Phoebe Bridgers on why she smashed her guitar on ‘Saturday Night Live’
Saturday Night Live provides artists with a rare opportunity to win over an audience of millions, and Phoebe Bridgers was always going to grab it with both hands. Following the broadcast, the music world was abuzz after witnessing Bridgers smash her guitar to smithereens in what was joyous moment of rock and roll release.
Smashing a guitar is an instinct that has been a fundamental craft of the genre for decades. Famously, The Who’s Pete Townshend often obliterated his guitar into a million pieces on a regular basis, so much so that it became something of a predictable party trick. Furthermore, the iconic album artwork for The Clash’s London Calling depicts Paul Simonon murdering his bass guitar in a wonderfully violent fashion.
Yet, when Bridgers decided to smash her instrument on Saturday Night Live, she was villainised for her actions. The musician first played her single ‘Kyoto’ before returning to the stage for ‘I Know The End’, which caused old-time rockers to suffer a bizarre online meltdown.
At the time, the late David Crosby took to Twitter to vent his frustrations at Bridgers, labelling the ending of her performance as “pathetic”. In response, she called him a “little bitch” in a wonderful refusal to accept unfair criticism. Doubling down, Crosby added: “Guitars are for playing…making music,” he said, before adding that he does “not give a flying F if others have done it before… It’s still stupid”.
Crosby wasn’t the only dissenting voice on social media after the performance, and the backlash surprised Bridgers. She later told Variety: “It’s pathetic and funny. No part of me thought it would piss anybody off. I literally went to sleep and woke up and was like, ‘what the fuck?’ It’s just so stupid.”
She added: “The fact that it made people so mad is kind of what’s punk rock about it. No thought whatsoever went into what it represented or meant: I’d never done it before, so might as well do it [on SNL], where it’s gonna be immortalised.”
Later, while appearing as a guest on the Five Things With Lynn Hirschberg podcast, Bridgers explained the band that influenced her decision. “It was more like a Bright Eyes thing,” she said. “There’s an amazing video of them doing ‘Ode To Joy’ on TV where they all smash their instruments”.
Bridgers explained how Bright Eyes member Nate Walcott worked on her records, but they’d never performed live together. Shortly before the performance, Walcott revealed that he wanted to play on Saturday Night Live, which sparked an idea in the artist’s head. She continued: “I remembered the video of him smashing his trumpet, and I was like, ‘It’s too last minute to make you do that, Nate, but I’m definitely going to smash my guitar’. People do it all the time, but I wanted to email the company before, Danelectro, and they sent me an instructional video on how to do it right. A lot of people can’t do it, and it was hard, it was harder than I thought for sure.”
Despite the hoards of complaints, Saturday Night Live was thrilled by Bridgers’ performance, which resulted in added publicity for the show. Bridgers said: “SNL was so excited, and I think they like an element of something else. It’s hard when you play guitar-based music to look exciting at all, so I think they were pretty stoked.”
Watch the footage of Phoebe Bridgers smashing her guitar on Saturday Night Live and the Bright Eyes video, which inspired her iconic performance, below.
