September 1, 2014

50 years ago this month: the first time Pete Townshend destroyed his guitar as part of an on-stage performance.

"Pete Townshend said it was an accident the first time he smashed his guitar. He was playing with The Who in a small cramped room at the Railway Hotel in Harrow, west London. The ceiling was damp with condensation, the room smoky, a smell of sweat and stale beer. The Who were playing 'Smokestack Lightning,' 'I’m a Man,' and 'Road Runner' when..."

I don't think the precise day is known, so I can't say "50 years ago today" as I normally do, and it wasn't a planned action, so this is an ambiguous milestone. Later, Townsend would do it on purpose. But even if it was intentional, it was long after the first planned performance of instrument destruction. I don't know what was the first, but Wikipedia has an article titled "Instrument destruction," which gives the honor to a performance that took place in 1956, amazingly enough, on the Lawrence Welk TV show. It was Rocky Rockwell, doing an Elvis Presley impersonation, and it looked a little something like this:



Maybe because that was comical, it shouldn't count. Rockwell wasn't sincere in his Elvisosity, so the destruction expressed only a rejection of the music he was inviting us to laugh at and reject. And they say Jerry Lee Lewis set his piano on fire in the 1950s. Charles Mingus famously got mad at someone and broke his $20,000 bass.

But there's some restriction of the definition of the feat that puts Pete Townsend first. Here's Jeff Beck aping Pete's routine in the 1966 movie "Blowup":

16 comments:

Rumpletweezer said...

In 1967 The Who opened for Herman's Hermits at the Baltimore Civic Center. The band destroyed its equipment--guitars, drums, and amplifiers. There was smoke. I became a fan of The Who and have been ever since.

richard mcenroe said...

My favorite Pete Townsend moment was when he fungo'd Abby Hoffman offstage at Woodstock. Shame he turned out to be a kiddy diddler.

Dr Weevil said...

Ira Louvin - the drunk half of the Louvin Brother bluegrass band - was smashing his mandolin on stage back in the '50s. He was a skilled mandolin repairman when he was sober, which helped keep the costs down.

His Wikipedia article is surprisingly short. Here's the second and last paragraph:

"Louvin was notorious for his drinking and short temper. He married four times, his third wife having shot him multiple times in the chest and hand after he allegedly beat her. He died on June 20, 1965 when a drunken driver struck his car in Williamsburg, Missouri. At the time, a warrant for Louvin's arrest had been issued on a DUI charge."

His teatotalling brother Charlie Louvin outlived him by 45+ years, and made many fine albums on his own. My favorite of their songs is 'The Great Atomic Power'. The message - that all-out nuclear war is no big deal compared to the wrath of God - is good theology, but very shocking to the average ignorant never-been-a-churchgoer today. The first tune on their greatest hits, "Broadminded", is also good for shocking the terminally naive: the first line is "That word 'broadminded' is spelled S-I-N".

Patrick said...

It breaks my heart to see those stars smashing a perfectly good guitar.

Carol said...

Yeah, I loved Hendrix but never got the instrument destruction thing. But then I never understood why my brothers would build Revell model tanks just to blow them up with firecrackers either.

Guildofcannonballs said...

I just watched Johnny Cash on Columbo (in near buff). Great movie. Columbo says he doesn't like planes, and Cash says don't be a wimp just learn to fly, Columbo says "I don't even like how tall I am" while standing a good 6" below Cash in the shot.

Very nice.

Anyway, Cash's character, Tommy Brown, ends up getting caught for murder in part because he didn't take his guitar with him on a plane flight he was planning on parachuting out of.

So, in conclusion, we know the character Tommy Brown from Columbo wouldn't be smashing his guitar but instead protecting it to the extent it reveals his involvement in murder.

Anonymous said...

NotquiteunBuckley said...

I just watched Johnny Cash on Columbo (in near buff). Great movie.

I love you, NQB.

Robert Cook said...

"My favorite Pete Townsend moment was when he fungo'd Abby Hoffman offstage at Woodstock. Shame he turned out to be a kiddy diddler."

Except, he didn't and isn't.

Robert Cook said...

"It breaks my heart to see those stars smashing a perfectly good guitar."

Once, Townshend retorted to those who condemned his destruction of guitars that they weren't Stradivarious violins but "planks of wood off an assembly line."

Robert Cook said...

"...I loved Hendrix but never got the instrument destruction thing."

Hendrix didn't really destroy his guitars; he did it at Monterey Pop Festival, and possibly one or two other times--if at all.

As for the Who, the first time was an accident, but it caused a sensation in the crowd, so Townshend's manager encouraged him to do it again at the next show, where he would have photographers ready to document the deed. It was a gimmick, a sensational bit of stage-craft, (expensive, too). They stopped it pretty early on, by 1968 or very early '69. Townshend has sporadically destroyed guitars over the years since then, but only rarely.

CWJ said...

Althouse,

Townsend's memoir says it was June not September, and that it was a Tuesday.

So if that's the case, the anniversary has already come and gone. OTOH, the actual anniversary date is pinned down a little better to June 2,9,16,23 or 30.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

What amazing talent it must take to destroy a guitar!

richard mcenroe said...

"Townshend had been arrested on January 13 of that year, after he used a credit card to view a child porn website as part of personal research while writing his autobiography. Townshend claimed he had been sexually abused as a child himself.

“The police have unconditionally accepted that these were my motives in looking at this site and that there was no other nefarious purpose,” said Townshend in an official press statement. “I accept that I was wrong to access this site and that by doing so, I broke the law.” He addressed the topic further in his 2012 autobiography, ‘Who I Am.’

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/pete-townshend-cleared-child-porn-charges/?trackback=tsmclip

I suggest you not try this defense unless you are a superstar yourself.

Townshend and Hoffman at Woodstock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8BYgzIEHIY

tim maguire said...

Does anyone know the fate of Nero's fiddle?

Robert Cook said...

"Does anyone know the fate of Nero's fiddle?"

It was certainly later destroyed for being lined with asbestos.

Anonymous said...

"It breaks my heart to see those stars smashing a perfectly good guitar."

I doubt that this line refers to Townshend.

The same song containes the line "You don't get out till you get some soul." It's not likely that this describes Pete.

Much more likely it's about that poser, Garth Brooks, who also smashed guitars but has no known soul.

Also, the 1963 reference fits Brooks better.