Jimi Hendrix, fire hazards and Saturday Night Live: Rock’n’roll’s raucous history of trashing guitars

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 4 month free trial Sign up Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 4 month free trial Sign up “I was expecting everybody to go, ‘Wow, he’s broken his guitar,’” he told Rolling Stone, “but nobody did anything, which made me kind of angry in a way, and determined to get this precious event noticed by the audience.” They certainly noticed when he then hammered the guitar to smithereens against the floor and amp. “I smashed this guitar and jumped all over the bits, and then picked up the 12-string and carried on as though nothing had happened,” he said in an issue of Sound International in 1980, “and the next day the place was packed.” Guitar demolition became a regular form of auto-destructive art for Townshend – a student of German artist Gustav Metzger, who originated the form – and was adopted with no little enthusiasm by The Who’s borderline maniacal drummer, Keith Moon. “The idea of almost ritualistically smashing a guitar is something so cool, and touches a nerve in so many people, that it seemed like a great way to put a period or to dot the ‘I’ or cross the ‘T’ at the end of a show,” Stanley told Allmusic, “that this is finite, that this is over, it’s the climax.” These pre-planned moments of showmanship, as visceral as they were, played into the romantic notion of rock’n’roll as a greater force than anything used to create it. “Because after a while they weren’t frustrated by their equipment breaking down; it was more of a celebration.” Ritzy Bryan of The Joy Formidable, who took to what she calls “losing” guitars during their climactic early hit “Whirring” on tours in 2010 and 2011 – even offing one during the very first song of their set at Reading 2010 – agrees that instruments die in the moments when frustration and freedom collide.