Townshend, a village fall scene, Vermont

All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to truth.

- Pete Townshend, The Who

The crowned king of smashing guitars is none other than The Who’s Pete Townshend. In a sense he was the godfather of guitar smashing on stage. 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.

In 2020, Roger Daltrey, the lead singer of The Who, perhaps with mischief in mind, said that Pete Townshend would creep around the stage collecting up all the bits of smashed guitars so he could glue them back together again. Which on the face of it wasn’t very rock’n’roll. It gets worse. According to Daltrey, to make it easier to repair his broken guitars, Townshend went to great lengths to smash them up as carefully as possible.

On the How to Wow podcast, Daltrey revealed the careful process behind Townshend’s destruction. “They were real guitars, but we worked out very cleverly that very rarely did the neck break. As long as the neck didn’t break, you could glue the body back,” he said. But Daltrey did charitably add that also pointed out: “It was costly in glue.” Fans of Townshend believed that Daltrey was deliberately trying to sabotage Townshend’s reputation. The pair interacted as little as possible during their time together and especially since the band broke up, doing separate interviews, having separate backstage areas at concerts and even recording entire albums without seeing each other.

However the story has a ring of truth to it. Pete Townshend once confessed inhis autobiography that, “The Who got paid 4000 pounds during those days, but we always smashed our equipment that cost more than 5000 pounds.“ Listen, it’s important to remember that even rock stars are people, and they have to deal with the same mundanities as the rest of us. Why Townshend had to glue all his guitars back together was because it was expensive to replace the smashed guitars and The Who were as frugal as they came.

In any case Townshend helped to set in stone one of rock’n’ roll’s defining images, the art of guitar smashing, unlike any other musical genre. In doing so he paved the way for the likes of other legendary guitarists like Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix to smash their guitars during their live performances on stage.

"Portrait of Anne, Viscountess Townshend, later Machioness Townshend" by Sir Joshua Reynolds, circa 1779-80.

Henry Townshend.

Day 1568, 8 October 2022

Silent Hill 1-4 Title Screens (1999-2004)

I added pictures to try and explain the cartoon better!

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Another view of Townshend in Vermont

"The Who : Pile & Faces" documentaire de Christophe Conte (2021), septembre 2022.

"Whoever lives here after me... You'll be the 21st, the last of the sacrifices. I leave it up to you..."

Silent Hill 4: The Room

You’re too late, Henry

Woke up in a cold sweat and knew what I had to do

Silent Hill 1-4 Save Screens (1999-2004)

Jonathan, mild-mannered solicitor gone feral vampire-slayer, locking eyes with The Count as he slits his throat: Consider your contract with Hawkins & Harker... 🤏😎 fully executed.