A Real Blast From the Past

It's Sept. 15, 1967 and The Who are the musical guests on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS television. The lineup this evening includes actors Bette Davis and Mickey Rooney, as well as comedian and perennial presidential candidate Pat Paulsen, but viewers are tuned in to see this crazy band from England that smashes their instruments.
The Who, for better or worse, had become known for this onstage wreckage, precipitated by an episode in which guitarist Pete Townsend accidently snapped the neck of his guitar on a low club ceiling. The crowd at that gig went crazy, thinking it was part of the act, and Townsend, being no dummy, recognized a good gimmick when he saw one. The instrument-wrecking finale became an occasional part of the band's gigs, but not nearly as often as legend had it.
On the Smothers' program, however, they decided to make a real spectacle of it. Guitar amps were rigged with flash pots and smoke, and one of Keith Moon's bass drums was packed with a small explosive charge. The story goes that sometime before they went on stage, Moon the Loon bribed a stage hand to increase the amount explosives in the drum. The results are obvious at the end of this video. The band is clearly stunned by the blast. No one expected the explosion to be as intense as it was, blowing the front of his bass drum clean off, and spraying Townsend with shrapnel. Townsend, in fact, has said he blames that explosion for contributing to his severe hearing loss over the years. It was a spectacular finish to an otherwise not terribly exciting lip-sync effort, but it cemented the Who's reputation forever after.