TRUE or FALSE: Pete Townsend’s first famous “guitar- smashing” was not a part of the act and purely accidental?
In 1964, while playing at London’s Railway Station
nightclub, Pete Townsend was having trouble with
his Rickenbacker. The electric guitar was buzzing
and humming, so Pete tried shaking it around, but
accidentally hit the low ceiling. To his complete
amazement, the guitar’s frame busted in half.
Pete, thinking quickly, acted as though it was
part of the act and started stomping on the guitar
and completely destroyed it, then turned to pick
up his Rick 12 and continued playing
as if everything was back to normal..
Pete: (After cracking the headstock)
” I was expecting everybody to go, “Wow, he’s
broken his guitar, he’s broken his guitar,” but
nobody did anything, which made me kind of
bloody angry in a way. And determined to get
this precious event noticed by the audience.
I proceeded to make a big thing of breaking the
guitar. I bounced all over the stage with it and I
threw the bits on the stage and I picked up my
spare guitar and carried on as though I really
had meant to do it. ”
But the crowd DID notice – and expected it to be
a “part of the act”
so much so that Kieth Moon decided to join in,
destroying his whole drum kit in the process – his
most outrageous act happened during The Who’s
debut on U.S. television on the ” Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour ” in 1967. Moon overloaded his bass
drum with explosive charges which were detonated
during the finale of the song, “My Generation.”
The explosion caused guest Bette Davis to faint,
set Pete Townshend’s hair on fire and, according
to legend, contributed to his later partial deafness
and tinnitus {constant ringing in one’s ears}.
Moon was also injured in the explosion when shrapnel
from the cymbals cut his arm.
VH1 later placed this event in the top ten of their list
of the 100 Greatest Rock and Roll Moments on Television.
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True or False
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