Pete Townshend recalled the advice he gave Jimi Hendrix the first time they met – and said he regretted passing on the information.

The Who guitarist encountered the future icon soon after his arrival in the U.K. in 1966, at the start of a nine-month period that would secure his reputation forever. But Townshend soon wished he hadn’t told Hendrix what he did, as he explained to Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show.

“What I did for Jimi – which I always regretted doing for Jimi – was that, his manager brought him to meet me at a recording studio when he first arrived, and he asked me what equipment to buy. I told him that I’d been using a mixture of an amplifier called Sound City, which was a Marshall substitute, with a Marshall, to get this really kind of slabby sound.”

It’s hardly surprising that Hendrix heeded the advice he’d been given; but it wasn’t long before Townshend realized what he’d done. “And then, a couple of weeks later, we did a show with him at the Saville Theatre with him allegedly supporting us,” the Englishman said. “I wish I’d never given him the tip! I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s brilliant enough without being a thousand watts loud!’”

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