WHO SANG INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION CRACK

After years of living tough, Nirvana finally started to make it when they signed with DGC in 1990, and in 1992 they were the toast of the music world at the MTV Awards – but that didn’t change their penchant for mayhem. Right from the beginning of Nirvana’s career, Kurt and Krist were partial to belting the crap out of the band’s gear. With The Who having already blown audiences away with their guitar smashing, Hendrix knew he needed something special – something beyond just smashing another poor guitar – and it was here that his infamous guitar-burning incident took place. Neither act wanted to follow the other, but eventually it was Hendrix who took the stage after The Who on the final Sunday of the festival.

WHO SANG INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION CRACK

The Who and The Jimi Hendrix Experience were both slotted to play the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, both were relatively unknown in the US at the time, and both knew that this festival performance was a great chance to crack the US. It was back in this US, though, where those antics would rocket him up the charts. While he had played around the US for years, it was in the UK where James Marshall Hendrix began to find fame, and also where he picked up some of his guitar-smashing antics. The film won the Grand Prix prize at Cannes in 1967, and was described as a “mod masterpiece” by Playboy Magazine – worth smashing a few guitars for, then. Though he was apparently a little apprehensive about smashing a guitar at first, he eventually smashes the shit of a Gibson 175 before throwing it into the crowd. While the role in question had been inspired by Townshend, Eric Burden had been asked to play it, but when he declined, the role went to now-legendary guitarist Jeff Beck. Word of Townshend’s antics spread quickly, and soon afterwards they had inspired a scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow Up. The Yardbirds’ Jeff Beck gives in to guitar smashing temptation Keith Moon filled his drum kit with explosions, which when exploded at the end of the show caused Bette Davis to faint and caused the onset of Pete Townshend’s tinnitus. The antics only accelerated from there, including their performance of ‘My Generation’ on The Smothers Brothers, on the 15th September 1967. “So I smashed this guitar and jumped all over the bits and then picked up the 12-string and carried on as though nothing had happened,” he said in the April 1980 Issue of Sound International, “and the next day the place was packed.”

Out of frustration and possibly embarrassment, Pete Townshend began guitar smashing his Rickenbacker to bits, only for the neck to snap on the ceiling of the Railway Tavern in Harrow In 1964 a new generation of instrument destruction was born. The Who’s Pete Townshend smashes his axe, Keith Moon responds

Who sang instruments of destruction