The Who’s Pete Townshend shares he was ‘lucky’ after freak guitar accident on 1989 tour

A freak guitar accident on The Who‘s 1989 tour left guitarist Pete Townshend feeling “lucky” after injuring his hand.

The founding member of the Roger Daltrey-fronted group shared in a tell-all interview that part of his guitar went straight through his hand in a gruesome on-stage moment. Townshend would share his wounds on the road had amounted to around 126 stitches in his hand, and he recalled a particularly grisly occasion where he needed a surgeon’s attention right after finishing a show. The performance, which occurred in 1989, was when Townshend had been playing a guitar originally designed for Eric Clapton. Townshend says when he lifted his arm, the guitar was “hanging” from a piece of metal which had gone straight through his hand. While the incident may not sound lucky, the surgeon who treated Townshend told him he had not hit anything vital.

Speaking to David Sheff of Playboy Magazine, Townshend said: “Yeah. That time I speared myself. I was using a guitar that was created for Eric Clapton. It had one of those whammy bars for vibrato, basically a sharp piece of metal. It went in one side of my hand and out the other. I lifted my arm and the guitar was hanging there by piece of metal through my hand.

“I slipped it off and belted a lot, but yeah. And there was a brilliant surgeon nearby, and I was lucky enough not to have hit anything vital. Then it happened again on the bike. Everything has happened to the same hand. I have some heavy right-hand karma. I’ve 126 stitches in my hand.”

It may come as little surprise then that Townshend says it’s “terribly painful” to play guitar like him. He said: “It is terribly painful. But I’m used to the fact that there will be pain. I know that I will take my nail off at the beginning of every tour. Still.

“The string gets under the fingernails and rips it off. It’s part of the job. I am playing sometimes and I go does a windmill, ‘Wang, wang, wang, blood’ and then I think, ‘This is it. I’ve arrived.’ It is the place where I should be, like a boxer in the middle of a fight. It’s difficult to hold the pick because it gets slippery. But that doesn’t matter. It actually energises me.”

Not only is it painful to play guitar like Townshend, but he believes it’s “embarrassing” to have to smash his guitars on stage, as that’s what fans expect of him. Though The Who guitarist would make a name for himself through his stylish riffs and explosive on-stage attitude, the requests he would receive later on in the band’s career to break instruments left him feeling a little disappointed.

He said: “Well you have to remember I’m not angry all the time. Even now I occasionally get frustrated on the stage with guitars and want to smash them. I tend not to do it, but the opportunity’s always there. I smashed a guitar on the Psycho Derelict tour and it was great fun.”