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Keith Richards’ opinion on Pete Townshend
One of the most important guitarists in the history of Rock and Roll, Keith Richards was not only a huge influence on countless players who emerged over the past decades, but also on many of his contemporaries. The Who’s Pete Townshend is one of them, as The Rolling Stones are his favorite band and he has revered them ever since he first had the chance to see them in a small club in England in the early 60s.
Richards is known for being quite sincere, never hiding his true opinions about other bands and musicians, even when they are negative. Over the decades, he has shared his thoughts on many guitar players, including Townshend.
What is Keith Richards’ opinion on Pete Townshend
Although Keith Richards never liked The Who, he admires Pete Townshend a lot as a songwriter and musician. “I always thought (Roger) Daltrey was all flash. And I love Pete Townshend, but I always thought the Who were a crazy band, anyway. You would say to (Keith) Moon, if you were in a session with him, ‘Just give me a swing,’ and he (couldn’t). He was an incredible drummer, but only with Pete Townshend. He could play to Pete like nobody else in the world. But if somebody threw him into a session with somebody else, it was a disaster. There’s nothing wrong with that; sometimes you’ve got that one paintbrush, and you rock it.”
“I just was never really interested in that many English rock & roll bands actually, at all. I mean, I usually like guys like Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and that was before I was even recording. But there was something (about) the Yeses and the Journeys and all them that just left me a bit cold,” Keith Richards told Rolling Stone in 2015. If Keith never really liked Daltrey as a frontman, the singer was also never a big fan of the Stones, having called them a “mediocre pub band”.
He said:
“You can not take away the fact that Mick Jagger is still the number one rock ‘n’ roll showman up front. But as a band, if you were outside a pub and you heard that music coming out of a pub some night, you’d think, ‘Well, that’s a mediocre pub band! No disrespect,” he told Coda Collection in 2021.
A great example of how highly Keith regards Townshend as a guitarist is that he mentioned him alongside Jimi Hendrix when saying that aspiring musicians couldn’t expect to reach their level easily or quickly. “I firmly believe if you want to be a guitar player, you better start on acoustic and then graduate to electric. Don’t think you’re going to be Townshend or Hendrix just because you can go wee wee wah wah, and all the electronic tricks of the trade. First you’ve got to know that fucker. And you go to bed with it. If there’s no babe around, you sleep with it. She’s just the right shape,” he said in his biography “Life”.
Pete “stole” the windmill guitar move from Keith Richards
Pete’s favorite band has always been The Rolling Stones and already said there was no one in Rock he admired more than Keith. He was lucky enough to see them back in the early ’60s when they were still playing in clubs and The Who was their opening act. Interestingly, he once revealed that his famous “windmill” guitar move was inspired by Keith Richards, who did it once without realizing it, and Townshend thought it was a fantastic thing to incorporate into his performances.
“(We) supported the Stones for two shows. They were young, they were brand new and they had one hit, with a Chuck Berry song called ‘Come On.’ I met them backstage and they were all very charming. As the curtain opened, Keith Richards is doing this (The windmill move). I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so cool!’ I thought it was part of his ‘thing.’ A couple of weeks later, we supported them again in a club in south London. I’m watching carefully, waiting, and he didn’t do it.”
(After asking Richards why) “He (Keith) went, ‘What?!’ I can’t tell you exactly what he said. But the inference was, ‘I’m Keith Richards. Do you really think I’m gonna do ballet?’ That was the inference,” Pete Townshend told David Letterman in 2012.
Pete Townshend said the Stones are the only group he was never ashamed to idolize
He is a good friend of The Rolling Stones members and was the one who inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 1989. “Keith Richards once told me that I think too much. The truth is that I think that generally I talk too much. But I don’t think first. Faced with injecting the Rolling Stones this evening I realized that thinking is not going to help me very much.”
“I can’t analyze what I feel about the Stones because I am a really absolute Stones fan, always have. Their early shows were just shocking. Absolutely riveting, stunning, moving and they changed my life completely. The Beatles were fun, no doubt about that. I’m talking about they’re live shows. I’m demeaning them in any way.”
“The Stones were really what made me wake up. On the Beatles shows there were a lot of screaming girls and at The Stones were the first to have a screaming boy. The sheer force of the Stones on stage and that perfectly balanced audience: 1000 girls and me (laughs). It kind of singled them out.”
“They are the only group that I’ve ever really been unashamed about idolizing. So much of what I am I got from you, The Stones. I had no idea most of it was already secondhand (Laughs). No more gags, the Stones are the greatest for me. They epitomize British Rock for me. Even though they are now my friends, I’m still a fan,” he said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
