Guitar brutalizations throughout the years. The Who were a uniquely dangerous band, and the striking pattern that emerges in going over these events in detail is the ever-present threat of violence, particularly at live shows. Some of their most famous and electrifying performances are propelled by frustration or full blown rage–at each other, at the circumstances, at technical difficulties, etc (Woodstock and Shepperton come to mind). They were a volatile group, a bomb constantly going off and reconstructing itself.
Pete is the primary instigator, unsurprisingly. (Keith, contrary to popular belief, was mostly a joiner-inner– at least on stage.) The way he describes his mental state during performances leads me to believe that he is not entirely there, that he is tapping into some kind of adrenaline-trance to do the job, for better and for worse. The victims are not limited to The Who’s equipment. A plainclothes cop at the Fillmore East in NY was seriously injured when he came onstage to try to warn the audience members of a fire next door in 1968 (Pete was arrested for this). Abbie Hoffman was notoriously attacked when he stormed the stage during Woodstock, and Pete followed it up by threatening to kill anyone else who dared to try. Mostly, he seems to injure himself on his own instrument, up to and including spearing his hand straight through on a whammy bar.
But, back to the instruments. WhoTabs has an ongoing, fan-maintained compendium of slaughtered guitars. Just skimming the entries, Pete has murdered at least 120 of them.
October 8, 1967, Kinema Ballroom, Dunfermline, Scotland:
I can verify adamantly that when The Who played Dunfermline Kinema on Sunday 8th October ’67 he was playing the remaining bottom half of the double neck SG. It was splintered straight across the factory-glued join and Pete’s right-hand fingers were bleeding from the constant catching on the splinters. His frilly yellow satin shirt front was splattered with blood. I’ll never forget it. Then a few weeks later they were on Top of the Pops (to premiere “I Can See For Miles”) with the guitar rebuilt with the necks V’d rather than parallel. I said to my mate — that’s half of the guitar I saw him play!
August 30, 1968, Earl Warren Showgrounds, Santa Barbara, CA:
I was in the second row, right in front of Pete. They were mind-blowingly great, and Pete systematically destroyed a Stratocaster, starting with shaking the guitar, pickups facing straight up, and getting the whammy bar to spin out of it like a helicopter blade. It flew into the gleeful audience, and he proceeded to wallop this poor Strat in an exhibition of destructiveness I have yet to see him top, on film or live.
April 27, 1969, again at Kinema Ballroom, Dunfermline, Scotland:
PT regularly eyed up the straightness of the neck of a cherry stereo 345 between numbers. We could tell its life was endangered and in between some very rough treatment, which must have hurt his pelvic bone, the guitar was poked through the stage ceiling and rotated ’til it roared like an airplane engine. It was then battered senseless on the floor and totally shredded beyond repair. A middle section of fretboard flew in my direction. Despite my rapid response, a girl fan snatched it. I remember also Bob Pridden having a terrible time of it with PT who upended all his Hi-Watt head amps gesturing there was a problem. BP scrambled on stage unaware of the specific problem. When he shrugged his shoulders, PT went ballistic and kicked his ass all over the stage playing all the while!
February 10, 1964, Palais Des Expositions, Paris, as relayed by Melody Maker:
…Townshend takes off his Les Paul, swings it over his head and dashes it to the ground. It bounces twice causing two tuning pegs to snap off. He picks it up and repeats the demolition. Retrieving his instrument for the third and last time, Townshend squares up to his speaker stack and, with the experienced eye of a mad axeman, severs the body from the neck with one swift classic stroke.
The audience goes bananas as the instrument lies mortified at his feet.
December 4, 1982, Cotton Bowl, Dallas, TX:
Being December, it was pretty cold outside, and evidently this caused tuning problems. Pete had trouble with the stage sound all night, often gesturing with an outstretched thumb to Bob Pridden for things to be turned up or down in the monitors. Clearly he was irritated at certain points during the set, as the closed-circuit TV images showed his face on the giant projection screen.
At the very end of the show, Pete surprised everyone by taking his irritation out on the guitar. Holding it by the neck, Pete slammed it on the stage with an “axe-chopping” motion, maybe two or three times. It didn’t break, so he threw it at his Mesa-Boogie speaker stacks, headstock-first, from about eight or ten feet away. The guitar sort of ricocheted off the top of the speaker stacks, bouncing up a bit as it continued its flight into the backstage area and disappeared from view, probably crashing into some road cases. I noticed one of the roadies watching from the side of the stage (perhaps it was Alan Rogan), with kind of a mixture of concern and amusement.
December 22, 1999, in their hometown of Shepherd’s Bush, London, at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire:
Pete had one episode of trouble with — I suppose — the amp, and the second time it happened he was upstage, facing the audience, when holding the guitar by the neck, near the headstock, with one hand he simultaneously turned to face upstage (away from the audience) as he swung the guitar in a full overhead windmill/smash. With this one stroke the guitar almost literally exploded when it hit the stage in front of the amps.
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