The Who's Roger Daltrey compares smashing a guitar to "killing the wife"

14 March 2024, 13:38 | Updated: 14 March 2024, 14:00

The Who's Roger Daltrey in 2016. Picture: Francesco Castaldo\Archivio Francesco Castaldo\Mondadori via Getty Images

By Jenny Mensah

The Who frontman, more known for swinging his mic lead, told Shaun Keaveny's Daily Grind podcast how he hates the idea of smashing a guitar.

Loading audio...

Roger Daltrey says smashing a guitar would be like killing his wife.

The Who frontman appeared on Shaun Keaveny's Daily Grind this week, where he insisted he only ever broke one guitar in his career and he still regrets it.

The My Generation singer - who's most known for his mic lead twirling antics on stage - said: "I’ve only ever smashed one guitar and I’m really sorry I did it.

“I don’t know why, just this thing came over me. I don't know. It was in Australia and I’ve always regretted it - I thought ‘I shouldn’t have done that', It was like killing the wife'.""

"[Fans] never came to hear the music, they came to see the guitar being broken," recalled the 80-year-old singer when talking about the band's early days. "The trouble was the guitar was worth sort of 50 gigs."

Listen to his podcast here from 18:00 mins into the episode.

Shaun Keaveny's Daily Grind podcast. Picture: Radio X

See him speak to Shaun Keaveny and introduce the show below:

Fellow bandmate and co-founder Pete Townshend has a real passion for smashing his guitars, and Daltrey previously admitted how much he hates seeing the rocker destroy such expensive instruments.

He wrote in his 2018 memoir Thanks A Lot Mr. Kibblewhite: "It was heartbreaking. When I remembered how much I’d struggled to get my first guitars, it was like watching an animal being slaughtered.

"An expensive animal that we’d have to replace with another expensive animal before the next gig.

"And we had to pay for the hole in the ceiling … from then on, the audience expected us to break our instruments. It was our thing.”