tributehub

Some say Pete Townshend, some say Jimi Hendrix, but apparently Jimi's famous guitar smashing sessions were to outdo Pete.

I vote for Ritchie Blackmore, some of his guitar smashing sessions were pure mental and bordering on almost hurting fans badly with his craziness!!

I'm glad to have seen Ritchie around 1978 as my first ever concert when he played with Rainbow along with Cozy Powell and Ronnie James Dio, that was my first ever concert and totally mind blowing, it was excruciatingly loud and my ears were ringing even the next day ... they simply don't play that loud anymore, but yup, Ritchie smashed his guitar right in front of me during the encore, sure by that time he was using strat copies with a decent pick up, but the guitar was demolished very spectacularly and thrown to the crowd, missed it, but saw one guy grab the strings and I watched the struggle, quite stunned, that guy had bleeding fingers, LOL, the guy with the main body of the guitar left the show right then, this was in the Aberdeen Capitol BTW.

Anyway, did some looking on You-Tube for Blackmore just now, here are a couple of his guitar killing sessions, the first is around the early Rainbow era I watched as a first concert, this was probably an original Fender Stratocaster.



Blackmore is really lucky he never hurt fans at the front of the stage to be honest!

This next one is obviously more staged, well worn Marshall speaker 4x4 cabs getting  sacrificed here but still crazy stuff



It sure brings back memories, eventually got to see Blackmore play a total of 5 times, twice with Rainbow and 3 times with Purple, still admire his early frantic guitar playing though, as well as his time with Blackmores Night as well now.

I honestly cant split Blackmore or Gilmour as my fave guitarist of all time, they are polar opposites and I love their work equally.

One last vid of Blackmore for those that care to watch ... Love his style and mannerisms, its like nothing else nowadays



Play it loud

Blackmore was certainly a monster guitar player, but I personally prefer Steve Morse's live interpretations of Purple's catalogue. For me, it's far better without the ego. The overblown renditions on Made in Japan sound very dated compared to the more consise versions on Live at Olympia and other more recent live Purple albums. As for guitar destroying, smashing up a beautiful piece of craftsmanship is the worst sort of ego fuelled excess. He should have had the splintered pieces shoved up his arse.

The case for the prosecution rests, m'lud.

I appreciate your opinion Nick, lots of people hate Blackmore, and this is afterall, a Pink Floyd related web site.

But I love multiple sources of music and i thought I'd be safe to post this here. I'm on a cyclic round of all my fave artists just now, especially Blackmore, it really is cyclic. I'll be right into Floyd after the Aberdeen Aussie show once more, I guess..

As for Steve Morse, he is good, but he's not Blackmore, and he doesn't pretend to be, what I like about him is, he will play some legacy Blackmore parts ... like Smoke on the Water, and Child in Time, Highway Star, just like Ritchie did, that was a wise move by him, but yes, Steve is well accepted as Deep Purple now, but he's no Ritchie Blackmore.

Anyway, if you feel I've been damaging to an obvious Pink Floyd related site, don't hesitate to delete this thread, I just love all kinds of music and if we cant do that here, thats OK.

Cheers.

i am a big fan of richie and his strats, that last vid shows him playing with the malmsteen idea of scalloped fretboard, he is a great guitar player but even though id love to break the living erm michael out of a strat some of those strats are such lovely guitars, one of them (the 2nd vid) looks exactly like my fender custom shopped angel strat. if i did that to mine id shoot myself after the gig haha

Actually, Malmsteen got the idea of the scalloped fret board from Blackmore, as indeed did Malmsteen get most if not all his ideas from Blackmore Even Yngwie admits this

Ive seen Yngwie Malmsteen play live too (Edinburgh Playhouse days) he never smashed a guitar, but it was an exciting concert, with his classical overtones like Blackmore did, Yngwie would be the first to admit he was the first Blackmore copier, just study his work.

Just to repeat, most of Blackmore's sacrificed Stratocasters were copy's, in the early days he did smash original Fender Strats though, but even his copy's had better pick ups fitted for the sacrifice solo, and I can definitely hear that in many of his recordings with a sacrificial guitar.

Anyway, we are straying here, the point of the thread was to say who the worlds best (or worst) guitar killer might be, I've given my You Tube evidence, if someone can find something even badder, fair play

I've always found the smashing of guitars to be mindless and idiotic.