“There’s no question”: Why Pete Townshend called Mick Jagger the next Chuck Berry

Posted On May 28, 2025May 28, 2025

Every generation is bound to repeat what has come before in one way or another. No matter how many times people claim to be doing something revolutionary, there are bound to be a few people who walk in the footsteps of their parents and try their hand at making the kind of music that’s either too lethargic to be interesting or too sentimental to take seriously. And while The Who tried to hold onto that rage for as long as they could, Pete Townshend knew there would come a day when their time would be up.

For all of the great moments scattered throughout their career, though, Townshend was always looking at the big picture. He wanted to let everyone know how the sausage was made in the industry, and that usually came down to making music that was either a comment on the system or went above and beyond what the traditional listening public wanted to hear, like all nine minutes of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ or the musical pieces of Tommy.

And despite his claims that rock and roll would fade away, his brand of rock left the door wide open for new generations to fill in the gaps that he put in his own work. Not many people were making music as loud and aggressive as Live at Leeds in the early 1970s, but Townshend’s booming guitar became the foundation for how heavy metal would end up using the medium a few years down the road, only this time with more rage than before.

But there wasn’t anything Townshend was doing that was any less thrilling than what people like Elvis Presley was doing a few years before. He knew that the days of Little Richard and Chuck Berry were what rock and roll was all about, but he felt that somewhere along the line, the passion had been lost, especially when working on some of the more extravagant music in the band’s catalogue like ‘Music Must Change’.

The punk movement hadn’t yet begun, but it’s hard not to look at an album like Quadrophenia as the epilogue for one piece of the band’s career. They had set about making bold new experiments, but after a few more albums and the ultimate demise of Keith Moon, Townshend only felt that the band were going to go down in history the same way that their idols did a few years before.

When looking back on his 1960s brethren, though, Townshend felt that Mick Jagger was bound to be the almighty rock icon of that time, saying in 1975, “With a group like The Rolling Stones, there`s this terrible danger…now I could be wrong…but there`s no question in my mind that it`s bound to happen…Mick Jagger will eventually become the Chuck Berry of the sixties, constantly parodying himself on stage.”

And while The Who made their best efforts to run away from that kind of future, it’s not like Jagger hasn’t taken his fair share of risks either. Chuck Berry didn’t need to change his formula all that much whenever he played, but when listening to The Stones’ music, it’s clear that they were ready to switch things up whenever they wanted to, even if it was driving themselves right into a ditch on albums like Dirty Work.

Then again, being compared to one of the fathers of rock and roll may as well have been a badge of honour for Jagger. There were times when his rooster walk could get a little tiresome onstage, but whenever listening to the band today, there’s a reason why hits like ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Paint It Black’ still have the same youthful energy that ‘Johnny B Goode’ had when they were growing up.

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