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Wed 27 May 2026 14:30, UK
As far as Pete Townshend could tell, rock and roll could be a world full of posers from time to time.
There are many people who genuinely feel like their music can change the world, but there are just as many who seem gung-ho on taking the money and running as soon as the hits start drying up a little too much for their taste. But when you look at the bands that Townshend kept close to the chest, all of them were intending to take every single move that they made onstage seriously before anyone had even heard a note of music.
Townshend had already started breaking down the barrier between band and audience when The Who made some of their classics, but he was also more than happy to throw in some cerebral lessons as well. Just because a band played rock and roll didn’t mean that they needed to be exclusively focused on partying, and a lot of the best moments in his repertoire were always about music that meant a little bit more than your average Chuck Berry song. The Beatles may have sung that all we needed was love, but Townshend was creating characters that needed love showered over them.
None of his songs may have been that easy to stomach for the average rock and roll fan, but that didn’t matter to him. All art needs to get people out of their seats to a certain degree, and even though Townshend was well ahead of the curve when it came to punk, a lot of the biggest names in the genre practically saw him as their adopted father. He was willing to disturb anyone and everyone when he played, so why couldn’t a band like The Clash do the exact same thing with their own message?
The volume had already begun going up for a long time, but when Joe Strummer played his guitar for the first time, people weren’t reacting like a typical rock audience. His condemnation of corrupt politicians gave a lot more weight to the typical rock and roll tunes he made, and while a lot of the punk bands made Townshend look like old news, he could at least acknowledge that Strummer was looking out for everyone.
Whereas most punk bands were strictly about anarchy, Townshend admired Strummer for looking out for the little guy, saying, “Chris Chappel, who worked for Bill Curbishley, escorted me to see U2, The Clash and Bruce Springsteen. I thought The Clash were spectacular. They were charming to me when we met, and Joe Strummer clearly had a heart of gold. His work for political causes, especially anti-racist ones, was inspiring.” But Townshend wasn’t showing up to give the band a simple pat on the back.
He was clearly learning from what the new school of artists were doing, and while he wasn’t going to be waxing poetic about the harsher realities of life, he could at least get a bit more pointed when it came to his own lyrics. The best songs he ever wrote were usually the ones with a message, and he could at least find a way to throw in some moves onstage that made him look like he was as serious as Strummer was.
Further reading: From The Vault
But the heart behind rock and roll wasn’t exclusive to Strummer, either. Even when Strummer began having an influence on the next generation of rock and rollers, Townshend found himself drawn to people like Eddie Vedder as well. He wasn’t remotely punk in the same way that Strummer was, but he seemed to have that same empathy for humankind that tends to be forgotten about when you look at some of the biggest names in rock and roll.
Because it’s one thing to make music for the sake of making a few people happy. Anyone can do that, but if you want to truly have an effect on someone, it’s not just about a couple of simple chords. It’s about trying to dig deep into your soul to try and find something that could connect on a much deeper level, and even if someone only made one song like that, it would have been enough for their entire career.
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