Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend (born Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend on 19 May 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, composer, and writer.

Pete Townshend made his name as the guitarist and principal songwriter for rock band The Who. His career with them spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the greatest^[1] and most influential^[2] rock bands of all time, in addition to being "possibly the greatest live band ever."^[3] Townshend is the primary songwriter for the group, writing well over 100 songs for the band's eleven studio albums, including the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations such as Odds and Sods. He has also written over 100 songs for his solo albums and rarities compilations. Although known mainly for being a guitarist, he is also an accomplished singer and keyboard player, and has played many other instruments on his solo albums, and on some Who albums (such as banjo, accordian, synthesizer, piano, bass guitar, drums).

Townshend has also written newspaper and magazine articles, book reviews, essays, books, and scripts.

After The High Numbers once again became The Who, Townshend wrote several successful singles for the band, including "I Can't Explain", "Pictures of Lily", "Substitute", and "My Generation". Townshend became known for his eccentric stage style during the band's early days, often interrupting concerts with lengthy introductions of songs, swinging his right arm against the guitar strings in his signature windmill style, often smashing guitars on stage, and often repeatedly throwing his guitars into his amplifiers and speaker cabinets. The first incident of guitar-smashing was brought about because Townshend accidentally smashed his guitar on the low roof of an early concert venue. He was so enraged at cracking the neck of his guitar that he systematically destroyed the rest of his kit, bringing the already uneasy show to an abrupt end. The onstage destruction of instruments soon became a regular part of The Who's performances that was further dramatized with pyrotechnics. Afterwards, he would flip it into the crowd. At a concert in Germany, a police officer walked up to him, pointed his gun at him, and ordered Townshend to stop smashing the guitar. Townshend, always a voluble interview subject, would later relate these antics to German/British artist Gustav Metzger's theories on Auto-destructive art, to which he had been exposed at art school. In his later years, Townshend attributed the motivation for his onstage destruction of guitars to a youthful anger he had long since outgrown.

The Who thrived, and continue to thrive, despite the deaths of two of the original members. They are regarded by many rock critics as one of the best^[4][5] live bands^[6][7] from a period of time that stretched from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the result of a unique combination of high volume, showmanship, a wide variety of rock beats, and a high-energy sound that alternated between tight and free-form. The Who continue to perform critically acclaimed sets in the 21st century, including a highly regarded performance at the Live 8 music festival in July 2005.

Townshend remained the primary songwriter and leader of the group, writing over 100 songs which appeared on the band's 11 studio albums. Among his most well-known accomplishments are the creation of Tommy, for which the term "rock opera" was coined, and a second pioneering rock opera, Quadrophenia; his wild, guitar-smashing stage persona – which has become virtually de rigueur in the majority of rock acts since the 1970s; his use of guitar feedback as sonic technique; and the introduction of the synthesizer as a rock instrument. Townshend revisited album-length storytelling throughout his career and remains the musician most associated with the rock opera form. Townshend also demonstrated prodigious talent on the guitar and was influential as a player, developing a unique style which combined aspects of rhythm and lead guitar and a characteristic mix of abandon and subtlety. Many tracks also feature Townshend on piano or keyboards, though keyboard-heavy tracks usually featured guest artists such as Nicky Hopkins, John Bundrick or Chris Stainton

Keith Richards

Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English guitarist, songwriter, singer, producer and founding member of The Rolling Stones. As a guitarist, Richards is mostly known for his innovative rhythm playing. In 2003 Richards was ranked 10th on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

With songwriting partner and Rolling Stones lead vocalist Mick Jagger, Richards has written and recorded hundreds of songs, fourteen of which Rolling Stone magazine lists among the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Keith Richards, the only child of Bert Richards and Doris Dupree Richards, was born in Dartford, Kent. His father was a factory labourer slightly injured during World War II, and Richards' paternal grandparents were socialists and civic leaders.^[3] His maternal grandfather (Augustus Theodore Dupree), who toured Britain in a jazz big band called Gus Dupree and his Boys, was an early influence on Richards' musical ambitions and got him interested in playing guitar.

Richards' mother introduced him to the music of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and bought him his first guitar - a Rosetti acoustic - for seven pounds. His father was less encouraging: "Every time the poor guy came in at night," Richards says, "he'd find me sitting at the top of the stairs with my guitar, playing and banging on the wall for percussion. He was great about it really. He'd only mutter, 'Stop that bloody noise.'" Richards' first guitar hero was Scotty Moore.

Richards attended Wentworth Primary School, as did Mick Jagger; the two knew each other as schoolboys, and lived in the same neighbourhood until Richards' family moved to another section of Dartford in 1954. From 1955 to 1959 Richards attended Dartford Technical School (now named Wilmington Grammar School), where the choirmaster, Jake Clair, noticed his singing voice and recruited him into the school choir. As one of a trio of boy sopranos Richards sang (among other performances) at Westminster Abbey in front of the Queen - an experience that he has called his "first taste of show biz."

In 1959, Richards was expelled from Dartford Technical School for truancy, and the headmaster suggested he would be more at home at the art college in the neighboring town of Sidcup. At Sidcup Art College Richards devoted his time to playing guitar, and first heard American bluesLittle Walter and Big Bill Broonzy. He swapped a pile of records for his first electric guitar, a hollow-body Hoffner cutaway. Fellow Sidcup student and future musical colleague Dick Taylor recalls, "There was a lot of music being played at Sidcup, and we'd go into the empty classrooms and fool around with our guitars. ... Even in those days Keith could play most of [Chuck Berry's] solos." Taylor also remembers Richards experimenting with various drugs at Sidcup: "In order to stay up late with our music and still get to Sidcup in the morning, Keith and I were on a pretty steady diet of pep pills, which not only kept us awake but gave us a lift. We took all kinds of things - pills girls took for menstruation, inhalers like Nostrilene, and other stuff. Opposite the college, there was this little park with an aviary that had a cockatoo in it. Cocky the Cockatoo we used to call it. Keith used to feed it pep pills and make it stagger around on its perch. If ever we were feeling bored, we'd go and give another upper to Cocky." artists like

One morning in 1961, on the train journey from Dartford to Sidcup, Richards happened to get into the same carriage as Mick Jagger, who was then a student at the London School of Economics.^[15] They recognized each other and began talking about the LPs Jagger had with him: blues and rhythm & blues albums he had acquired by mail-order from America. Richards was surprised and impressed that Jagger not only shared his enthusiasm for Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, but also that he owned such LPs, which were extremely rare in Britain at the time. The two discovered that they had a mutual friend: Dick Taylor, with whom Jagger was singing in an amateur band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Jagger invited Richards to come to a rehearsal, and soon after Richards also joined the line-up. The group disbanded after Jagger and Richards met Brian Jones, with whom they went on to form The Rolling Stones.

By mid-1962 Richards had left Sidcup Art College in favour of pursuing his fledgling musical career, and moved into a London flat with Jagger and Jones. His parents divorced about the same time. Richards maintained close ties with his mother, who was very supportive of his musical activities, but he became estranged from his father, and didn't resume contact with him until 1982.

From 1963 to 1978, Richards used the professional name "Keith Richard", which Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham considered more suitable as a show-business name.