A: Actually I didn't meet Townshend until Yes played a club in Mayfair. A horrible, typical late 60's after club, snobbish 'in' club called The Revolution. This might be before that Who gig, but I'm not sure. I remember The Revolution gig because I had seen two or three times the person running the club asked us to turn down and... it was a disco! You know? it was a swinging London disco, with all the guys all dressed up terribly, this kind of after middle class guy wearing velvet and ties. We just thought they were a lot of idiots, we hated playing there! And I remember this particularly well because we were kind of embarrassed to be there, it was a bad booking, so we were supposed to be kind of background and here we are doing 'Something's Coming' from West Side Story and doing Beatles' 'Every Little Thing', incredibly fast and incredibly loud, and I hated them.
And at the end of the first set I remember walking downstairs to get a drink at the bar and somebody hit me very hard over the head and when I turned around to hit the person back thinking 'Who's the fuck?' and it was Pete Townshend! And he said: 'You guys are fucking great, come and have a drink!' And I was just amazed cause I didn't even know he was there for a start and he said: 'Why are you playing here? This place is horrible!' So we had a couple of drinks together and he was raving about how much he liked the band, particularly about my guitar playing, and I was very flattered.--Peter Banks