Phoebe Bridgers’ Guitar Smash Shows Rock Still Has Power To Shock – When Done By Women
The act of destroying instruments has been intrinsic to the male mythos of rock 'n' roll almost since the beginning. Though there were reported instances of jazz and blues musicians destroying instruments in the 1950s – usually in a fit of rage at not headlining, being out of tune, or kicking back at hecklers – Pete Townshend and The Who are the credited beginning of that myth in the 1960s. It had high-minded beginnings – Townshend was inspired by the "auto-destructive" art of Gustav Metzger that sought to highlight the destruction of World War II when he first smashed his (expensive) Rickenbacker guitar on stage in 1964. But he and The Who were one-upped by Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival when Hendrix set fire to his recently custom-painted guitar with lighter-fluid. In the countless iterations of the act over the next fifty years, it has solidified into a time-old, shockless part of a dying rock 'n' roll routine. So why is anybody mad that Phoebe Bridgers smashed her guitar in 2021?
It doesn't take a degree in gender studies to work out the answer: because she's a woman. While the overblown, space operatics of Muse's Matt Bellamy allow him to break 140 guitars on a single tour – the Guinness World Record – Bridgers' destruction at the end of her performance of "I Know The End" on Saturday Night Live has provoked a bizarrely puritanical Twitter debate over whether the move was over the top. Most of it spawned out of a single tweet from a user who went by the nom de plume, BrooklynDad_Defiant!: "Why did this woman, Phoebe Bridgers, destroy her guitar on SNL? I mean, I didn't care much for the song either, but that seemed extra.".
Certainly his choice to write "this woman" and then also Bridgers' name is telling of this defiant Brooklyn dad's attitudes, but the replies are filled with equally baffling strawman arguments against the smash. Some say the guitar should have been donated to a child in need; others, that it was an "unjustifiably awkward display of white privilege"; many, that she couldn't carry it like The Who. These deranged takes showcase the unexpectedly visceral power a guitar smash can have in 2021 – when done by a woman. Most of these people can't conceive of a woman as being part of the same rock lineage as their venerated Townshends, Hendrixes or Kurt Cobains. Nevermind that the sound monitor Bridgers smashed it against was fake and made to be broken, or that she even pre-advised the guitar company Danelectro – the brand of her now-defunct guitar – that she was going to break it, who then wished her luck. Or even that she's not the first person to do so on Saturday Night Live.
Ultimately, the micro-uproar is a boon for Bridgers. She's trending on Twitter and sharing the best jokes about her guttural screams; it's the most anyone has talked about a Saturday Night Live musical performance in a long time. It's a strange way to remind us that perhaps there is somehow room in culture for another rock revival, if a woman smashing a guitar on a mainstream stage is all it takes to shock America.
Written by Josh Martin, a Melbourne-based freelance music and media writer with words in MTV Australia, NME, Junkee, Crikey, etc. Follow him on Twitter @joshmartjourn.
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