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windmills and impalement
Mike Hanley writes:
>There was a radio broadcast in Canada, from CFOX in Vancouver the night
>after Pete Spiked his hand. They talked about it in detail.
>According to Roger, "It was on the last note of Won't Get Fooled Again".
>Then he muttered that the local attending doctor said if he was asked to
put
>an object through a hand with minimal damage, he'd be hard pressed, but
Pete
>managed to do it.
>(no encore, i guess) :--)
I was there. TacomaDome. Rog was correct - it was on the last note of
WGFA. I was watching Pete windmilling through the final chords (big
surprise), and he sort of crumpled up on the last one. He then reached
up with his left hand, tore the guitar off, tossed it on the stage, and
RAN off stage, doubled over, holding his right hand against his body,
before the rest of the band had even noticed there was nothing more than
noise coming from the guitar. Bewildered looking, the rest of the band
left the stage. After several minutes of thundering applause Roger, John
and the orchestra came back out, and Roger said something like "Pete's on
his way to the 'ospital, but we still wanna play..." to which the crowd
went nuts and they started into "Hey Joe" or "Born On The Bayou" (can't
remember which was first). They played an encore but it was "Pete-less."
Michael Mullins adds:
>Did he actually put the bar all
>the way through his hand? It's difficult for me to imagine exactly how
that
>would happen; the tip of your average Fender tremolo arm being covered
in a
>semi-rounded plastic casing, one would think that, if anything, it would
>simply knock the heck out of both your hand and the bar in a glancing
impact. But I
>guess if you get your arm moving fast enough....
The report I heard was that he did run the thing all the way through. I
think he was using Schecter equipment at that time (JeffW help me out
here), and their tremolo arms (known to the less-cultured as Whammy Bar
or Twang Bar) didn't have that knob on the end, and were slender machined
aluminum of about 3/8" diameter, with a little point on the end. It
would not be too difficult (especially considering the velocity and force
that PT can generate) that he could put one through his hand.
There's also been some speculation about the violent windmilling and
whether or not PT is actually hitting the strings.
Having Pete and John as primary musical influences, and having the
opportunity in college to play in the local club scene, I've been
windmilling on guitar and bass for years. It's not that tough to hit the
strings. One thing I've noticed about Pete is that he doesn't always hit
the strings with the pick - you can sort of bounce your fist off the
strings and get a decent sound. Hell, just thumping the body of the
guitar with a chord fretted will produce a decent soun. Any source of
vibration to those strings is going to be transferred to the pickups.
I've seen him fret some windmills, but (most often) I've seen him
actually contact (in some form or another) the guitar or strings
themselves.
In case you're wondering, it IS a real kick in the butt to windmill on a
Rickenbacker bass. Especially when it's played through a 100-watt
Hiwatt.... :)
OK,
KLW