“SUBSTITUTE”

The Who

A TIMELESS AND enduringly appealing powerpop classic, this early Who song from 1966 features guitarist Pete Townshend’s celebrated songcraft and simple but effective rhythm parts.

The guitarist kicks off the tune with a punchy chord riff, for which he employs compact triad inversions on the top three strings over an open D-string pedal tone, foreshadowing both the song’s chorus and a compositional approach that he would later go on to employ to great effect in tracks like “Sparks,” from Tommy. Notice how, by using an electric 12-string guitar here, the notes on the G string are doubled an octave higher, along with the open D notes, adding to the richness and “tallness” of the chord voicings.

The first three chords require a couple of quick position shifts to make, so take it slow at first, until muscle and visual memory set in, and try to grab all three notes of each shape at once, as opposed to setting down one finger at a time, which is a bad habit to form when changing chords.

A six-string electric guitar (Gtr. 2) enters at the end of bar 4, taking the spotlight with a simple but catchy riff built around an open D5 chord, with John Entwistle’s signature growling bass doubling Townshend’s melodic movement an octave lower. You may find that an alternative fingering for the D5 chord, such as “2 and 3” or “2 and 4” works best for this part, as it would conveniently free up your 1st finger to grab the B note on the A string’s 2nd fret.

For the song’s pre-chorus (see section C, bar 17), Townshend tastefully married a supportive sequence of open chord changes (Em - G5 - D), played on acoustic (Gtr. 3), with a catchy single-note, electric-guitar-and-bass-in-octaves riff that doesn’t get in the way of singer Roger Daltrey’s vocals. Townshend offers a subtle, cool variation on this riff for the song’s third pre-chorus, at section F (bar 46), where he

F# bends up to the low G note from at the 2nd fret, pulling the string in toward the palm.