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Originally Posted by floydmoline
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Reportedly it began with Pete actually really pissed off at a guitar for some reason or other
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not entirely accurate :-O i know i'm being an ass here, but the first guitar to die at the hands of pete was a fender telecaster and it was because he was pissed off at roger not the guitar ;-) |
You're not being an ass!
But you are wrong. The first time Pete destroyed a guitar onstage was because they were playing a venue with an extremely low ceiling and he accidently hit the headstock into the celing, cracking the neck/headstock. He got so pissed off he then smashed the guitar. You could look it up. Wikipedia:
The first incident of guitar-smashing was brought about because Townshend accidentally smashed his guitar on the low roof of an early concert venue. He was so enraged at cracking the neck of his guitar that he systematically destroyed the rest of his kit, bringing the already uneasy show to an abrupt end.
Same story on thewho.net, which is pretty fanatical about accuracy, dated as ~ Sept. 8 1964:
His first public guitar smashing, where he cracked the headstock of his guitar on a low ceiling, pulling it out and realizing the damage, he smashed the remainder in disgust, then turned to pick up his Rick 12 and continued playing. The next gig at the Railway, the crowd expected him to smash a guitar again.
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 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.
And Chaz beat me to it about taking inflation of guitar prices into account.