Pete Townshend’s opinion on Metallica

As The Who’s guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend became one of the most important musicians of all time. He was a crucial part of the Rock and Roll revolution led by British bands in the 1960s. By the end of that decade, those groups were experimenting extensively and some began creating heavier songs. One example is Who’s “I Can See for Miles,” which later inspired the Beatles to write “Helter Skelter.”

These songs are considered by some to be among the origins of Heavy Metal. Although it is not Townshend’s favorite style of music, he has been aware of groups from the genre and has shared his opinions on many of them over the decades, including the Thrash Metal band Metallica.

What is Pete Townshend’s opinion on Metallica

Pete Townshend is actually a fan of Metallica and of the members of the band. In fact, he called James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett “brilliant guitar players” and said the group had done an “incredible amount” of great work over the years. “It’s quite tough to be in a band, anybody will tell you this. I’ve only met and become familiar with the guys from Metallica recently. They came to Hollywood Bowl to see us when we did our orchestral show.”

“I’d always thought of Metallica as ‘shredders’, you know, about being (fast) and they are shredders, they’re brilliant guitar players. But what really impressed me was the fact that this ‘contract’… the best word is ‘compact’, it’s a kind of way you shake hands with somebody and just say: ‘We’re going to move forward and we don’t know how we’re going to develop. We don’t know where we gonna go, but we’re gonna stick together and see what happens.”

He continued:

“They’ve done an incredible amount of developing different ideas. They used an orchestra before we did, they didn’t have it for the whole show and it was very successful. So actually looking a band like them, I certainly think ‘Wow” This is the definitive band!’ (Bands also like) ZZ Top, for example, you know, for one year they didn’t go home for 365 days. I think their wives said: ‘Listen, it’s thanksgiving, you’ve gotta come home’ and they went home. But they were so screwed up with the idea of going back to their homes that they booked the families into a Holiday Inn hotel. These guys were not just fellow musicians, they were friends. They saw their upsides and their downsides,” Pete Townshend told Apple Music in 2021 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

The Metallica members are also fans of The Who, James Hetfield especially. He picked the song “Behind Blue Eyes” as one of his favorites of all time in an interview with Rolling Stone. “This song had all that teen angst bubbling under it. It’s about asking for help but not really wanting it. Reminds me a lot of me,” he said in 2004.

Pete Townshend told Kirk Hammett he was a great guitar player

Although The Who have been one of the most influential bands in the world for the past six decades, Kirk Hammett actually became a big fan of them only in recent years. Not long after rediscovering their music, he went to see them at the Hollywood Bowl and had the chance to meet Pete and Roger Daltrey backstage. Only a few months later, the American musician was invited by Mick Fleetwood to take part in Peter Green’s tribute show, which also featured Townshend. As Kirk recalled, during the rehearsal, Pete praised him and said he played really well.

Pete Townshend said The Who sort of invented Heavy Metal

There are many theories about how Heavy Metal was born and the most widely accepted is that it truly took shape with the release of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album in 1970. However, some trace its origins slightly earlier, pointing to the Beatles song “Helter Skelter,” which was actually inspired by Pete Townshend. After reading an interview in which The Who’s songwriter said they had created the heaviest song he had ever heard, Paul McCartney decided to try to top that.

The song was “I Can See for Miles”, part of their 1967 album “The Who Sell Out”. Three years later, in 1970, a few months after Sabbath’s first album was released, The Who put out the live album “Live At Leeds”. That record was mentioned as an influence by many musicians like Eddie Van Halen and in Pete’s opinion, they sort of invented Heavy Metal music with that record.

He said that in an interview with Toronto Sun in 2019, when talking about the band’s album “Who” (2019). “(This record) doesn’t sound like The Who from those early heavy metal years. We sort of invented Heavy Metal with (our first live album) ‘Live at Leeds’ (1970). We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin. You know heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar and some of those bands, like Jimi Hendrix for example, did it far better than we did.”

He continued:

“Cream, with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, they came along in ‘67, same year as Jimi Hendrix, and they kind of stole our mantle in a sense. So people who want to hear that old Heavy Metal sound there are plenty of bands that can provide it. So it’s not really what we can actually do today. Even if we wanted to, it was never high on my list of wishes,” Pete Townshend said.

Although Pete Townshend praised Metallica, he is not very familiar with their discography. In 2021, when the band had released only ten studio albums, he said they had put out more records than The Who, who already had twelve studio albums. “The Who didn’t make that many records, when you compare us to bands like Metallica or even fucking Primal Scream, who’ve got dozens of albums. I think it was partly because I was the main writer. But we were also touring so much.”

“I know that’s true of a lot of artists, but the way that I write is not with the band. I tend to write at home, which The Who Sell Out is a good testament to. Because it’s got all the demos on and you can see how I gathered material,” Pete Townshend told Uncut. Since then, Metallica have released “72 Seasons” (2023), and they will be tied with The Who when they put out their next album.