Townshend's electric guitar from the Who's first album, 1965's My Generation, through 1978's Who Are You had an indelible sonic thumbprint � a savage howl of angst, dissatisfaction, anger and ebullient joy discharged through stacks of Marshall, Vox and Hiwatt amplifiers. Of course, his acoustic six-string playing was and is still indelible, too, but it's his formative and most influential electric days that created an entire school of rock rhythm and lead guitar playing.

Several of the things that made Townshend unique were within his physical approach to the guitar. His rhythm playing favors down strokes, with upstrokes often reserved for emotional punctuation. And his hybrid pick-and-fingers approach to striking the strings stems from his early experience playing banjo. That instrument gave Townshend a fundamental grasp of finger-picking and plucking, so he could palm or float a flat-pick on his fingers while tearing out, for example, the stuttering chords of "Who Are You." His skiffle music beginnings also developed the wrist work that defined his signature acoustic guitar strumming on the Gibson SJ-200.

Another part of Townshend's magic is his chord voicings. He used thumb fretted seventh chords and sustained fourths unsparingly, and even added an extra D note � on the second string � for his G campfire chord.

For the Who's first few years Townshend had been forced by poverty to play and plug into whatever he could afford. Initially, with his pre-Who group the Detours, it was a Harmony Stratotone he'd spray painted red, and then his first quality electric instrument, an Epiphone Wilshire he bought from Detours singer Roger Daltrey.