The Who guitarist Pete Townshend has recently said in a recent interview that the avenues and exploits of the guitar are no longer up for experimentation. Everything has been “literally exhausted”. The future of rock is guitarless.
As reported by Ultimate Classic Rock, the legendary rocker indicated that highly skilled guitarists have left little in the way of creative avenues for other players to explore. He also acknowledged that while rock music is falling in its popularity, it definitely isn’t dead. He proposed that rock however may need to stop depending on the guitar.
“The guitar may be losing ground, but in part, that’s because if you spend an hour on Instagram or YouTube, you will quickly discover unknown people playing the guitar the way a great orchestral violinist like Yehudi Menuhin once might have played his instrument,” Townshend told The Dallas Morning News last week (Sept. 23). “These are virtuosos of the highest order. They can shred like Eddie Van Halen or play jazz like John McLaughlin.”
He continued, “They’ve literally exhausted the possibilities of the guitar.”
This isn’t the first time that Rock’s lifespan has been discussed at length by a legend of the scene. We live in an era dominated by hip-hop and pop music in the mainstream, so it’s easy to feel a little disheartened.
“This kind of virtuosity is already happening with beat box-based rap, and with laptop-supported pop,” Townshend said. “Everything will change again, maybe faster than it did for guitar music — who knows?”
Townshend then clarified, “Hip-hop is rock to my ears: music for the neighbourhood, the street, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the young, the ignored. That used to be what I focused on. Now, I try to write real operas, and want my stage work to be like art installations — and why not? Kanye West has been doing the same thing.”
