Classic rock bands have commanded the Super Bowl halftime stage since Janet Jackson’s infamous 2004 “wardrobe malfunction,” with Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen providing the soundtrack to the world’s biggest tailgate party. This year The Who are scheduled for a blistering break from the gridiron action in Miami on Sunday, February 7, and they’ve already leaked a set list that includes “Baba O’Riley,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Tommy, Can You Hear Me?”, “Who Are You” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” — an orgy of flat-out great music.
Appearing on stage with founding members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey — who are typically augmented in concert by Zak Starkey on drums, Simon Townshend on guitar and keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick — will be Pete’s trusty Gibson SJ-200 signature model acoustic guitar.
The image most rock fans have of Townshend sets him before a wall of Marshall or Hi-Watt amplifiers with a Gibson SG Special strapped across his body and his arm raised in one of his patented windmills. But the fact is that, despite Townshend’s pioneering work with high-volume amplification, acoustic guitar has always been at the core of his playing.
“The lead-versus-acoustic thing is not just about my hearing, my intransigence, my fear of spearing myself or my musical preference,” Townshend said in 1996 as he prepared for the Who’s Quadrophenia tour. “It is about musical and presentational dynamics. Remember that I write mainly on acoustic guitar. A lot of the songs from Quadrophenia, like a lot of Who songs, sound the best when I play acoustic.”
Scoop, Townsend’s definitive demos collection, is proof. The two-LP set, first released in 1983, is jammed with songs driven by his acoustic work. Many of the Who’s greatest numbers including “Pinball Wizard,” “Magic Bus” and “Behind Blue Eyes” have his acoustic guitar as their foundation. And he’s one of the few superstars of the classic-rock era who blended acoustic and electric six-string tracks in the studio, making that combination an important part of the Who’s distinctive sound.
Townsend acquired his first Gibson J-200 from Manny’s Music in New York City in 1968. He used it to demo and record his solo and Who songs, including “Pinball Wizard,” from 1969’s Tommy, through 1993’s Psychoderelict. He chose the guitar from five new J-200s on the famed music shop’s wall.
“It had a crisp sound and an easy neck,” Townshend told Gibson.com in 2004. “It was only later I found how well the J-200 records when you play it hard. Like the Everly acoustic, it has a rather dead soundboard and that allows you to really dig in when strumming. They are hard to bring to life with piezo pickups because the sound is so distinctive in real air, but the body shape, the necks and the sheer strength of the guitar are all very important to me. They also look utterly beautiful.”
The same can be said of his current signature model. The roots of the Gibson Pete Townshend SJ-200 acoustic guitar stretch back to 1997, when Gibson artist rep Tim Bolin caught up to the slammin’ virtuoso on the Quadrophenia tour and presented him with a Fishman Matrix-pickup equipped Gibson J-200, which immediately went into service on stage alongside two other J-200s used by Townsend and Daltrey.
Then in 2004 Gibson introduced the signature model inspired by Townshend’s own beloved 1968 J-200. Built at Gibson’s acoustic guitar plant in Bozeman, Montana, the first 150 were personally signed on their serial number labels by the Who leader. The Townshend J-200 sports the Fishman Ellipse Matrix Pickup System, a spruce top and flamed maple body with a Madagascar rosewood fingerboard, a solid moustache bridge for added volume, gold kidney tuners and mother of pearl crown inlays along the fingerboard, with Townshend’s signature inlaid on the fingerboard just above the sound hole.
Townshend was intimately involved in the guitar’s design. He paid particular attention to the neck, since he prefers a low, thin profile, like that on his original J-200, which now resides in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
Always a harsh critic of his artistry, Townshend contends that his acoustic guitar abilities were diminished by a late ’80s bicycle accident that shattered his right wrist. Yet anyone who has seen him lead the Who on tour in recent years knows his live performances still ring with the kind of vitality and power that ensure that this Sunday’s halftime show will be as pulse pounding as anything else that happens in Dolphin Stadium.