The One Song by The Who That Even Pete Townshend Hated

Few songs by The Who are as legendary as “Pinball Wizard”. This hard rock power pop tune was a standout track on the band’s 1969 rock opera concept record, Tommy. The whole of the album is quite incredible, and it even spawned stage performances and a film. “Pinball Wizard” is still quite a loved song today. But The Who, notably member Pete Townshend, didn’t have a ton of love for this particular tune.

Videos by American Songwriter

“Pinball Wizard” definitely resonated with listeners, though. Upon the single’s release, it hit No. 4 on the UK charts and did similarly well on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US, where it hit No. 19. However, according to Pete Townshend, the song was “awful” and “clumsy.”

In the remastered version of Tommy, Pete Townshend had some critical words in the liner notes for the song “Pinball Wizard”. Specifically, Townshend called the song “the most clumsy piece of writing [he had] ever done.” He also wrote that he was “embarrassed” of the song.

“This sounds like a Music Hall song,” Townshend wrote. 

Pete Townshend and The Who Didn’t Love “Pinball Wizard”

Apparently, the song almost didn’t make it to the album, too. In late 1968 (or early 1969, depending on who you ask), The Who performed a rough draft of the whole album to music critic Nik Cohn. Cohn, in turn, didn’t have the best reaction to it. It was because of this that Townshend penned “Pinball Wizard”, mainly to introduce the plot point that the titular hero, who was disabled, was also a master at a certain game. Without Cohn’s lukewarm feedback, Townshend might not have penned “Pinball Wizard” at all. Still, Townshend repeatedly bemoaned “Pinball Wizard” in the liner notes.

“I scribbled it out and all the verses were the same length and there was no kind of middle eight,” said Townshend of “Pinball Wizard”. “It was going to be a complete dud, but I carried on. […] I knocked a demo together and took it to the studio, and everyone loved it. [Engineer] Damon Lyon-Shaw said ‘Pete, that’s a hit.’ Everybody was really excited, and I suddenly thought, ‘Have I written a hit?’ It was just because the only person that we knew would give us a good review, was a pinball fanatic.”

Though plenty of fans and critics have called it “joyful” and otherwise complimented it, this one is not one of Townshend’s favorites. And despite the fact that Townshend thinks the song is clumsy and one of his worst songwriting ventures, “Pinball Wizard” is still a standard at their live shows.

Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images