Jimi Hendrix ripped off The Who’s Pete Townshend classic guitar move, according to Roger Daltrey on ‘Life on the Road.’
“When Pete used to break those guitars, it was like a ritual slaughter of some mythological animal. The thing used to scream. Every whack of it somewhere would create a different noise, and that never got written up. It was all about, ‘Oh, he smashed his guitar…’ ‘Sorry mate, but you missed the point.’ What I never ever talked about was the noise it was making.”
“All that stage act that Hendrix did, with the speakers and the guitar up against the microphone stand, all of that came from Townshend. Hendrix copied that completely. We all must understand that history, Hendrix saw Townshend doing that and, ‘Oh, I’m gonna grab that!'”
He also discussed the chemistry between The Who’s original lineup, and the personalities of late bandmates John Entwisle and and Keith Moon.
“John was very, very quiet, and had a really, really dry sense of humor. He kind of didn’t mind being the static one, but he would get his own back by being the loud one, you know, when you turn the bass up, it drowns everything out.
Pete was always off in the clouds, and if he felt like it, he’d speak to you, and he seemed to be always in the mood. Moon was completely a fearless, funniest guy I’ve ever met in my life. Moon had a personality that you could be totally outrageous, but you’d have to laugh at him.
“The friction between Moon and myself in the early days was because he used to think the singer should be behind the drum kit. [Laughs] And of course, us singers with our egos, we think, ‘No, we should be at the front.’ There we were, these four completely different people with huge egos, and we’d have fistfights. It was incredibly volatile, and that used to come across in the music, which made people sit up and listen.
If you think about The Who, it was the third World War every time we got on stage. [Laughs] In the early days, I used a microphone on Keith’s cymbals, and he used to get pissed off because I used to whack them with my knuckles, and I was a sheet metal worker, so my hands are like hammers. [Laughs] This was all while Pete was smashing the guitars, it used to give this surreal kind of in-tune-but-out-of-tune, in-rhythm-but-out-of-rhythm sound, and no one ever wrote about the noise it made.” Ultimate-Guitar.com transcribed these comments.
