“He had the skills of a shaman”: the artist Pete Townshend said gave light to rock and roll

Posted On May 20, 2025May 20, 2025

There’s a certain darkness that has followed rock and roll since the genre began. As much as the style was about having fun and making a little too much noise when the parents came home, it was all worth it to get that kind of musical release whenever a band started playing. And while Pete Townshend knew that release better than most when making The Who’s first records, he felt that there was something more that could be done with the song form beyond the three-minute single.

That being said, it’s not like Townshend wasn’t great at the singles market, either. He could make some of the best power pop tunes coming out of England at the time, but something was always holding him back from what he really wanted to play if he stayed in that realm. He wanted to move forward, and songs like ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ were a good way for him to let go of those emotions.

There had been long songs in rock and roll before, but none of them managed to pack a small drama within the space of nine minutes. Most bands liked the idea of telling a story with their songs, but whereas Bob Dylan made songs centred around characters that you’d find in a novel over three chords, Townshend created different musical episodes that felt like watching different scenes in a movie.

But Townshend wasn’t the only one thinking that rock and roll could go in some different directions. He had been looking to make something innovative ever since he started, but the Summer of Love gave everyone free rein to do whatever they wanted, and when the psychedelic movement kicked into high gear, no one was doing it better than Jimi Hendrix when he landed in England.

Even though Eric Clapton was quickly becoming known as a musical god whenever he played with Cream, Hendrix put him to shame when he first played. He was a spectacle on record, listening back to tunes like Electric Ladyland, but when hearing him play live for the first time, Townshend felt that he was hearing someone who made rock and roll shine a little differently than he was doing.

Compared to every other rock band, Townshend knew that Hendrix was creating something that brought an element of beauty to rock and roll, saying, “You can listen to the records, but to see this guy in the flesh, he was just from another planet. He had the skills of a shaman. I never quite understood how he did what he did. He seemed to come alive and create light and colour.”

And whereas most people brought colour to rock and roll through the pastel-coloured clothes they were wearing, Hendrix never took any of his talents for granted. There had been moments where people transcended rock and roll, but you could hear every bit of emotion in his songs being channelled on the spot whenever he played live, whether that was the beauty of ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ or the pure anger at the war going on half a world away on the solo of ‘Machine Gun’.

So, while Townshend did manage to bring something new to rock during his prime, Hendrix’s work was far more integral to what rock and roll was about. He wanted to capture a feeling whenever he played, and by putting his heart down on vinyl, he made so many rockers understand how important rock and roll could be.

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