In early 1977, Keith Moon took Pete Townshend to see Generation X at the Marquee Club. “It was my first punk concert,” Townshend recalled in 2019. “Keith had had the courage to go [to punk gigs], and I’d never had the courage to go. I think when the punk movement came along, it wasn’t their mission to conquer, but to destroy. And they did. But I loved the punk movement, because that’s what I wanted The Who to be. I wanted The Who to last six months then disappear, so I could go back to art school and have a decent life.
“At the show, I remember thinking: ‘Wow, this is what we used to do. And they’re doing it again. They’re not doing it quite as well as we did it, but they’re doing it really, really well, and they’re young.”
