Pete Townshend has revealed why he avoided listening to Led Zeppelin during the band’s heyday: He thought they were trying to steal The Who’s audience. The guitarist also pushed back on the idea that The Who helped create heavy metal, explaining why he struggled to connect with the genre — even as he acknowledged the musicianship of its leading bands.
The Who’s 1970 live album Live At Leeds is frequently cited as an important influence on heavy metal. Roger Daltrey has previously argued that the band played a major role in the genre’s development. Townshend, however, offered a more measured assessment in an interview with Classic Album Review.
“A lot of players cited it as giving them permission, in a sense, to go nuts, to stretch out and to jam,” he said. “I think Live At Leeds is probably as explosive as it got. Meanwhile, for example, at Woodstock, we played a good chunk of Tommy and then we played some heavy stuff as well. We did both.”
Townshend acknowledged the genre’s musical prowess but questioned its underlying ethos.
“Heavy metal was almost a religious philosophy. It was rooted in a sense of darkness and often irony, often ironically, I think. Also, the musicianship is extraordinary in heavy metal.”
His own listening habits, however, were surprisingly limited. “The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC. I never really got into Led Zeppelin, which is strange,” he said.
Townshend has since made an effort to revisit the band’s catalog — and even reconnect with its guitarist. Praising Zeppelin’s ability to combine heavy music with softer songwriting and ballads, he revealed that he had recently tried to arrange lunch with Jimmy Page.
“I’ve recently been trying to get Jimmy Page to have lunch with me. I sent him a note recently saying, ‘I’ve been listening to all of the Zeppelin albums again.’
“And there’s some fucking great stuff there. It’s just that at the time I didn’t like it that they were, in a sense, trying to pinch our audience!”
It wasn’t the first time Townshend had felt threatened by a guitarist pushing rock music into new territory. He recalled the arrival of Jimi Hendrix, whose powerful amplifiers, distortion and wah-wah pedal forced him to reassess what another guitarist could accomplish.
“I’d been through it before with Jimi Hendrix coming over with his big amplifiers and his distortion and his wah-wah pedal and everything else, and having to admit, ‘Wow, here is a guitar genius!’”
Townshend counted Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck among his friends. He said he was surprised by the range of Zeppelin’s music when he eventually gave the band a proper listen.
“I was kind of surprised, really, when I started to listen to Led Zeppelin, at the variations.”
As for Black Sabbath, Townshend said he had largely missed out on the band and others like them, despite recognizing their appeal. His reservations, he suggested, had as much to do with his own outlook as with the music.
“I don’t know about bands like Black Sabbath and so on because I really didn’t listen to them, despite the fact that I think they were great fun and enjoyable. I really love the parts of the music business where people don’t take themselves too seriously.
“That was my issue in my early days — I felt I was carrying a big cross, a big manifesto for rock and roll. I felt that it was important for me to deliver.”
