Pete Townshend was one of the most influential songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s, having, alongside Keith Moon, John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey, made The Who one of the biggest Rock and Roll bands in the world.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he has always been interested in new bands and closely followed the British music scene, having the chance to witness the rise of Pink Floyd when they were still playing in clubs. Over the decades, he has shared his opinions on the band’s members, including their main songwriter, bassist and singer Roger Waters.
Pete Townshend’s opinion on Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters
Pete Townshend might be one of the few people who is good friends with both David Gilmour and Roger Waters, since the feud between the two and ideas outside music didn’t always mix and consequently affected the people they worked and hung out with. In his opinion, Roger already had an incredible stage presence back in the ’60s and he could tell that the bassist would later become the band’s driving force.
“On 6 January 1967 I missed one of the only Who shows of my career through drug abuse, when I took my third acid trip and realised I couldn’t possibly drive 300 miles to Morecambe where we had a show. Instead I went to see the Pink Floyd play for the first time at the UFO Club. Syd Barrett was wonderful, and so were the rest of them. I fell in love with the band and the club itself, especially John Hopkins (‘Hoppy’ as he was known), who ran the club and worked the door.”
Pete Townshend continued:
“I went again the following night. This time I didn’t use acid and took Eric Clapton to see Syd. (He) walked on stage (off his head on acid), played a single chord, and made it last about an hour using an electronic echo machine called a Binson. When he did start to play again he was truly inspiring. Roger Waters had the most incredible presence, was strikingly handsome and clearly fancied Karen (Pete’s future first wife)”.
“I found him a little scary. It was evident that he was going to be the principal driving force behind Pink Floyd. What no one could have known, as the band hadn’t yet made any recordings, was how glorious so much of their music would become once Syd’s more experimental influence waned,” Pete Townshend said in his autobiography “Who I Am”.
Pete Townshend said Roger Waters performance during Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” tour was “spine-chilling”
Pete remained a big fan of Pink Floyd and had the chance to see many of their concerts. In 1980, he went to see the band at the Nassau Coliseum when they were promoting the groundbreaking album “The Wall”. According to Pete, Waters’ performance that night was “spine-chilling.” “We drove to the Coliseum and were given seats so far back in the huge venue that it was impossible to see the musicians’ faces on stage. During the interval we went backstage and I introduced Theresa (his then partner) to Roger Waters.”
“It pleased me to see him make the same bemused assessment he had made when he met me and Karen at the first UFO Club Pink Floyd gig back in 1967. How the fuck does he do it? The show was extraordinary. David Gilmour’s rendition of ‘Comfortably Numb’ will remain with me for my entire life. Roger Waters was spine-chilling, as usual, a towering and formidable presence,” Pete Townshend said in his autobiography.
A few decades later he had the chance to see Pink Floyd’s final reunion at the Live 8 concert in 2005, where The Who also perfo
rmed. It was also the last time he saw Richard Wright, who had previous bought one of his pianos. “The press made much of the competition between The Who and Pink Floyd, but the atmosphere backstage was friendly. It was good to see the towering Roger Waters working with David Gilmour again.”
He continued:
“It was the last time I got to see Rick Wright. (He) had purchased my big Bösendorfer piano from me when I closed my studio years before. We all wondered if Floyd would reunite and tour. Their show was perfect, I thought, but Roger and David never quite reconciled. It was remarkable that they joined together this one last time. I felt privileged to be in their midst,” Pete Townshend said in his book.
The Who was Roger Waters’ opening act
Curiously, in 2016, The Who was the opening act for Roger Waters at the Desert Trip Festival. On the other days had artists like The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and Neil Young. Pete loved to see his show after his set. “All the bands on this bill know each other because we’ve been in this business over 50 years,” said Townshend. “We’re all friends and there’s no competition; nobody’s gonna blow anybody else off the stage.”
“It’s all love and peace and harmony. You can see later on my very good friend Roger Waters with his polystyrene bricks. I’m a huge fan of Pink Floyd, since I took Eric Clapton to see them at the UFO Club in the days of Syd Barrett. He’s coming on later and you’ll need to get your brain in gear for that. Some of you may not know this, but it is really a flying pig. It’s not just the skunk you’re smoking,” he told Billboard in 2016.
A couple of years before, Pete had already seen Roger’s show. He described it as “a big Cirque du Soleil meets The Wall.” Although they are good friends, so far Pete only collaborated with David Gilmour. They co-wrote the songs “Love On The Air” (Released on the 1984 Gilmour solo album “About Face”), “All Lovers Are Deranged” (Also released on Gilmour’s “About Face” and re-recorded by Townshend on his 2001 compilation album “Scoop 3”) and “White City Fighting” (Released on Pete’s “White City: A Novel” in 1985).