Approaching the 1970s, The Beatles were on the way out, leaving a gaping hole in rock ‘n’ roll for their peers to fill. As the new decade turned, The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones emerged as the salient stalwarts of classic rock. During this period, The Who conformed to the contemporary rise of prog-rock with innovative concept albums and experimental instrumentation.
The early 1970s saw a flourish of creatively attuned and highly talented musicians picking up The Beatles’ discarded threads at the vanguard of rock music. Despite their dispersal, the Liverpool band remained a dominant force through the solo endeavours of its members and their immortal influence on subsequent acts.
Like several of The Beatles’ 1960s peers, The Who were often cautious to speak too highly of their rivals. Famously, the guitarist Pete Townshend enjoyed spitting a little vitriol on his opponents. In an early TV interview with The Who, the guitarist was asked a question about musical quality.
“Actually, this afternoon, John [Entwistle] and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles — in which the voices come out of the one side and the backing track comes out of the other,” he began in response. “When you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy.”
Further to this comment, Townshend discussed Paul McCartney’s solo album Tug of War in a 1982 conversation with Kurt Loder for Rolling Stone. When Loder suggested the album had “virtually nothing to do with rock and roll,” Townshend replied, questioning whether McCartney “ever really had anything to do with rock.”
On the other side of the coin, The Who’s frontman Roger Daltrey has always appeared a little more accepting of The Beatles’ talent, especially that of John Lennon. Contributing to a 2015 feature for Uncut, the iconic singer picked out ‘Jealous Guy’ as one of his all-time favourite songs, also sparing praise for Lennon’s towering vocals on his cover of BB King’s ‘Stand By Me’.
“My favourite? It’s ‘Jealous Guy’,” he said rather succinctly. “I don’t have to tell you why. But I was listening to his voice the other day; his music was on a radio play – his version of ‘Stand By Me’. Fucking great voice he had.”
Continuing, Daltrey appraised the late Beatle’s personality. “He was lovely, but again, he had that side of him which could be quite cutting and come across quite nasty,” Daltrey remembered. “But he was straight up and down – what you saw was what you got. I can’t imagine what their life must have been like. It must have been a nightmare. I can see why people go completely mad in this business. How they dealt with it – they couldn’t go out. I suppose it makes you have to hang on to who you are: every day, you have to ask yourself, ‘Who the fuck am I?’ We had a few years of screaming girls, but that was it.”
