Rockers Smash Guitars - Television Tropes & Idioms

Rock the Casbah!.

"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. At times they can push it further with Trash the Set as well.

Despite the name, this is not limited to guitars.

Examples:

Advertising

A PBS promo ("Be more passionate") featuring a String Quintet (playing the scherzo from Brahms op. 34) finishes with the performers trashing their instruments.

Film

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.
Jeff Beck, with The Yardbirds, does this in the movie Blow Up.
Happens in the movie Top Secret!. At the end of Nick Rivers' rendition of the song Tutti Frutti, an octogenarian orchestra player smashes his electric guitar.
Parodied in the opening scene of Wrongfully Accused, to make violin concerts seem awesome.

Literature

In Soul Music, the only time the band variously known as Insanity, Suck, 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.
- Later Death, with all the style Supporting Bands wished they had, smashes The Guitar. It explicitly does not destroy The Music, but it does limit its power.

Live-Action TV

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.
A Mystery Science Theater 3000 invention exchange featured "The Rock & Wreck Guitar," a guitar which could be reassembled after being smashed, for garage bands who can't afford to keep buying new equipment.
- Another invention exchange had the Mads create guitars made from squeeze toys. After playing a hard-rocking, squeaky song, Forrester and Frank smash the guitars.
- Another time Brain Guy pulled the whole burning the guitar bit ala Jimi Hendrix, until Bobo wrecked the mood by roasting marshmallows over it.
- In Pod People, Joel's invention exchange is a new guitar chord designed particularly for ending concerts. It's so complicated that it takes two hands for Joel to fret it, and when strummed it causes the guitar to explode in his hands.
This happens with Tommy in an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun. But the guitar isn't his.
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).
Horrible Histories has the Luddites perform a song in the style of the Sex Pistols. Naturally, they smash their instruments at the end.
Spoofed in an episode of The Monkees. At an art gallery, Mike wanders into a room where it looks like a high-class piano recital is about to take place. Liberace walks in and, instead of playing the piano, takes a sledge hammer out of a case and smashes the piano to pieces.

Real Life

The Who are the Trope Codifier, if not the Trope Maker. One story has it that the band were playing on a stage with a low ceiling and Townshend unthinkingly raised his guitar whilst playing, driving the headstock into the ceiling and snapping it off. He proceeded to destroy the rest of the guitar, Keith Moon followed suit with the drums, and the audience liked it so much that the band started regularly smashing their gear—even when it got to the point where they did more damage than their shows paid for.
- Their musical destruction probably reached its apotheosis during a 1967 appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, in which Moon's bass drum was rigged with explosive in order to blow up at the end of the set. During rehearsal, the effect was unimpressive, so Moon "convinced" the SPFX technician to double the charge, without telling anyone. So, during the actual take, the explosion knocked Moon backwards and scared the daylights out of everyone. In addition, Townshend (who was standing in front of the drum when it blew) had his hair singed and suffered permanent damage to his hearing. (The whole performance can be seen here, with the destruction beginning around the 7:20 mark.)
  - Just after the explosion, the practice was spoofed when Tommy Smothers, carrying a guitar, walked over to the band. Townshend took Smothers' guitar (actually a breakaway prop) and smashed it to pieces. Cue Tommy asking Dick if he could borrow his bass for a moment.
Pictured atop this page is Paul Simonon of The Clash. It's a bass guitar variation. It happened at a 1979 concert at the Palladium in New York, and the photo was later used for the cover of the album London Calling. It is worth noting that Simonon immediately regretted destroying the instrument, because it was his best-sounding bass.
Jimi Hendrix would do this, but only after setting the guitar on fire first.
Nirvana were well known for this. Cobain would actually have a stash of cheaply made, low-quality guitars for this purpose. When you saw him switch to the cheap Stratocaster copy, you could tell that instrument wasn't going to make it to the end of the show.
- The John Hiatt song "Perfectly Good Guitar" was inspired by an incident at the MTV Music Awards, where Krist Novoselic tried to do this... only to accidentally hit himself over the head with his bass guitar instead.
Oh, it breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar...
Variation: Yoshiki Hayashi of X Japan does this to his drum kit.
Roger Fisher of Heart did this in the famous "El Kabong" incident where he smashed his guitar and walked offstage in the middle of a concert. He was kicked out of the band for it.
- Of course, the reason he did it was because he and girlfriend/fellow guitarist Nancy Wilson had recently split up.
A few good Weezer examples:
- Rivers Cuomo's first guitar in the band was a holdover from his metal days, a Charvel. It was smashed to bits, but the dismembered headstock can be seen littering the practice area pictured in The Blue Album's liner notes.
- Rivers' second guitar after forming Weezer was a red Stratocaster. It was eventually given to some friends in another band, Justin and Adam of Shufflepuck. One night, Adam was having trouble with his main guitar staying in tune, so halfway through the last song, he switched to the red strat, but found it was even more out of tune. He got so upset, he started swinging the guitar around and smashing it. The crowd enjoyed themselves, but he noticed a look of horror on his friend Kevin's face. Turns out Justin sold the red guitar to Kevin right before the show started.
Paul Stanley from KISS usually smashes an Ibanez guitar to the repeating slow beat that comes at the end of their song "Black Diamond". The beat keeps going until the guitar is in pieces, no matter how many tries he needs.
The Dillinger Escape Plan are quite fond of smashing guitars, setting guitars on fire, smashing microphones and PA equipment, setting drumkits on fire...
Older Than Radio: Paganini is probably the Ur example of instrument destruction. After some claimed his skill was only due to his Stradivarius, he played a concert with a cheap violin without anyone noticing it, and smashed it afterwards.
- Paganini would often not replace worn-out strings on his violins, becasue if a string broke in concert in would just give him a chance to complete the piece with the remaining strings, thus letting him show off his virtuosity.
Possibly parodied in "Weird Al" Yankovic's video for "You Don't Love Me Anymore", where the (filled with Lyrical Dissonance) ballad ends with Al smashing his acoustic guitar to pieces (and apparently not only it was an expensive instrument, but it was also hard to break). He does this in concerts after singing "You Don't Love Me Anymore" as well. Additionally, the opening of The Compleat Al shows Al destroying his accordion with fire, ala Jimi Hendrix.
Muse's performance at Reading Festival 2011 features Matt Bellamy repeatedly throwing his guitar at the drums before finally hurling it into the air. The drums were probably hurt worse than the guitar.
- Matt also seemed to do it a lot during the Absolution tour, usually to his Ibanez Destroyers.
Emilie Autumn sometimes smashes her violins.
During their first tours in support of Pretty Hate Machine and Broken, Nine Inch Nails drew attention because they would attack all their instruments, not just guitars. Trent Reznor would frequently use his footwear to smash off the keys of very expensive Yamaha DX synthesizers.
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.
Keith Emerson just loved to stab, slam, step on and swing around his Hammond L-100 organ. Remarkably, it held up for years, but its scars were often covered with metal patches.
Inverted by Ritchie Blackmore; he threw his guitar up in the air, it came back down and actually smashed his finger.
When Skrillex's equipment ceases to function during live performances, his first solution is to destroy it.

Video Games

Discussed in Apollo Justice Ace Attorney. 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.
One of Nikki's Personal Techs in Chrono Cross has him smash his guitar over an enemy's head.
Rock Band 2 has this sometimes during a Big Rock Ending.

Web Comics

Parodied here in Dawn Of Time during Dawn's Duel with Death scene. Death FacePalms when she smashes up his nice flying-V guitar.

Western Animation

Happens on Jimmy Two Shoes, when Jimmy is having a dream of being a rocker.
In the Sponge Bob Square Pants episode "The Camping Episode", Spongebob smashes his guitar at the end of "The Campfire Song Song". Then for good measure, Patrick smashes the drums that he had been playing over Spongebob's head.
In the Animaniacs episode "Woodstock Slappy", Slappy the Squirrel's new summer tree-house turns out to be on the same farm where Woodstock is being held. In her efforts to shut up the concert so she can get some peace and quiet, she smashes Pete Townsend's guitar, apparently inspiring the Who to include this in their act.
Scooby and Shaggy do this at the end of an episode of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated.