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How much did you pay for the chunk of his guitar
The one he ruthlessly smashed at the end of the show?
And how much will he pay for a brand new guitar
One which he'll ruthlessly smash at the end of another show?
And how long will the workers keep building him new ones?
As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones
- CAKE, Rock and Roll Lifestyle
A rock star gets so into the hardness of the music, that he/she actually destroys instruments. Typically this is smashing a guitar (hence the trope name) on the stage as hard as possible, pounding it to fragments with a few whacks. Some rock bands take it Up to Eleven and set their instruments on fire. And these aren't fictional works trying to make rock seem bad. This is Truth in Television.
Now this might seem like a waste of a perfectly good instrument, and sometimes it was, but smashing a guitar is much harder than you'd expect from seeing this trope in fiction. Many a young guitarist have gotten frustrated with their instrument in the middle of the show and decided to smash it, only to find out that their instrument is Made of Iron (or plywood). Bands where the instrument destruction is more planned and theatrical will often rig an instrument to smash apart easily in order to please the audience.
Although it was a few decades ago, so this is now more played with in fiction than showing up in Real Life bands.
Compare Great Balls of Fire, Can-Crushing Cranium, Dramatic Shattering.
Despite the name, this is not limited to guitars.
Examples:
Real Life
Fictional
- Kids in the Hall spoofed this with Dave trying to play folk on a standard acoustic guitar, the strings kept breaking, and in the end, Dave said "What the hell. Long live Rock & Roll" and smashed the guitar.
- In the original Back to the Future, Marty Mc Fly ends his guitar performance in the year 1955 by kicking over an amplifier. His audience of audience, who had been enjoying the new (to them) kind of music up until that point, reacted with shock.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "The Camping Episode", where at the end of Spongebob's campfire song, Spongebob smashed his guitar, while Patrick smashed the drums that he had been playing.
- This happens with Tommy in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun. But the guitar isn't his.
- Discussed in Apollo Justice. Trucy asks Klavier if he'd ever smash his guitars, and he says he wouldn't because he thinks of them as his lovers. He's also extremely upset when one of them (albeit one with high sentimental value) gets burned during a performance.
- Parodied in the opening scene of Wrongfully Accused, to make violin concerts seem awesome.
- Jeff Beck, with The Yardbirds, in the movie Blow-Up.
- One of Nikki's Personal Techs in Chrono Cross has him smash his guitar over an enemy's head.
- Parodied during one of the musical games on Whose Line Is It Anyway? At the end of a song, Wayne Brady begins to do this with an Air Guitar - before putting it gently back on its stand instead.
- In another game, Ryan does it straight (just also with an air guitar).
- Happens on Jimmy Two-Shoes, when Jimmy is having a dream of being a rocker.
- Mocked by Tripod in one of their songs where they retell their big rock moment and ruin the effect by mentioning how they had it insured and told the audience to stand back.
- In Soul Music, the only time the band variously known as Insanity, Suck, and And Supporting Bands got a positive reaction from their audience was when one of them smashed his guitar on-stage. But only because he'd smashed it on another band member.
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