Re: Feedback on feedback and WAY, anyway

[Brian Cady <cadyb@home.com>]

On Pete creating feedback:

I recently recovered a Pete interview where he talks about that:

"When the Big Feedback Controversy was going on in the mid-sixties, Dave Davies
and I used to have hilarious arguments about who was the first to invent
feedback.  I used to pull Dave's leg by saying 'we both supported the Beatles in
Blackpool and you weren't doing it then...I bet you nicked it off me when you
saw me doing it.'  And Dave would scream that he was doing it long before that. 
Then one day I read this incredible story about Jeff Beck in which he said,
'Yeah, Townshend came down t'see d'Tridents rehearsing and he saw me using the
feedback and copied it.'  I never ever saw the Tridents and the man is
pathetic.  Obviously, Beck may feel deeply enough that he invented feedback, but
for Chrissakes who gives a shit?  Why even comment on it?  It doesn't really
matter, it's just a funny noise made by a guitar."

As for the lack of punk on Who Are You, Pete and I think Roger said at the time
how much they supported Punk and that the best they could do for it was to get
out of its way.  By which they meant that The Who shouldn't try to copy their
sound (even if they did invent it).  This may have been an excuse for the fact
that from 1976 on, Pete put a lot of his musical energy into finding ways to
fill the Who's sound while turning the volume down to save his hearing.  Hence,
horns, strings, a drummer who didn't ride the cymbals and play as loudly as
possible, etc.  Punk would have meant sustaining the volume and that, as far as
Pete was concerned, was no longer possible.

		-Brian in Atlanta