How Ty Segall accidentally destroyed his favourite guitar: “That was sad”
There are many unsung heroes involved in the making of a good live show. Lurking in the shadows of the spotlights occupied by stars are technicians and facilitators who keep everything running smoothly, so the musicians can get the acclaim. Of all those supporting players, the sound technician is undoubtedly one of the most important.
There are shows I’ve been to, where that sentiment feels more pertinent than others. Where I watch guitarists in particular, fiddle around with a carefully crafted pedal board, improvising with its settings and thus putting the sound technician into a fit of fury. This wasn’t planned for? What will this sound like? Can it handle this much power?
The last question was one I specifically remember asking myself at a Ty Segall gig, where the sheer level of distortion coming from his guitar playing almost took my face off, let alone the pedal board. Effects were funnelled through it to create a bona fide sound of immersive fuzz rock and I walked away from that gig, with a newfound respect for all things sound.
But, in my curious obsession with the way in which these myriad textures were layered through just one instrument, I began to neglect the actual instrument. In decades past, it’s been subject to on-stage smashings in the name of showmanship, but as modernity rolled on and the industrial power of a fuzz pedal was introduced, it needed to be a robust member of the live show.
Particularly for someone like Ty Segall, who centralises his music around the guitar and uses his live shows to descend into physically demanding guitar solos, that push and pull at every corner of tension within the instrument. But surprisingly, it wasn’t a raging solo or thumping chorus that brought one of his trusty guitars to its shattering end. It was a simple moment of normal neglect.
“I’d toured with it for about a year,” he told Guitar World, when describing his prized 1965 Gibson Melody Maker. Continuing, he said, “but one show I had it leaned up against my amp, and [when] I went to go say hi to somebody, I stepped on the stage really hard and the guitar fell over and exploded. The headstock shattered into five pieces; it was not just a crack. That was sad.”
Someone with a penchant for the poetic may have noted that leaning it against the amp, the piece of equipment then even dormant, homes all the power of his live show may have been the first mistake.
But it was a sad, almost underwhelming end for an instrument that played an integral role in forming the classic Ty Segall sound. It’s believed that his ’65 Gibson Melody Maker was used in the making of his 2021 album Harmonizer, which was one of his most powerful to date. It leaned heavy on the production style and centred a large part of its melodies around an intensely saturated fuzz pedal, that one could call the swansong of this great instrument.
