The Who’s Pete Townshend Shocks Rock World: “The Beatles Copied Us!”

Pete Townshend, the guitarist of the London-based rock band The Who, made shocking comments on The Beatles and stated that the band copied them by releasing their eighth studio album, “Sgt. Pepper.”

As some of you might remember, The Beatles‘ “Sgt. Pepper” has released in May 1967. Meanwhile, The Who has released its third studio album “The Who Sell Out” in December 1967, although it was started recording in May.

Recently, when the Rolling Stone told Pete Townshend, “The Beatles released ‘Sgt. Pepper’ at the beginning of ‘The Who Sell Out’ era. Did that inspire you at all? They framed their songs around the ‘Sgt. Pepper’ idea and you framed yours around a pirate radio station,” The Who guitarist denied the claims.

“No, no,” Townshend said. “Come on. The Beatles copied us! Paul McCartney came up to me at the Bag O’Nails, which we mention in the album artwork. He was always very, very sweet to me.

“I should say that first. But he said to me that he really loved our mini-opera, which was called ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away.’

“That was on the album that preceded ‘The Who Sell Out.’ And he told me they were thinking about doing similar things.

“I think anybody that was even a little bit art school back then, a little bit adventurous – and, of course, The Beatles were encouraged to experiment to the max in the studio – would have thought about doing something which was a concept.”

Later, he continued by touching on the title of the album.

“It was only at that photo session that we learned that the name of the album was going to be ‘The Who Sell Out,’ which is a brilliant title, of course. It was only on that date that we learned what the cover was going to look like. Things moved very quickly in those days.

“Days before that, [The Who co-manager] Kit Lambert sent me Side 1 of the album to approve that had all of these wonderful commercials and some of the jingles that we’d recorded.

“We did a few goofy, fun things in the studio. We did that because we didn’t feel that we had enough strong songs for a complete album. Our managers owned and ran Track Records and they wanted another album out. They were going to put it out, whatever we said.

“And so, me and Chris Stamp, the other Who manager who was involved with Kit Lambert, who was our producer then, we had this brainstorming session to turn it into… like a day’s chapter from a radio station, to give a framework to what I thought was a too-varied bunch of songs.

He concluded: “It was a very strange time, and The Who’s live performances from this period would have been brutal, verging on heavy metal. Despite the fact that we were dressed like Christmas trees, it was still pretty brutal. And yet the songs I was writing were very, very light.

“It was before I got an interest in Meher Baba or any sort of metaphysical ideas. But they are romantic and slightly mystical, a bit hippie-ish I suppose. But we felt the album was weak and it needed a framework.

“But getting back to ‘Sgt. Pepper,’ there isn’t much of a concept to that record. But to this day, whenever I sit down and get the vinyl out, stick it on, something always leaps out that I’ve never noticed before.”

Click here for the entire interview.