The Guitarists Who Made Pete Townshend Listen: Clapton, Page, Richards, Beck and Hendrix

From London’s crowded clubs to the world’s biggest stages, Pete Townshend remembers the guitarists who changed the way he heard the instrument—and why true greatness was never about playing the most notes.

There was a time when playing guitar was less about becoming famous than simply surviving the night.

The rooms could be tiny. The audiences could be smaller. Sometimes there might be only two or three people watching. The sound could be rough, the equipment unreliable and the money barely worth mentioning.

But for a young guitarist coming of age in London, those rooms offered something priceless: the chance to hear what other musicians were doing.

And in the 1960s, there was no shortage of players worth listening to.

Pete Townshend, the guitarist and creative force behind The Who, came of age during one of the most extraordinary periods in the history of electric guitar. London was crowded with ambitious young musicians, while American blues records were inspiring a new generation to rethink what the instrument could do.

For Townshend, however, the guitar was never simply a contest.

“I never really thought about it that way,” he reflects. “For me, the guitar was never a competition.”

That doesn’t mean he wasn’t competitive.

Of course he was.

Every guitarist was.

If another band released an extraordinary record, you noticed. If another player discovered a new sound, you went home thinking about it. You might insist you didn’t care, but you cared enormously.

What mattered to Townshend wasn’t necessarily who could play the fastest or execute the most complicated solo. It was something harder to measure: individuality.

The guitarists who stayed with him were the ones who developed a voice so unmistakable that a listener could identify them after only a few notes.

Among those players were Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix.

Five guitarists.

Five radically different approaches.

And five musicians who, in their own ways, made Townshend listen.

Eric Clapton: The Power of Restraint

Eric Clapton was impossible to ignore.

In London’s music scene, his reputation spread quickly. Musicians would hear his name in pubs and clubs, and before long everyone seemed to be talking about the young guitarist.

What struck Townshend wasn’t merely Clapton’s technique. It was his control.

Clapton didn’t need theatrics. He didn’t need to leap around a stage or turn the performance into a spectacle.

He could simply stand there and play.

The guitar did the rest.

Townshend remembers hearing Clapton during his time with John Mayall and being struck by the sheer authority of the sound. Clapton could make an electric guitar enormously powerful without making it feel excessive.

That was particularly striking because Townshend was heading in almost the opposite direction.

The Who’s sound was becoming synonymous with volume, huge chords, feedback and physical energy. Townshend wanted the guitar to become part of the entire performance.

Clapton didn’t need any of that.

His touch was enough.

“Touch” is a word guitarists use constantly, but Townshend believes Clapton genuinely possessed the quality. A few notes could reveal the player immediately.

And that, he argues, is far more difficult than simply playing fast.

Anyone can learn speed with enough practice. Developing a musical identity is another matter entirely.

There was even a period when London musicians jokingly referred to Clapton as “God.”

Townshend found the mythology slightly absurd, but beneath the exaggeration was an undeniable truth: Clapton was an extraordinary guitarist.

Townshend never wanted to become him.

He simply recognized that Clapton understood something about the instrument that he himself had not yet discovered.

Jimmy Page: Building an Entire World

Jimmy Page represented something different.

Before Led Zeppelin became one of the biggest bands in the world, Page was already a familiar name among London’s musicians and recording studios.

He had built a formidable reputation as a session guitarist, appearing on countless records and developing an understanding of the studio that would later become central to Led Zeppelin’s sound.

For Townshend, that experience was part of what made Page so remarkable.

Page didn’t merely understand how to play the guitar.

He understood where the guitar belonged.

He knew when it should enter a song, what sound it required, how it could interact with other instruments—and, crucially, when it should disappear.

That sense of arrangement became one of Page’s greatest strengths.

Then Led Zeppelin arrived.

The sound was enormous.

But Townshend distinguishes volume from scale.

Plenty of bands were loud. The Who certainly were.

Led Zeppelin was something else.

Page created an enormous sonic landscape filled with acoustic guitars, unusual tunings, heavy riffs, delicate passages and layers of sound.

His background as a studio musician was obvious, but the result never felt sterile.

It felt dangerous.

That was the difference.

For Townshend, Page’s greatest quality wasn’t technical brilliance. It was imagination.

A technically impressive guitarist can leave you admiring the mechanics.

An imaginative guitarist leaves you wondering what you’ve just heard.

Page could take a relatively simple musical idea and make it mysterious. His riffs had weight and personality. Within seconds of hearing one, you knew whose world you had entered.

That was his signature.

Keith Richards: The Genius of Space

Keith Richards presents a different challenge.

People sometimes hear a Richards riff and think it sounds simple.

Townshend’s response is essentially: exactly.

That simplicity is the point.

Richards understood something that many guitarists never fully learn: you don’t have to fill every available space.

You don’t need to prove you’re a guitarist every few seconds.

Sometimes one chord, played in precisely the right place, can define an entire song.

Richards’ genius lies partly in his relationship with rhythm.

His playing may sound loose, but underneath that looseness is extraordinary timing.

He knows when to push.

When to hang back.

When to leave space.

And when to hit the chord that suddenly makes the entire song fall into place.

Townshend acknowledges that his own approach was more aggressive. The Who demanded a huge guitar presence, and Townshend often used enormous chords to fill the space around the band.

Richards didn’t need to work that way.

He had Charlie Watts.

He had Bill Wyman.

And he understood exactly how the guitar could fit between them.

That is musicianship, Townshend argues.

People often focus on Richards’ mythology—his legendary lifestyle, his ability to seemingly survive anything, the larger-than-life stories that have surrounded him for decades.

But underneath the mythology was an exceptionally intelligent musician.

You can impress an audience with technique for five minutes.

Richards created riffs that could remain compelling for generations.

Jeff Beck: The Guitar as an Unknown Language

Jeff Beck was different again.

For Townshend, Beck was “frightening”—not because of his personality, but because of his unpredictability.

With Beck, you couldn’t always understand the machinery behind the sound.

Other great guitarists could sometimes be analyzed. You could listen closely and work out how they achieved something.

Beck was harder to decode.

He seemed to have a private conversation with his instrument.

His work with the Yardbirds was particularly important to Townshend because it demonstrated how distortion, sustain and feedback could become musical tools rather than unwanted side effects.

That was territory Townshend himself was exploring.

Feedback wasn’t simply noise.

It could become part of the composition.

Beck seemed to understand that instinctively.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about Beck was his refusal to stand still.

He never seemed particularly interested in becoming a fixed version of himself. Instead, he continued searching for new sounds and new techniques.

Later in his career, his command of his fingers and tremolo arm became extraordinary.

A note could bend, breathe and almost speak.

That isn’t something you learn from a manual.

It comes from curiosity.

For Townshend, that curiosity was ultimately more important than technical skill.

Beck didn’t need to announce how clever he was.

He simply produced sounds nobody else could produce.

That may be the highest compliment one guitarist can give another.

Jimi Hendrix: When the Rules Changed

Then there was Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix is difficult to discuss because his mythology is now so enormous.

Everyone knows the photographs.

The guitar behind his head.

The feedback.

The fire.

The outrageous stage performances.

But Townshend remembers what it was like before all of those moments became history.

Before Hendrix was a legend, he was simply a musician who had arrived in London.

And when people heard him, something became immediately apparent:

The rules had changed.

Hendrix didn’t seem to treat the guitar like a conventional guitar.

It screamed.

It sang.

It exploded.

He could make an enormous amount of noise while remaining extraordinarily expressive.

That was particularly meaningful to Townshend because The Who had already been exploring volume and feedback.

Townshend recognized some familiar territory when Hendrix appeared.

But Hendrix took that territory somewhere else entirely.

He transformed feedback into music.

He made distortion beautiful.

And perhaps most frustratingly for his contemporaries, he could make extraordinary playing look effortless.

Townshend remembers musicians watching Hendrix and then looking at one another, almost silently asking:

Did you just see that?

There was blues in Hendrix’s playing, certainly.

But there was also something entirely new.

That was what made him different.

Hendrix didn’t merely become another great guitarist.

He changed the conversation about what the electric guitar could be.

Competition Was Inevitable

There was competition among musicians in those days.

Townshend doesn’t pretend otherwise.

Bands watched one another carefully.

If Led Zeppelin made a great record, everyone noticed.

If The Rolling Stones came up with another unforgettable riff, everyone noticed.

If Hendrix did something astonishing, everyone noticed.

Then you went home and thought about it.

That didn’t necessarily mean you wanted to copy the person.

In fact, Townshend believes that is an important distinction.

Admiration isn’t imitation.

When you’re young, hearing a great guitarist can make you want his guitar, his amplifier and his sound. You start copying his movements and trying to reproduce his tone.

Eventually, if you’re lucky, you discover that isn’t the goal.

The goal is to find your own voice.

Townshend knew he wasn’t going to become Clapton.

He wasn’t going to become Beck.

And there was certainly no chance he would wake up one morning and suddenly play like Hendrix.

So he developed his own language.

Huge chords.

Feedback.

Physicality.

A windmilling right arm.

Destruction.

Volume.

The guitar became part of the theatrical experience of The Who.

That was his voice.

And ultimately, that’s what he believes the greatest guitarists have in common.

Not technique.

Not speed.

Not equipment.

Identity.

The Measure of a Great Guitarist

Looking back, Townshend doesn’t believe there was ever one correct way to play guitar.

If there were, every guitarist would sound the same.

And that, he suggests, would be a terrible world indeed.

Clapton could make a handful of notes feel enormous.

Page could construct an entire landscape around a riff.

Richards understood rhythm and space.

Beck pursued sounds nobody else had discovered.

Hendrix transformed the possibilities of the instrument itself.

Their differences were precisely what made them great.

And that may be the real lesson Townshend took from them.

Technique changes.

Equipment changes.

Styles come and go.

But individuality lasts.

A guitarist can spend years learning how to play faster, louder or more accurately. Yet the moment that really matters is when someone hits a note—or plays a chord—and you immediately know who it is.

That is when the instrument stops being merely an instrument.

It becomes a voice.

And for Townshend, those five guitarists each found a voice powerful enough to make him stop, listen and reconsider what he thought the guitar could do.