Pinball Wizard- The Who (Guitar Cover)

Here's my guitar cover of ‪@thewho5803‬ 1969 single 'Pinball Wizard' off of their rock opera Tommy!

Written by guitarist Pete Townshend, the song is a classic rock hit featuring fast rhythmic acoustic strumming and distorted power chords. It is one of my favorite songs of all time, and one that really got me into guitar playing

The Who recorded it on February 7th, 1969 at Morgan Studios in London. Pete used his typical guitar rig at the time- a Gibson J-200 acoustic and his Gibson SG Special. He was plugged into Hiwatt amps for the recording of Tommy

I'm using my Ibanez J-200 copy (made in the 1970's in Japan) for the acoustic guitar part. Pete overdubbed a second acoustic guitar, which really just doubles the strumming of the first one

And for Pete's electric guitar, I'm playing my 1970 Gibson SG Special. This is the exact kind that Pete used for the recording of Tommy, although his was from 1968. The SG Special differs from the typical SG 'Standard' mainly with its P-90 pickups

I'm using the new ‪@aclamguitars‬ Doctor Robert V3 pedal on a low gain setting, plugged into my 1965 Fender Bassman. This did a good job of replicating the Hiwatt's bright and distorted, yet loud tone

INTERESTING NOTES:
0:08 Pete plays an F#m7 XX4220 here, bending the index up so that the high E string rings out
0:25 Pete's electric guitar enters, playing octave slide-ups on the low E and D strings. In live recordings, bassist John Entwistle did these distorted slides on his P Bass
0:36 Pete does not fret the high E string, also letting it ring out during the following G and F# chords
0:48 The overdubbed acoustic guitar enters here (off-camera at first)
0:58 After one octave slide-up, Pete rings out a harmonic note on the 12th fret of the B-string for the rest of this verse
1:23 Pete sustains the electric guitar E power chord here, instead of hitting it twice
1:40 For this verse, Pete continues to play the harmonic B note, but in a different galloping pattern
1:56 Pete plays the E chord higher up here- 0799XX
2:47 The song modulates to Bb7 here and Pete plays interesting hammer-ons and 7th notes

MY GEAR:
1970's Ibanez Jamboree 698
1970 Gibson SG Special
1965 Fender Bassman
Aclam Dr Robert V3
Neumann TLM-103

#thewho #pinballwizard #petetownshend