The Who’s smash hits
QUESTION How many guitars has The Who’s Pete Townshend destroyed on stage? Which make and model has been the most unfortunate?
The Railway hotel was a Victorian pub close to harrow & Wealdstone station, owned by blues and harmonica player Cyril Davies, who was dedicated to showcasing up-and-coming bands.
On September 8, 1964, The Who were in residence when guitarist Pete Townshend had a revelation: ‘I was banging my guitar around making noises and banged it on the ceiling in this club and the neck broke off, because Rickenbackers are made out of cardboard,’ he said. ‘everybody started to laugh and they went: “hah, that’ll teach you to be flash.”
‘I thought I’d no other recourse but to make it look like I’d meant to do it, so I smashed it and jumped all over the bits, then picked up the 12-string and carried on as though nothing had happened. ‘The next day the place was packed.’ The crowd’s riotous response led him eventually to start smashing his guitar on almost every show, as the band headed for worldwide fame with hits such as My Generation, Pinball Wizard, Baba O’Riley and Won’t Get Fooled Again.
A list of guitar smashes by Townshend has been compiled from various resources, including The Who Concert File, by Joe McMichael and ‘Irish’ Jack Lyons, and Anyway Anyhow Anywhere, by Andy Neill and Matt Kent, and various eyewitness accounts uploaded to thewho.net.
From these, we know he smashed at least 140 guitars and probably many more — more than 35 in 1967 alone. The main victims were Fender Stratocasters and Gibson SG Specials, 45 of each bit the dust. Various Rickenbackers, Gibson Les Pauls and a number of Gibson eS-345 Stereo guitars suffered a similar fate.
Just why he smashed so many guitars has become the subject of debate. In a 1968 interview with Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone, he explained it was in part frustration: ‘It was due to happen because I was getting to the point where I’d play and play, and I mean, I still can’t play how I’d like to play.’
Lead singer Roger Daltrey said it was an important part of the music: ‘It’s always frustrated me that when you read about The Who, people always wrote about Pete smashing a guitar into an amp. They didn’t get it. It wasn’t about the visual of it, but the sound it made.
‘When Pete used to break a guitar, it sometimes used to take him ten minutes. It would be like a sacrificial lamb. This thing would scream. It was an incredible sonic experience. The volume would leave us with our ears bleeding. Sometimes we used to come off stage and the ringing in our ears didn’t go away for two days.’
Today, Townshend’s smashed guitars are more valuable than the originals. A Rickenbacker destroyed at the band’s 25th anniversary concert in 1989 was bought at auction for £52,000 in 2015.
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum even displays the remains of a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Deluxe smashed during a performance in the late Sixties.
Leon Smith, Watford, Herts.
QUESTION What became of the Australian man who fired two blank cartridges at Prince Charles in 1994?
DAVID KANG, the man who once fired at Prince Charles with a starting pistol, is now a barrister.
Kang, then 23, fired two blanks at the Prince during an Australia Day speech at Tumbalong Park, Darling harbour, in Sydney in 1994. he ran onto the stage, firing the shots as he rushed towards the Prince, who had just risen to approach the lectern. Kang fully expected to be shot but was wrestled to the ground by then-NSW Premier John Fahey and Australian of the Year Ian Kiernan.
Prince Charles was commended for his unfazed reaction. he adjusted his cuffs and stood calmly as various bodyguards piled onto Kang and arrested him. In court, Kang faced a variety of charges, including the federal crime of attacking an internationally protected person, as well as illegally using a firearm, possessing a firearm, affray and assault. he could have received a 20-year sentence.
Kang testified that he was suffering from depression and was protesting at the plight of Cambodian refugees in Australia. he was found guilty of threatening unlawful violence and sentenced to just 500 hours of community service.
From that brush with the law came the direction that would reshape Mr Kang’s life. he was admitted to the Bar in 2005 and has since specialised in criminal and medical law.
Laura Hayward, Poole, Dorset.
QUESTION Have 28,000 rivers disappeared in China in the past few decades?
IN 2011, China’s Ministry of Water Resources announced the results of a three-year survey of the country’s waterways which said there were 22,909 rivers in China with catchment areas of more than 100 sq km; less than half the government’s estimated figure.
Officials attributed the decline to climate change and outdated mapping techniques from the 1950s.
environmentalists put the disappearance of the rivers down to over-exploitation of resources, particularly of groundwater, and intense development.
hydroelectric projects such as the Three Gorges Dam, which diverted trillions of litres of water, also played a role.
Sion Kenny, Oxford.
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