Roger Daltrey hated it when Pete Townshend broke guitars
Roger Daltrey in his meeting with Shawn Keaveny for the 'Daily grind' podcast, as well as expressing all his doubts and his fears about the growing use of artificial intelligencealso talked about broken guitars, a house specialty Who.
He himself declared that he only broke one guitar and that he still suffers from that moment, which he even compared to the idea of killing his wife.
“The fans came to listen to the music, they came to see guitars broken. The problem is that the guitar was worth 50 concerts. I only broke one guitar and I'm really sorry I did it. I don't know why I felt like doing it. I always regretted it, I thought, 'I shouldn't have done it, it was like killing your wife.”
As opposed to Roger Daltreyto his bandmate and guitarist Pete Townshend he really liked breaking guitars, which was also, in concert, one of the most awaited moments by the group's fans. This costly habit, which contributed to making the performances of the WhoRoger never fully digested it, as he recounted in his memoir 'Thanks A Lot Mr. Kibblewhite'.
“It was heartbreaking. When I remembered how much I had to fight to get my first guitars, it was like watching an animal being slaughtered. An expensive animal that we would have to replace with another expensive animal before the next concert. And we had to pay for the hole in the ceiling. From then on, the public expected us to break our instruments. It was our thing.”
Despite his spite, Roger Daltrey he admitted that Pete Townshend over time he was very careful not to break the neck of the guitar so that he could glue the body of the guitar back together after the concert. Speaking on the 'How to Wow' podcast in 2020, he said: “They weren't stage guitars, they were real guitars, but we worked very intelligently, very rarely the neck broke, as long as the neck didn't break you could glue the body on. Even with the holes, it didn't matter, as long as the distance between the bridge and the nut of the guitar was the same you could make it work.”
