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David Crosby calls Phoebe Bridgers’ guitar smash “childish stage drama,” says “guitars are for playing”

He’d also previously called her performance “pathetic.”

Phoebe Bridgers and David Crosby

Images: Ilya S. Savenok / Scott Dudelson / Getty

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David Crosby has weighed in on the many, many arguments that followed in the wake of Phoebe Bridgers smashing her guitar during a performance of I Know The End on SNL on Saturday (6 February.)

The chaotic closer to her album Punisher, the song features one of the most intense moments of the LP – the instrumentation swells, and makes way for a full-on metal scream from Bridgers. So a live performance of the track perhaps has a precedent for intensity, but in the opinion of folk musician David Crosby, it didn’t justify the guitar smash towards the end of the song.

Writing on Twitter, Crosby said: “Guitars are for playing… making music… not stupidly bashing them on a fake monitor for childish stage drama… I really do NOT give a flying F if others have done it before.”

“It’s still STUPID”

Earlier this week Crosby was also asked by a fan what he thought of the performance, to which he responded “pathetic.” Bridgers herself then responded to Crosby’s comment “little bitch.”

The incident has seen a huge amount of argument over the last few days. Some outlets have pointed out the gendered nature of the criticism being leveraged at Bridgers. Angie Mortoccio noted in Rolling Stone “it’s hard to imagine anyone asking, ‘Why did this man, Eddie Van Halen, destroy his guitar?’ with quite the same condescending tone.”

Bonnie Stiernberg noted in InsideHook: “Her guitar-smashing is nothing compared to that of the male acts who get worshipped for doing it. She even went out of her way to ask permission beforehand and get a fake monitor set up to minimize the amount of costly damage she’d actually be inflicting.”

Aside from responding to criticism from Crosby, Bridgers has also been retweeting other jokes about the incident – such as Drew Gooden’s comment that “There are millions of hungry kids out there who would have loved to eat that guitar. And now no one can eat it. I can’t stop crying.”

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