Pete Townshend has shared his thoughts as to whether The Who should be acknowledged as one of the godfathers of heavy metal.
The question arose during Townshend's appearance on the Classic Album Review podcast, when host Barry Robinson referenced the evolution of heavy metal and noted that "everyone cites Black Sabbath as being the band that started it, but The Who were bludgeoningly heavy and loud at that time." Robinson then asked Townshend directly, "Do you think you have a place to play in that narrative?"
"In a way," Townshend replies, "but I do think the difference really was that bands like Black Sabbath and all of the other big heavy metal bands - until Led Zeppelin came along who combined heavy metal with some softer songwriting and ballads and so on - heavy metal was a almost a religious philosophy. It was rooted in a sense of darkness, and often ironically.
"Also the musicianship is extraordinary in heavy metal," he continues. "A lot of heavy metal players cited the Live At Leeds album as giving them permission in a sense to go nuts, to stretch out, and to jam.
"But, no, I don't necessarily think so. I think Live at Leeds is probably as explosive as it got [for The Who], but, we were still doing... like for example at Woodstock, we played a good chunk of Tommy and then we played some heavy stuff as well. We did both.
"The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC," the legendary guitarist continues. "I never really got into Led Zeppelin, which is strange because I've recently been trying to to get Jimmy Page to have lunch with me. I sent him a note recently just saying, I've been listening to all of the Zeppelin albums again, and there's some fucking great stuff there.
"It's just that, at the time, I didn't like it that they were in a sense trying to pinch our audience," Townshend adds with a laugh. "I'd been through it before with Jimi Hendrix coming over, with his big amplifiers and his distortion, and his wah-wah pedal and everything else and, having to admit, Wow, here is a guitar genius."
"I was kind of surprised, really, when I started to listen to Led Zeppelin at the the variations." Townshend concedes, adding that he knew Jimmy Page could be a 'shredder'. "I don't know about bands like Black Sabbath and so on because I really didn't listen to them despite the fact that they were great fun. I love the parts of the music business where people don't take themselves too seriously."
Watch the interview in full below.
