The Who star Pete Townshend hated performing at the Woodstock festival because the "drugged up hippies" in attendance didn't appreciate one of the band's finest shows.

The guitarist has opened up about the experience of performing before dawn on 17 August, 1969 in Ken Sharp's new book Play On: Power Pop Heroes, and he admits he's disappointed the festival wasn't the start of something really big.

In an excerpt on Ultimate Classic Rock, Townshend states, "We were brilliant. It was all those drugged up hippies that ended up looking like twats in The Simpsons (that spoiled it). Listen, Woodstock should have delivered what it promised. We did. The movie (festival documentary) delivered too, I think.

"Woodstock could have been a beginning, not an end. There were nearly a million very good souls there, with the best intentions. What went wrong? I don't know. Maybe nothing. I didn't have a good time. It was just another gig to me - a particularly tough one."