The “genius” Pete Townshend called “unrecognised by the world”
Rock and roll has been described in the history books as a watershed moment in Western culture. Everything had been in black and white for so long, and while Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley came to prominence at the time, it felt like they brought everything into colour when they lit up the stage. But rock could also harm those who weren’t ready for it, and Pete Townshend thought that people like Charlie Parker were glossed over for no good reason.
But Townshend was never shy about his status as a rock and roller, either. His role as The Who’s main songwriter was always about being able to capture the zeitgeist in a way few other people could, and the amount of incredible material that he got out of just two chords on ‘My Generation’ spoke much more than any complex jazz song that anyone else could put out.
In fact, that was the whole point behind rock and roll in the first place. It had strayed outside the lines of jazz and catered more towards blues most of the time, so it wasn’t impossible for a bunch of kids to throw together three chords and sing their hearts out when they put something together in a garage.
However, Townshend still thought that people like Parker never got the credit that they deserved in rock’s heyday, telling Rolling Stone during his prime, “Jazz hasn’t had the effect on the world in 25 fucking years that pop has had in one year today. Geniuses like Charlie Parker are completely unrecognised by the world, and yet groups like The Rolling Stones –very normal, very regular guys– are incredibly well-known. The whole system is a different thing entirely.”
Then again, that might just be down to the mediums that they worked in. For all of the simple music that got on the pop charts, most of it catered to the common attention span of the masses, who probably didn’t have the same kind of patience to listen to a band play through a jazz standard or take countless solos across every track.
Just because it’s different doesn’t mean that you should avoid it, though. Throughout his time working with The Who, Townshend would even find ways to incorporate different jazzy textures into his songs, including using the droning sound of the open D string to simulate a modal sound on the single ‘Substitute’.
While there certainly wasn’t as much attention being paid to jazz in the mid-1960s, Miles Davis would be the one to burst everything wide open again. The minute that Bitches Brew came out, fans got to hear what jazz could mean in a psychedelic context, as Davis assaulted his horns the same that Jimi Hendrix might assault his guitar.
If the 1960s were the era of psychedelia, then the 1970s was when all those virtuosos started to show their stuff. As much as artists like The Doors were great for their time and even had sprinklings of jazz in their songs, everyone from the UK to Steely Dan would help jazz reach a wider audience with either takes on standards or original compositions that would take casual rock fans forever to actually figure out. Jazz had its time in the sun before rock and roll, but even with Townshend breaking down the door for rock, the complex side of music still managed to work its way into the conversation,