Pete Townshend explains "I Can't Explain" and "Substitute"

Pete Townshend writes about the creation of two of his classic songs:

About I Can't Explain:

This was the most critical challenge I had ever faced. No one else in the band could do what I might be able to do – write a hit song. I went into the kitchen of the flat in Ealing where I also kept my tape machine, and listened to three or four records over and over again. One was Bob Dylan’s Freewheeling. I was really fond too of You Better Get It In your Soul by Charlie Mingus. I was also obsessed at the time with trying to understand what was going on with Charlie Parker. I’ve forgotten who it was at college that suggested I listen to him, but I was doing so. I may even have listened to a song called Devil’s Jump by John Lee Hooker. Even Green Onions. Anyway, I listened. Then I tried to divine what it was I was actually feeling as a result of hearing the music I’d just bathed in. The notion that kept coming into my head was the same: I Can't Explain. This was only my second song, and I was already doing something I would often do in the future: writing songs about music.

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About Substitute:

In February Andrew Oldham played me a white label of the Stones' 19th Nervous Breakdown. I found the track inspiring. I set up my two tape machines, now stereo, in my new flat, and wrote Substitute. I used a Harmony 12 string guitar on three overlaid tracks. The word 'substitute' had become a sublime buzzword since Smokey Robinson had used it in his masterpiece Tracks of my Tears.

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