Pete Townshend, The Who’s guitarist and principal songwriter, was born into a musical family in Chiswick, West London, on 19 May 1945. His father Cliff played the alto saxophone with the RAF dance band The Squadronaires, and his mother Betty Dennis sang professionally. An aunt encouraged him to learn piano but after seeing the movie Rock Around The Clock in 1956 he was drawn to rock’n’roll, an interest his parents actively encouraged. Having dallied briefly with the guitar, Pete’s first real instrument was the banjo which he played in a schoolboy trad jazz outfit called The Confederates. The group featured John Entwistle on trumpet but after John took up the bass guitar the two friends joined another schoolboy band, The Scorpions, with Pete on guitar. Pete and John both attended Acton County Grammar School where another, slightly older, pupil Roger Daltrey had a group called The Detours. Roger invited John to join and about six months later the nucleus of The Who was in place when John persuaded Roger that Pete should join too. Meanwhile Pete had enrolled at Ealing School of Art to study graphic design, where he broadened his mind on a diet of radical performance art and American blues music, both of which would influence The Detours as they worked their passage through the West London club and pub circuit. With the arrival in 1964 of drummer Keith Moon and managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, The Who were on their way, with Pete increasingly cast in the role of leader and spokesman.
