Just because two legendary bands were around at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean they were fans of one another. That’s apparently what happened with The Who and Led Zeppelin.In an October 2026 appearance on Classic Album Review, The Who guitarist Pete Townshend admitted that he “never really got into Led Zeppelin.” Even at the height of their fame, he just didn’t connect with his fellow English rocker’s music.Host Barry Robinson also asked Townshend whether he felt The Who helped break ground in heavy metal. “No, I don’t necessarily think so,” Townshend replied, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. “I think [our 1970 live album] Live At Leeds is probably as explosive as it got. But, meanwhile, we were still doing… Like, for example, at Woodstock, we played a good chunk of Tommy, and then we played some heavy stuff, as well. We did both.”Pete Townshend felt, back in the day, that Led Zeppelin was trying to ‘pinch’ The Who’s audience“The only heavy metal I really listened to was AC/DC,” the rock icon added. “And I never really got into Led Zeppelin, which is strange because today I’ve recently been trying to get Jimmy Page to have lunch with me. I sent him a note recently just saying, ‘I’ve been listening to all of the Zeppelin albums again,’ and I thought I should. And there’s some fucking great stuff there.”“It’s just that at the time I didn’t like it that they were, in a sense, trying to pinch our audience,” Townshend recalled. “I’d been through it before with Jimi Hendrix coming over with his big amplifiers and his distortion and his wah-wah pedal and everything else, and having to admit, ‘Wow, here is a guitar genius.’ Eric Clapton was my friend. Jeff Beck was my friend. Jimi was somebody that I knew really well. I knew he was a great shredder if he wanted to be. And so I was kind of surprised, really, when I started to listen to Led Zeppelin at the variations.”Finally, he got around to mentioning a band that very much can be credited with paving heavy metal ground. “I don’t know about bands like Black Sabbath, and so on because I really didn’t listen to them,” he said. “Despite the fact that I think they were — can I put it like this? I think they were great fun and enjoyable.”“And I really love the parts of the music business where people don’t take themselves too seriously,” Townshend concluded. “That was my issue in my early days, was that I felt I was carrying a big cross, a big manifesto for rock and roll. I felt that this was important for me to deliver this.”Photo by Pete Still/RedfernsThe post The Who Legend Admits He Didn’t Like Led Zeppelin for a Surprising Reason appeared first on VICE.