The Who’s Pete Townshend offered a shady explanation of his differences with fellow 1960s rock titans The Beatles.
“When you look at early interviews with The Beatles, what they did is every time they were asked a serious question, they made a joke,” Townshend, 79, complained on the Tuesday, March 25, episode of the “Switched on Pop” podcast.
While The Beatles were initially seen as the clean-cut, mop-tops of pop music, The Who blasted onto the scene in 1965 with their revolutionary anthem “My Generation.”
“My Generation” hit No. 2 on the U.K. singles charts following a wave of controversy, in which the BBC initially refused to play the song because Townshend’s stuttering vocals were deemed offensive to people who actually stuttered. The track was eventually let back onto the British charts once it became too popular to ignore, though it only reached No. 74 in the U.S.
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While discussing the controversy in his latest podcast interview, Townshend rejected long-held theories that “My Generation” was actually banned over fears that it would incite the youth to revolt against the British government.
“I think the people that banned it were intelligent people and they were being protective,” he insisted. “I don’t think it was because they felt it would create a revolution or that it was a reflection of a potential revolution. In fact there was never a revolution.”
“The revolution in the U.K., which I hoped to feel that I was a part, was about fashion and about art and about music,” Townshend continued. “It was not about societal change. It wasn’t about politics. There were no musicians and no artists that spoke about politics. There was nobody suggesting who you vote for. It was considered to be passé to even have a political stance.”
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Townshend touched on major differences between The Who and The Beatles at the time, since the Fab Four usually refused to speak about political or social justice issues in the mid-1960s.
“I tried to answer questions seriously but I knew there were subjects I had to stay away from,” he added. “I would have defended myself really quite valiantly on the stuttering. It wasn’t meant to be a piss-take about people stuttering. It was meant to be that I grew up in this group of boys who took so much amphetamines that they couldn’t speak.”
The Beatles were known for their evasive and often flippant interviews in their early days, exemplified by John Lennon nonchalantly suggesting The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus” in 1966.
“I don’t know which will go first — rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity,” he then quipped.
Lennon’s comments drew criticism and boycott threats from the Vatican and other Christian groups before the singer-songwriter offered a half-hearted public apology.
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“If you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry,” he said at the time.
The Beatles later became much more socially conscious following a trip to India in 1968, where they stayed with George Harrison’s guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram. The group wrote some of their most overtly political songs during this period, including “Revolution.”
Townshend is no stranger to throwing shade at his contemporaries, as he famously beefed with Kanye West over the latter’s Glastonbury set in 2015. In 2019, the guitarist accused Led Zeppelin of ripping off The Who’s “heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar” and suggested in the 1995 documentary The History of Rock and Roll that Jimi Hendrix also borrowed from the band to become successful.
