The first time Pete Townshend smashed a guitar: “Smashed it to smithereens”
Rebellion comes easy for some. While many of us struggled in our teen years to act out against what might have been only a slightly unfavourable living condition, some people were born to fight the power. However small that power may be. Pete Townshend was undoubtedly one of them.
The Who’s lead guitarist is arguably one of the greatest songwriters that Britain has ever produced, but it’s not just his creative prowess that built his immense reputation. Townshend was, for a long while, a one-man wrecking machine.
His on-stage antics were famously wild, a skill which blew away audiences all over the world who were in awe of Townshend’s ferocious behaviour. He would prowl the stage, hoping to maul anyone who dared look at him. The guitarist would also routinely thrash at his instrument with reckless abandon, playing it harder than most dared. But that would be the least of his guitars’ worries.
Soon enough, Townshend and The Who became well-known for one thing: trashing everything in sight. For the most part, this was hotel rooms, with Keith Moon leading the charge, but when on stage, without a television in sight or a Rolls Royce to put in a swimming pool they were stuck. So, instead, they smashed their instruments. It became a signature piece, to the point they were often in debt because they show they played but didn’t pay enough to cover the instruments broken. But when did he start doing his signature exploit?
The Who tore up the rulebook in the 1960s and put on a proper rock show, which was like nothing else in ’65. Bursting onto the scene with relentless authority, the band released the incredible song ‘I Can’t Explain‘ which propelled their status to international fame. However, despite their studio success, it was the band’s live shows in which they really came into their own.
Townshend was cut from a different cloth than The Beatles; he wasn’t a charming figure who was polite or family-friendly. His on-stage presence was aggressive from the very first note he played until he literally slammed his guitar into the ground at the end of a gig, a moment of performative art playing out in front of audiences every night.
The guitar god actually destroyed his first six-string way before he ever achieved any notoriety, as he once revealed in a past conversation with Playboy’s David Sheff: “I was 13. John Entwistle and I were rehearsing together in the front room of my house. My grandmother came in shouting, ‘Turn that bloody racket down!’ I said, ‘I’ll do better than that,’ and I got my guitar–this was a good guitar that I had paid for myself with money I earned from a paper route–and smashed it to smithereens. I said, ‘Now will you fucking get out of my life?’ and she stomped out.”
He then continued: “I looked at John and said, ‘What now?’ And he said, ‘Another paper route, I think.’ Once I had done it, it was always there as a possibility. If ever I wanted to deal with any kind of hidden rage, I could always take it out on the guitar. I could always trigger the same little bit of psychotherapy.”
Sheff then tried to get inside of the mind of Townshend and tried to find out whether he does this as a form of letting off his anger or is it just theatre to which The Who icon stated: “Well, you have to remember I’m not angry all the time. Even now I occasionally get frustrated on the stage with guitars and want to smash them. I tend not to do it, but the opportunity’s always there. I smashed a guitar on the Psycho Derelict tour and it was great fun.”
As Townshend alludes to, he only does the guitar smashing when he is in the mood to do so, making it a special and almost symbolic moment. Sheff, pondering the question of guilt in regards to smashing such an expensive instrument, saw Townshend reveal his plans to auction off the crumbled guitar for charitable causes.
He also stated the brutally honest reason why he only does it when he wants to do so, saying: “It’s also embarrassing, is what it is. It’s like comedians’ being forced to use their catchphrase after they’ve become serious actors.”
Watch Townshend do his iconic trick in action, below.
