or that he’d listen to out of choice, but there’s no denying it’s one of the most important pieces of music that The Who created as a unit. A new century later, the track’s playfulness continues to serve as an introductory point to the classic rock giants with its joyful appeal… no doubt to Townshend’s chagrin
