Created by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young in Australia back in 1973, there is no band like AC/DC. For more than five decades, the band has continued to play the exact same kind of music they love, a sound that cannot be emulated without Angus’s guitar playing. But they would not have achieved that sound without the bands that came before and inspired them. Over the decades, Angus Young has shared his opinions on groups like The Who and their guitarist Pete Townshend, saying what he liked and did not like about them. What is Angus Young's opinion on The Who and Pete Townshend Angus and his late brother Malcolm were big fans of The Who since the 1960s and the band was one of their influences. The guitarist even kind of "praised" them in the beginning of AC/DC's career, when criticizing Led Zeppelin, calling the Jimmy Page band "poor imitators of The Who". Young also admires Pete Townshend and once said he was a kind of guitarist who could play one string or chord and make something simple sound really better. "Pete Townshend is another guy who can sit on one string or one chord and make something seemingly mundane thing come really alive. He used to play a very light SG, like I do. But he'd whack the SG and it would really move, and he'd stand there like a rock. Being a little guy, when I hit the SG it moves but I have no but to move with it (laughs). My brother George used to tell me if I fell all over the stage chasing my guitar, I should make it look like part of the act!" Angus Young said. The AC/DC leader really recognizes Townshend's influence in Rock music. He already said he was one of the most imitated guitarists in the world. "There are a lot of good guitarists in the world but you just lose interest. It's like if you saw Pete Townshend when he first started off. It was all bang, bang the hell out of the guitar." Angus Young continued: "But the style he plays is probably the most imitated in the world. (Eric) Clapton was happening but he got too technical. He made 12 bars seem like a big thing. There are a hell of a lot of good players around, so many you can't keep track. But I haven't bought a record in years except something like Muddy Waters," he said in an interview with Steven Rosen in 1978. However, the musician personally did not like Pete Townshend’s solo career in the 1980s. He felt that Townshend should have always worked with Roger Daltrey. "I tend to look at the music as a song; it sounds a bit funny talking about it as someplace to play a solo. My brother would beat me up. People tend to see me as a soloist. Poor people. You'd think they'd have something better to do. I mean there's a lot of comedy on TV worth watching. Yeah, people see that but I don't." "I look at it as a band. I think Pete Townshend is rotten without Roger Daltrey and The Who. He's quite boring actually. Or the same with Zeppelin without John Bonham. To me it's not the same. I mean there are solo people who just do that sort of thing. I like it as a band, as a unit. You should hear me on my own. It's horrendous," he told Guitar World in 1984 Pete Townshend reportedly said "how are we going to top this?" when AC/DC opened for The Who Angus and AC/DC had the chance to meet and spend time with The Who in 1979, when they became the band’s opening act. At the time, the group still had their first classic line-up with Bon Scott as their frontman and "Highway to Hell" had just been released. In the book "The Story of AC/DC: Let There Be Rock" (2006), Kirk Dyer, the late Cheap Trick road manager, recalled that after AC/DC left the stage, the members of The Who looked at one another and Pete asked how they were supposed to top that performance. "It was a two-day event and AC/DC followed us and then The Who. During our set, all the band guys are watching us play. Pete Townshend and all the AC/DC guys are trying to get us to screw up, that kind of thing. Which is normal, band guys will sit on the sidelines mooning each other, just like a football team or something. Just a bunch of practical jokers. Anyway, it was time for AC/DC to go on and no one could find Angus." He continued: "You can hear him, but no one can tell where he is. All of a sudden you see that he’s up on a security guard’s shoulders all the way in the back of the crowd—85,000 deep! About a quarter of a mile away from the stage, starting the song. I’m standing onstage with Pete Townshend and Rick Nielsen, right next to them. They’re talking and Pete was just blown away. He couldn’t believe how great they had just rocked. I don’t think he had ever seen them before that. They just came out and did a killer set, I mean it was unbelievable. (AC/DC) came out and just blew the crowd away, The Who guys are looking at each other and Pete Townshend said to the rest of the band, ‘How are we going to top this?!’" Kirk Dryer said. According to Pete Townshend, they were not able to top AC/DC that night and several factors got in the way, such as the London Council limiting the sound level and prohibiting them from using their lasers. "(...) Harvey Goldsmith arranged for The Who to perform at Wembley Stadium with AC/DC in support, but it wasn’t as intense as it should have been. The Greater London Council limited the sound level and forbade us to use our lasers. We worked hard, playing to a huge audience of nearly 80,000 people. Fans sent letters praising the show, but it didn’t feel right," Pete Townshend said in his autobiography "Who I Am". One of the main differences between The Who and AC/DC according to Pete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkT8W6u81Ks He believes AC/DC and The Who are different kinds of bands. To Pete, the Australian band could keep the same intensity in every album they made because they never changed their style. As a songwriter, Townshend wanted to experiment and try different things every time he had the chance to write new music. “AC/DC made 50 albums, but all their albums were the same. It wasn’t the way The Who worked. We were an ideas band. (…) I’ve got about 500 titles I might release online, mostly unfinished stuff. We’re not making Coca-Cola, where every can has to taste the same. And it’s turned out, surprise, surprise, that rock ’n’ roll is really good at dealing with the difficulties of aging. Watching Keith Richards onstage, trying to do what he used to do — it’s disturbing, heart-rending, but also delightful," Pete Townshend said in an interview with The New York Times in 2024. Although their music and songwriting styles are not similar, their careers do share some coincidences. Both bands lost a member in his early 30s under tragic circumstances. Keith Moon died in 1978 at the age of 32 and Bon Scott passed away in 1980 at the age of 33. The post Angus Young’s opinion on The Who and Pete Townshend appeared first on Rock and Roll Garage.