Whoever said smashing guitars went out of style and relevance after grunge left the throne in the late ’90s was hopefully tuned in to the February 6 episode of Saturday Night Live. Musical guest Phoebe Bridgers ended a spirited performance of her recent hit “I Know the End” by smashing her guitar on a monitor. Raising her Dano ’56 — not the easiest first guitar break — over and over, Bridgers chopped away until the stubborn axe finally offered a small chunk of its body. Sparks flew, the clang of her still-live guitar rang through the infamous Studio 8H, and the scaled-down live audience erupted in applause as the song ended.
The last note of the song and the last spark of her pickup wiring had barely faded before the reactions began to pour in. On Twitter and other platforms, viewers expressed a variety of critiques from support to disgust to confusion to simple statements like, “I don’t get it.” And, just like that, a rock ‘n’ roll trope that has consistently found its way to the stage over the decades, but that had gone mostly dark of late, was in the spotlight and in the conversation again.
Does smashing a guitar, in 2021, still have relevance or, in musical terms, resonance? Maybe it’s an act of desperation at capturing a vibe or a performative intensity that only made sense when the world wasn’t dealing with a pandemic and other global shifts like no more big live shows with crowds. Maybe smashing guitars was a thing of a particular time and place and needs to stay in the past.
Maybe. But we’re not going to get bogged down in cultural historical critiques here. Instead, we are going to take a quick, rowdy look at the history of smashing guitars; let each example make its own statement, highlight its own impact and meaning; and let you decide what, if anything, this most rock ‘n’ roll act still has to offer.
The Who’s Pete Townshend
The crowned king of smashing guitars is none other than the Who’s Pete Townshend. He also gets the earliest credit for the act. The year was 1964. The Who were playing a small pub in London known as the Railway Tavern in Harrow and Wealdstone. At some point, Townshend’s Rickenbacker headstock hit the venue’s low ceiling, cracking it with a thud. When Townshend saw that none of the other band members seemed to notice or care, he decided to make it noticeable and smashed the guitar to the floor and against his amp, shattering it to pieces. And thus began a decades-long destructive affair between Pete and his many guitars.
Townshend would go on to smash more guitars on more stages in more countries the world over than any guitarist in rock ‘n’ roll history. He set the bar high on the act, performing it with an intensity and poetic presentation that bordered on dance. He would often raise his Gibson or Fender high over his head, holding it to the sky — a kind of sacrifice to the muse, to the crowd, to the moment. From there, the smashing took many directions. From bouncing the bottom of the body at the strap-button end off the stage over and over, to wielding it like an axe and chopping down a mic stand, to ramming it over and over into the drum stand or into a tower of speakers, Townshend made each guitar smashing an unforgettable moment for the audience.
Jeff Beck
Another early guitar smashing in the archives of rock comes by way of Jeff Beck in the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film Blowup. The film features a scene with the Yardbirds onstage at a small venue. At some point during his lead on “Stroll On,” Beck’s Vox amp begins to short. He attempts a few knob adjustments to no avail. While he continues to try and play through it, the frustration gets the best of Beck, and he begins slapping the neck of his hollowbody Hofner against his amp, eventually snapping it off. He, then, lays the body out onstage and stomps it over and over into oblivion. Satisfied that the Hofner is thoroughly finished, Beck rips the neck, literally hanging from a string, from the shattered body and throws it into the audience, who swarm the piece in a shark-like frenzy.
Jimi Hendrix
Our next guitar smasher is none other than Jimi Hendrix. An innovator of style who changed the landscape of rock guitar forever, Hendrix brought the same creative artistry to breaking his instrument. A friend of Townshend’s, Hendrix is believed to have taken inspiration from Pete and began smashing his guitar onstage in a fashion similar to his contemporary. But on June 18, 1967, at the Monterey Pop Festival, Hendrix would make the act very much his own.
Toward the end of their newly released hit “Fire,” Hendrix laid his Fender Strat on the stage, neck pointing to the crowd. He casually grabbed a container of lighter fluid, doused the body of his Strat, leaned over, and kissed the neck, then he sat up, struck a match, and tossed it onto the guitar. With flames shooting off the body, the band played on as Hendrix held out his hands in a conjuring motion, coaxing the flames to grow. He grabbed the fluid nearby and soaked the burning Strat several more times then lifted it by its neck and began swinging it around wildly into his amp, a mic stand, and the drums. After several maniacal swings, Hendrix brought the still-burning guitar down with a crash onto the stage and into pieces. Just as he had done with the art of guitar, Hendrix created a new paradigm for smashing them that would carry over to the 1970s.
Kiss’s Paul Stanley
And what better artist to pick up where Hendrix left off than Paul Stanley of Kiss? Utilizing the pyrotechnics of their overall stage show, Stanley perfected the choreography of his guitar smashing throughout the ’70s and over the next several decades. With giant flames leaping up on beat as he twirled his Ibanez toward the stage without letting it hit, Stanley took his sweet time. Always one to get as much from his audience as possible, Stanley would hold his instrument out as he walked to the front of the stage to coax more enthusiasm from the crowd before finally smashing his Ibanez as more flames flew.
Kurt Cobain
Guitars would catch a bit of a break in the ’80s as synth-based music took over. But a reckoning awaited as the ’90s came on, and a certain Seattle band grew to prominence by 1991 led by an angsty front man with enough pent-up rage from a troubled childhood to more than make up for the quiet ’80s.
Kurt Cobain adored smashing guitars. In the seven brief years he was onstage, he smashed an impressive number of guitars, mostly cheap ones as Cobain was a connoisseur of thrift-store guitars. No one knows how many for sure, but, by most accounts, it was a nearly nightly occurrence at the end of each live show in the heyday of their short career. Cobain didn’t just smash his guitars; he also wrecked as much of the stage as he could in the process — amps, drums, mic stands, monitors, props — nothing within reach was safe. He also pulled off some impressive athletics during some of these smashings, planting the headstock of his knockoff Jazzmaster to the stage, laying his stomach on the body, and attempting a kind of catapult!
Numerous other ’90s rock stars smashed their guitars. Time and space won’t allow a full listing here, but moving through the ’00s, the ’10s, and into the present, we have some really impressive smashers that warrant a full treatment.
Muse’s Matthew Bellamy
Next up, Muse’s Matthew Bellamy. Bellamy has the distinct honor of setting a Guinness record for smashing an astounding 140 guitars on the band’s 2004 tour. You read that right. One. Hundred. Forty. That’s a lot of guitars in a career, let alone one tour.
Dead Sara’s Emily Armstrong
Emily Armstrong of the post-hardcore band Dead Sara has been blazing a trail of energetic live performances for almost two decades. She has also earned quite the rep for smashing up her guitar at the ends of shows, as the clip below clearly captures.
Ritzy Bryan
Finally, lead singer Ritzy Bryan from the band The Joy Formidable pulled a solid 180 in the world of guitar smashing when she broke her instrument in the opening song of their set at the
2010 Reading Festival. Unusual for sure, but, in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, the unusual has always found a home.
Let’s Smash This Up
We hope you enjoyed this very brief tour through the history of smashing guitars. There are literally hundreds of other examples worth a mention. The Internet is a wonderful place to relive these smashing moments, so we invite you to take your own tour. In doing so, you can make up your own mind about what message, if any, these artists were and still are trying to send when they send their guitars into oblivion.
We want to close this piece by giving the “King of the Smash” the last word. In a radio interview from 2019, Townshend was asked if he still smashed his guitar onstage. Townshend told the interviewer that he had not done it in many years. When pressed as to why, Townshend said the following: “For me, it was an expression of a kind of youthful, artistic notion. It wasn’t about anger or my own frustrations.” Ah youth, that most fleeting of moments. Thanks for the memories, Pete! They were and continue to be a smashing good time.