The First Song Pete Townshend Wrote At 11, Before He Knew How to Play Guitar, Was Inspired by Young Love and Bill Haley

It was one of Pete Townshend‘s earliest compositions, “It Was You,” that was first released in 1964 by The Naturals, a Merseybeat group from Essex, England. “We recorded my first song, ‘It Was You,’ in late 1963 at the home studio of Barry Gray, who wrote music for children’s TV puppet series like ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Fireball XL5,’” recalled Townshend in his 2012 memoir, Who I Am. “Dick James, The Beatles’ co-publisher at the time, heard ‘It Was You’ and signed me to his company.”

Before “It Was You” hit, while Townshend was in The Detours, an earlier iteration of The Who, he wrote his first song at 11 with childhood friend Graham Beard, whom he’d known since the age of 4. Music was part of Townshend’s life from an early age. As a child, he often traveled with his father, Cliff, a jazz musician for the Royal Air Force (RAF) dance band, the Squadronaires.

“I was in this world where I was a child, I was on a bus with my dad and his dance band,” recalled Townshend. “But when I was 12 or 13, suddenly there was skiffle and Elvis and Bill Haley.” The first guitar Townshend remembers playing was one handmade by Beard’s father, Fred, so he could pose in front of the mirror, “wiggling like Elvis.”

“It was barely functional,” said Townshend of the guitar stringed with piano wire, “but I got a tune out of it. This was 1955, 1956. Suddenly, I’ve got this mankey homemade guitar.”

In 1956, Townshend’s grandmother gifted him an inexpensive Spanish guitar for Christmas.

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“Bubbles”

During this time, Townshend also took his first stab at writing with Beard. Their early co-write, “Bubbles,” was a coming-of-age tune about the naivety of young love, inspired by his early obsession with the music of Haley.

“My friend Graham Beard and I were about 11, and we went to see some Bill Haley movies when we were on holiday,” said Townshend. “So we wrote some songs—the only one I remember was called ‘Bubbles.’ Then I got a guitar, at around 12 years old, and started to try to put music to these songs we’d put together.”

Growing up, Townshend’s father, a classically trained clarinetist who also played the saxophone, didn’t encourage his son’s musical aspirations and pushed him to pursue other careers. “My dad is handsome, well-dressed, and he wakes up in the morning and plays Prokofiev. He’s sophisticated, he drinks, and all the women love him,m but I’ve got my guitar, and I know that I can point it at him and go ‘Bang, you’re dead.’ And I couldn’t even play it.”

At one point, his father tried to teach him how to read music and didn’t see any point in having a piano in the house, Townshend says, since he didn’t show any “musical aptitude” at the time.

“I didn’t play music in a way that he understood it,” says Townshend. “It’s not that my dad didn’t support me, just that he used to encourage me to be a writer instead: ‘Be a journalist. That’s a good idea.’ Then, when it was clear that I was good at painting, he encouraged me to go to art school. I could have gone in any of those ways… but that wasn’t my journey.”

Photo: Pete Townshend, playing keyboards in home studio (Chris Morphet/Redferns)