Musician of the week. 04/11/2011.

Pete Townshend.

Ah, alongside Johnny Marr in my top guitarists. Johnny Marr was the one who inspired me to pick up the guitar and Pete Townshend was the one who inspired me to play it. I can see when I play guitar I have those Townshend rhythms, he's got this brilliant strumming technique in his hands - a wonderful flamenco style of playing. The Who strumming  patterns are usually the hardest to get because of the speed and complex nature of them - Pinball Wizard for example! Normally I can do a strumming pattern easily from memory but I did have to listen to Pinball Wizard a few times, and Real Good Looking Boy too. In his early work he'd tie this in with a Kinks' style of playing with hard power chords to enter into one of his classics, not even power chords sometimes - take 'Substitute', it's a total work of art the way he plays on that twelve string and also a complicated little number to play, Townshend you cheeky minx.

Lyrically he summed up a generation, once in a song and once in a line of a song. Of course 'My Generation' summed up the whole of the sixties' generation of kids, even now the lyrics are applicable to our generation but going back to 'Substitute' he managed to sum up his generation with one line 'I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth', now I know Roger Daltrey has picked up on this before but what he says is true; they were piss poor during and after the war and no one was born with a golden spoon in their mouth, no one and Townshend just summed up those hard years in one line of a song, genius.

Now let's talk about Baba O' Riley, what a classic song. That opening synthesiser, which apparantly came about when Townshend put in the vital statistics to Meher Baba into the synth, but this is untrue - it actually came about accidently because the A.R.P synthersiser kept on sticking and looping those few notes. I think it is Townshend at his best, easily the best song he's written - not album! Song, Tommy is the best album he's written.

Ah Pete Townshend, the master of the concept album, or 'rock opera' as he prefers it. Tommy is my favourite album of all time just because of the sheer genius, I still can't fully get my head around how he even did it, I've only really just grasped the whole story. Now I can't give Townshend all the credit as it was Moonie's idea of there being a holiday camp and Entwistle had contributed some songs but it was Townshend's idea, he had gone up to Kit Lambert or Christ Stamp and said "Look, I've got this idea for an album. It''s about a deph, dumb and blind kid who can only connect with people through the vibrations of music. He also has a mean hand at pinball" If I'd have been at that meeting I'd have sent him to St Luke's (- a mental home situated in my area, there's an old man there who rocks in the corner). But Townshend was right, it was a genius idea and it's one of the (if not the) greatest album ever created.