Happy 80th birthday to Pete Townshend! [+ his guitars] | Don’s Tunes / Route

Exactly who were the guitarists who influenced you as a youth?

Pete Townshend: Wes, Kenny Burrell (in his work with Jimmy Smith), Jim Hall (with Jimmy Giuffre), Buddy Guy, Leadbelly, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Snooks Eaglin, Big Bill Broonzy, Hubert Sumlin (with Howlin’ Wolf), Albert King, Steve Cropper, Don Everly, Bruce Welch (with The Shadows), Eddie Cochran, James Burton (with Ricky Nelson). Among my contemporaries, it was Dave Davies, Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young. At art school I met Bert Jansch, and realized folk guys used tricks (tunings)!

You’ve been heavily involved in the recording process for decades. Has the art of recording changed for the better or worse in that time, and how are you using today’s technology?

Pete Townshend: I mix old and new. I have pro analogue tape machines running alongside a computer running Digital Performer or Ableton Live. Things have got better. The emergence of digital was tricky. The sound was poor at first. I was lucky because I used Synclavier as my digital medium. That was sampling at 100KHz in mono and 50KHz in stereo back in 1984, with fabulous integrity. Now a laptop can deliver that if you wish.

Although you’re not really known as a guitar collector, what are some of your favorite pieces in the collection?

Pete Townshend: A Dobro lap steel I bought at my local music shop. It must be about 1928. It looks like a frying pan. I’ve got a perfect Bacon and Day tenor banjo with a built-in mute I bought in New York a few years ago. There’s a 1956 Epiphone Emperor that sounds like John Lee Hooker has traded souls with Carl Perkins and come back from the dead. I’ve got an Esquire string bender by Parsons-White, the real deal. I’ve still got the orange Chet Atkins Joe Walsh gave me back in the early ‘70s. My favorite guitar of all happens to be English. It’s one of the first small-body Ariels by Fylde. I have three now, all superb, set up in different tunings.

Interview - PremierGuitar March 11, 2010

Photo:  George Rose

 

Don's Tunes

Happy 80th birthday to Pete Townshend, born in Chiswick, London on this day in 1945. No one knows what it's like to be the bad man, to be the sad man, behind blue eyes.

Pete Townshend - "Behind Blue Eyes"

(Live on VH-1 Storytellers - London, UK - March 23, 2000)

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