A Detective Story: Pete Townshend Rickenbacker Fragment

In which your humble author puts on his gumshoes

This isn’t our usual type of article. But enough people have asked me for my opinion on this item that I thought it might be interesting to walk you through my thought process.

The item in question is this:

“Pete Townshend” Rickenbacker fragment

The fragment is currently offered for sale on Reverb. Here’s the key parts from the description:

“Extremely rare, investment-grade piece of rock history.

Offered here is an original Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string electric guitar famously stage-smashed and hand-signed by Pete Townshend of The Who during the band’s 1972 German tour, which included their Munich appearance on September 4, 1972.

This is not simply a signed guitar — it is a surviving example of Townshend’s legendary on-stage destruction ritual from the height of The Who’s early-’70s power.

During the 1972 German tour, Townshend played and ultimately smashed this Rickenbacker 360/12 on stage in true Who fashion. The remains were recovered and preserved, later signed by Townshend, and have since been carefully maintained as a display artifact.”

The fragment is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity from Julien’s 2021 Music Icons auction and a letter from the family of the original owner.

According to that letter:

“My uncle, Heinz Stapfel (aka Heino), was tour leader for The Who concert tour of Germany in 1972. My uncle collected the fragment…from the stage after Pete Townshend smashed the instrument…either at the concert in Essen or Munich. I don’t know for sure which of these two it was as my uncle has passed away. The fragment of the guitar was signed by Pete Townshend for my uncle in the group’s hotel after the concert.”

Letter from owner

The letter also includes a few photos, one of which turns out to be particularly useful. We’ll come back to it shortly.

“Pete Townshend” Rickenbacker fragment

The fragment sold for $15,360, plus a 27% buyer’s premium—$19,507 out the door—and is currently being offered for $39,999. So is it worth it?

That’s obviously a subjective question, and I won’t try to answer it. And it’s an incomplete question. The better question is “is it worth it…if that’s what it really is?” Because I’m pretty certain it’s not. Let me tell you why.

Let’s begin with the evidence that makes the story plausible:

1. Pete Townshend is a noted Rickenbacker player.

2. Townshend is known for smashing guitars—including Rickenbackers—as part of The Who’s stage act.

3. Townshend did own at least one Mapleglo 360/12 from roughly the same period as this fragment

4. The Who toured continental Europe from August through September of 1972, including stops in Essen and Munich.

5. The signature resembles Townshend’s, and has what appears to be a personal inscription.

Let’s dive into those a bit more.

Pete Townshend and smashed Rickenbackers go together like peanut butter and jelly in most people’s minds, and with good reason. Townshend’s habit of smashing Rickenbackers began as an accident before evolving into a gimmick that played a significant role in building The Who’s early fame and notoriety.

Townshend with damaged Rickenbackers

That said, he didn’t smash nearly as many as you probably think. The total death toll from those early years was probably only seven or eight guitars—although several were taped or glued back together multiple times so they could be smashed again.

Importantly, though, all of those seven to eight guitars were Rose Morris export models—mostly 1998s and 1993s—all of which came with a Fireglo finish. One notable exception is the 360S/12 prototype you can read about here—but it too was Fireglo. Whatever this fragment is, it’s not one of these guitars.

But Townshend did own at least one Mapleglo New Style 360/12 similar to the fragment in question. It appeared on stage extensively from mid-1966 through early 1967. Here he is with it in early 1967:

Townshend with Mapleglo 360/12

Remember I told you the photos in the owner’s letter would be important? Here’s where they come in. We can’t read the serial number in those photos, but we can still tell something very important from them. Up until roughly March 1966, Rickenbacker serial numbers were stamped in a single line across the bottom of the jackplate. Beginning around March 1966, the two-letter date code moved to the top while the production number remained on the bottom.

Jackplate detail

On this fragment, there is no date code on the top of the jackplate. That means it was made before March 1966—as was the guitar we know Townshend owned and played.

Corroborating points four and five are straightforward enough. The Who did perform in Essen and Munich during the 1972 tour, and the signature certainly looks like Townshend’s.

But after that, the story starts to fall apart.

Let’s go back to early 1966. By then, Pete’s guitar smashing had become an expected part of The Who’s stage show, but the cost was nearly bankrupting the band. Remember, because of import duties, Rickenbackers were extremely expensive in the UK—around $5,000 in today’s dollars. And while several of Townshend’s guitars were reassembled to be smashed again, Rickenbacker’s semi-hollowbody construction made that much more difficult.

So beginning in early 1966, toward the end of the show Townshend would put his Rickenbacker away and pick up a cheaper—and much more easily repaired—Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster for the grand finale. Townshend’s last documented Rickenbacker smashing from this period came in November 1966—and that was for a promotional film.

Add to that the fact that as The Who’s sound grew heavier the Rickenbackers didn’t, and by mid-1967 Townshend had stopped using them on stage entirely. He played a variety of Gibson and Fender models through late 1967 and early 1968 before settling on the Gibson SG Special, which he would play more or less exclusively on stage through late 1971.

But those SG Specials—many more of which were destroyed than Rickenbackers—started getting hard to find after Gibson discontinued them in 1970. And so in late 1971 Townshend began supplementing his dwindling stock of SGs with several Gibson Les Paul variants, including the Les Paul Deluxe, which would completely supplant the SG in 1973.

Notice what we didn’t mention: Rickenbackers.

And there’s the biggest problem with the story. There is simply no documented evidence of Townshend using a Rickenbacker during the 1972 tour or, frankly, on stage at any point between 1967 and 1980—where he briefly pulled out a refinished Rose Morris 1993 in, ironically enough, Essen and Zurich.

Townshend with 1993 in Essen, 1980

It’s also worth mentioning that by the 1972 tour—likely at least partially due to the limited availability of Townshend’s preferred SG Specials—guitar smashing had become relatively rare. While not comprehensive, The Who superfan Irish Jack Lyons’ book The Who Concert Files identifies the Rome show—which came after both Essen and Munich—as the “first smash” of the tour.

So let’s talk about the last bit: the signature. Now I am not by any means a handwriting expert, but here’s what jumps out at me.

Signature

First, it absolutely resembles other verified Townshend signatures. Looping the top of the “P” back across the upstroke to both create the crossbar of the “T” and cross the “t” in Pete is a defining element of his signature.

As Townshend has gotten older, he has simplified his signature. So not only do I believe this could be his, I also think it’s likely an older example. That, too, would tend to support the story.

That leaves the “Heino” bit of the story. Here’s the details of that inscription:

Personalization of inscription

To me, it looks like “Hi nore”, but that’s just one interpretation. The “Hi” certainly appears to be a separate word. I think the most honest thing we can say is that the inscription is open to interpretation, and neither proves nor disproves the provenance.

This whole thing would be a lot easier if we knew what happened to Townshend’s Mapleglo 360/12. Sadly, we don’t. We have no record of it being smashed or, if it wasn’t, what happened to it or where it is today. Believe me, I’ve tried to find the answer to that question.

So where does that leave us? I feel very confident saying that the story as presented is not true. I absolutely do not believe it was collected by a stage hand named Heino after Pete Townshend smashed the guitar during a 1972 performance in Germany.

Is it Townshend’s 360/12 bearing his signature? We simply can’t rule it out. There are enough consistencies to say it’s possible. But when the provenance is almost certainly incorrect, it inevitably casts doubt on everything else.

And this is where I have to be a little hard on Julien’s. A certificate of authenticity should not simply certify that an object exists and came with a story. The whole point of a certificate of authenticity is to test that story against the available evidence. In this case, even a modest amount of research should have raised serious questions about the claimed 1972 provenance.

So is it worth $39,999?

If the provenance were solid, perhaps. Rare pieces of genuine rock history can command extraordinary prices—even if you or I personally wouldn’t pay that much.

But based on the evidence currently available? Absolutely not.

Case closed. For now, anyway.