Rock 'n' roll guitarists have been smashing guitars on stage since at least 1964 when Pete Townshend, of the band The High Numbers, got a bit upset after he inadvertently punched a hole in the low ceiling with his guitar headstock and wanted everyone to know about it. The audience was impressed. The second time he wrecked an instrument on stage was actually for publicity — someone from the Daily Mail had told the band another guitar smash would help land them on the paper's front page, so Townshend checked with his manager to make sure they could spare the expense of ruining yet another guitar. Though he got the go-ahead and carried out the mission with flair, the Daily Mail failed to hold up their end of the unofficial bargain. Nonetheless he repeated the stunt quite a few more times as the band became known as The Who. Other musicians followed, impressed by the sheer ballsiness of the gesture. "I grew up lucky enough to have seen The Who in '68. I saw Jimi Hendrix twice," Kiss frontman (and avid guitar-smasher) Paul Stanley told AllMusic in 2016. "The idea of almost ritualistically smashing a guitar is something so cool and touches a nerve in so many people that it seemed like a great way to put a period or to dot the I or cross the T at the end of a show — that this is finite, that this is over, it's the climax."
Next-level trolling
![](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/4AX6CM5Y7YNS6OCAQ3J6UYG7Z4.jpg?auth=ac883e21d43b32a040627bfec4f72ee1513d4a5ced4ceb9fbf090244fa3fb26d&width=16&height=6&quality=70&smart=true)
Troll posts this to closed anti-vaxxer page called Vaccines Exposed to see if they take the bait. They do. Laurence, a member, lets Deb into the private group and asks what happened. She responds: "So when I first got there, there was absolutely NO place to park," the post read. "Then, I left my keys in the locked car. So I had to call roadside rescue and wait for them to get there. And of course that took forever. Then, as I was waiting, some guy walked by me and gave me a rude look like I was loitering or something. Then when roadside rescue got there I found out the doors weren't even locked. Ugh. So then I was like an hour late for the study and so I was last in line to get the vaccine. I got vaccinated though so now I have a decreased chance of contracting Covid. So that's cool. But it was one of the worst experiences I've ever had."