WCSX Classic Cuts : Sparks
WCSX Classic Cuts
The Who: “Sparks”
The Hook: The product of a challenge Pete Townshend gave to himself to regularly come up with demos for The Who.
Album: Tommy
Year: 1969
Writer: Pete Townshend
Stats: Never released as a single.
Background: During the late ’60s, Pete Townshend lived in the Belgravia section of London, where he regularly created demos for The Who in the studio he had built for himself in his apartment. He says he used to challenge himself to just play his guitar until something worthwhile came out — and that such songs as “Happy Jack” and “Magic Bus” were born that way. He tells us about another song that emerged from that period, which would become an instrumental part of Tommy, “Sparks.”
The Who’s Pete Townshend on how the Tommy instrumental “Sparks” grew out of a phase he went through where he challenged himself to regularly sit down with a guitar and play until he had a song demo for the band. OC:…symphonic piece. :20
“Some quite interesting songs came out of that requirement to just knock something out which will enable me to make a demo. Another thing that was a bit like that was “Sparks,” the overture that I wrote for what was then going to be a rock opera called Rael, where I just sat down and started to play for the fun of it and produced really quite an extraordinary spontaneous symphonic piece.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah66Jji74Tk