Pete Townshend reveals the three bands who filled The Who’s shoes: “They took the stadium audience that I had prepared”

Pete Townshend says Bruce Springsteen, Queen and U2 took over The Who’s role as stadium rock acts after the band split in the early 1980s. He believes The Who helped establish the audience for large-scale anthemic songs, and says the three acts carried that style to stadium crowds.

Townshend named “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and expansive versions of “My Generation” as examples of the music he had written for stadiums. He said it stung to see the other bands attract that audience, but he felt proud of them and became friends with their members. In the same interview, he also said he had reconsidered Led Zeppelin, whose music he had once dismissed partly because he saw them as rivals.