Jona Weinhofen on destroying guitars

Bring Me The Horizon guitarist and self-described show off Jona Weinhofen spoke to Guitar World about the hazards facing his six-string friends while on tour, in a new weekly tour blog.

"I’ve owned a lot of guitars throughout my 14 years of playing guitar, some of them were free (thankfully!), most of them were bought, paid for or traded. I’ve put chips, dents, scratches, character marks, etc. in all of my guitars. For anyone who knows me as a musician, I love to throw my tools of the trade around the place during a live show. There’s nothing I love more than to find a nice speaker stack or stage truss and climb to the top in front of the crowd to bust out a solo. I know…I’m a bit of a show off! Whenever I do this, my poor guitar is usually slung on my back getting dragged up there with me, the whole time bashing around earning new scars."

The guitars aren't the only thing in danger on-stage, as Jona reveals:

"On the night of 3/16/2011 we played Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The crowd was rabid right from the first band on and this continued well into our set. Something that is not so common during our set (but can occur when we’re playing with bands who have fairly different fans to ours) is that there can be a few people who do not really care for BMTH. And by saying that, I mean they don’t mind standing there during our entire set flipping us off, yelling obscenities at us or throwing whatever objects they can find at us (bottles, shoes, cartons of milk!). It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

"Normally, I don’t take notice of things like this and am vibing off the other 2999 people who absolutely love the show. This particular night, all in the name of fun, I thought it would be cool to stage dive but the one thing I hadn’t taken into account was the angle at which my guitar had landed on the stage when I flung it backwards over my head while gearing up for the stage dive.

"I emerged from the crowd with the help of the pit security only to look up and see my guitar tech, Dean, holding my beloved Caparison Angelus…the headstock snapped completely off and swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum held on only by the few strings which hadn’t broken. It was the first time I have ever destroyed a guitar beyond repair. Luckily, I have great support from the guys at Caparison guitars and I have a backup guitar. I also contacted my friend Dean Zelinsky over at DBZ guitars and he was kind enough to send me out a couple of Bolero models to help back me up in case something like this occurred again!"

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