Sunday, February 29, 2004

Pete Townshend's famous guitar smashing was not just a visual spectacle, but had a musical purpose: he was selfconscious in his assertion of rock as a legitimate art form.
"I think the most important musical development we've made in pop music is in free-form music which does exactly what it wants. We don't allow our instruments to stop us doing what we want.... We smash our instruments, tear our clothes and wreck everything. The expense doesn't worry us because that would be something which would get between us and our music...So I don't have a love affair with a guitar, I don't polish it after every performance; I play the fucking thing."
Source: Guitars, by Tom Evans, 1977