The Who’s Pete Townshend “Never Really Got Into Led Zeppelin,” But Did Listen to AC/DC

The Who’s Pete Townshend admitted in a new interview that he “never really got into Led Zeppelin” at the height of the latter act’s fame, adding, “The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC.”

Townshend was a guest on the YouTube channel Classic Album Review, where host Barry Robinson asked the guitarist if he thought The Who were early progenitors of heavy metal.

“No, I don’t necessarily think so,” responded Townshend (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “I think [our 1970 live album] Live At Leeds is probably as explosive as it got. But, meanwhile, we were still doing… Like, for example, at Woodstock, we played a good chunk of Tommy and then we played some heavy stuff, as well. We did both.”

He continued, “The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC,” Pete admitted. “And I never really got into Led Zeppelin, which is strange because today I’ve recently been trying to get Jimmy Page to have lunch with me. I sent him a note recently just saying, ‘I’ve been listening to all of the Zeppelin albums again,’ and I thought I should. And there’s some fucking great stuff there.”

He explained, “It’s just that at the time I didn’t like it that they were, in a sense, trying to pinch our audience. 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.’ Eric Clapton was my friend. Jeff Beck was my friend. Jimi was somebody that I knew really well. I knew he was a great shredder if he wanted to be. And so I was kind of surprised, really, when I started to listen to Led Zeppelin at the variations.”

While it could be argued that none of the acts that Townshend mentioned are really heavy metal, he did eventually get around to the band that is largely credited with inventing the genre. “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 — can I put it like this? I think they were great fun and enjoyable.”

He concluded, “And 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, was that I felt I was carrying a big cross, a big manifesto for rock and roll. I felt that this was important for me to deliver this.”

Watch Pete Townshend’s interview on Classic Album Review below. And see where The Who, Zeppelin, Sabbath, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience each landed on Consequence’s recent list of the 100 Best Bands of All Time.