It's September 21st, 1979, at a Clash show at New York's Palladium, and Paul Simonon's bass has only seconds to live. "The show had gone quite well," says Simonon, "but for me inside, it just wasn't working well, so I suppose I took it out on the bass. If I was smart, I would have got the spare bass and used that one, because it wasn't as good as the one I smashed up."
Although it might be of interest that the first "actual" smashing took place on the 20th, not as credited, and pictured on the album....Anyway, there's always Pete.......
Pete Townsend on smashing guitars | Rolling Stone Mag | 1968
When did you start smashing guitars?
“It happened by complete accident the first time. We were just kicking around in a club which we played every Tuesday and I was playing the guitar and it hit the ceiling. It broke and it kind of shocked me 'cause I wasn't ready for it to go. I didn't particularly want it to go but it went. And I was expecting an incredible thing, it being so precious to me, and I was expecting everybody to go, "Wow he's broken his guitar," but nobody did anything which made me kind of angry in a way, and determined to get this precious event noticed by the audience. I proceeded to make a big thing of breaking the guitar. I pounced all over the stage with it and I threw the bits on the stage and I picked up my spare guitar and carried on as though I really meant to do it.”
Were you happy about it?
“Deep inside I was very unhappy because the thing had got broken. It got around and the next week the people came and they came up to me and they said ‘Oh, we heard all about it, man; it's 'bout time someone gave it to a guitar’ and all this kind of stuff. It kind of grew from there, we'd go to another town and people would say ‘Oh yea, we heard that you smashed a guitar.’ It built and built and built and built and built and built until one day, a very important daily newspaper came to see us and said, ‘Oh, we hear you're the group that smashes their guitars up. Well we hope you're going to do it tonight, because we're from the Daily Mail. If you do, you'll probably make the front pages.’”
...........It all seems a very very long time ago.........but you're right Aidy, like yesterday.
The year I got my Equity card.
Br.