Ugh, I'd forgotten about it, or just mentally blocked it out.
 
We were playing a gig at a baseball stadium as an opening act for Cheap Trick. Our soundman and lighting tech wouldn't be doing anything because the headliner wasn't going to let them anywhere near their gear. I decided it would be cool to have them be guitar techs. Well, not really techs, but guys to bring us a guitar when the current one went out of tune.
 
About 3 songs into the set, I nod to the soundman for the white Strat I had bought about a month earlier. Since we were broke, I only had 2 straps and I had 3 guitars. He took the strap off my Yamaha SBG1000 and put it on the Strat and brought it out. I turned it up, played an E chord to check the tuning and stepped up to the mic. I took my hand off the neck to adjust the mic angle, and that's when the strap lock slipped out of the neck end of the guitar sending the tail piece down to the iron base of the mic stand. I was holding the bottom of the guitar body near the jack and the impact snapped the tail piece completely off and I lost my grip on the body and the entire mess fell at my feet. 
 
The noise was incredible! I was running through a full 100w Marshall stack and it was pretty much wide open. I was just standing there stunned looking at the shrieking mess at my feet. The soundman came running out and grabbed the cable about a foot from the body and started pulling trying to unplug it, but was only managing to drag the squalling disaster across the stage, jerking at cable. One of the crew from Cheap Trick calmly strode over to my amp and turned it down and just walked back to side stage shaking his head.
 
The crowd thought it was just hilarious. Me....not so much.

Could have been worse Randy, at least it was pre-YouTube 

Always enjoy reading your stories Randy.....very entertaining to say the least.  

All I can say about Randy's story is OUCH!!!

Guitars are for playing, not collecting. 
...
Reminds me of renting a car in Italy. Given previous experience with rental companies, went to check it out before signing the lease. Yikes, front bumper had all kinds of dings, paint scraped off, etc. When I pointed this out to the charming clerk, she goes "Oh that's nothing. Here in Italy we use our bumpers."  

JohnKenn
As cool as road worn gear is, some of us still prefer the pristine state of a new instrument. 

I have to agree... I don't gig with mine any more anyway. My SG saw stage a few times but the PRS is "almost" pristine. As I was lifting it off the wall mounted hanger, and turning round to place it on its floor stand I caught the ceiling with the headstock...
 
Thing is, to me at least, not being a great play by any stretch of the imagination, my PSR in particular is as much of a piece of art as it is a guitar. Plain old red SG, not so much haha!

@Jackson...
 
Brings back fond memories of my European driving experience, but more, the cars and driving mores of cultures from Istanbul and east. Italy was a cake walk in comparrison.
 
They have a replica of the San Fran Golden Gate bridge across the Bosphorus straits. Said this was the last icon of leaving western civilization. They were right. Not to judge or say that my way is any way more civilized or safe.
 
Somewhere way more remote out there in the dust, a road link from Iran to Afghanistan, there is a steroid version of the Ben Hur chariot race. Deadly circle of hell bound drivers ready to die for Allah if you get in the way of any of the exits. No rules, no speed limits, no lane demarcations. Survival of the fittest.
 
In India, the horn was the most used item in the car. The street was shared by pedestrians, cows, bull carts. You aimed down the middle and kept the horn blaring. Road kill, human or animal was just part of life. If you could afford a car or motorcycle, you cleaned the blood off the grill and called it another day.
 
Legal requirements to get a driver's license if you could afford a car was to be tall enough to see over the hood.
 
John

Beepster
And getting schmucked with a Tele is not really something you want to happen.
 
It's like if a cricket bat and a sledghammer had a sharp, pointy, hurty babby.

 
Nope , I just keep my Tele in the case and I use this Strat for that instead  

 

Beepster
I eexpect an orange tagarooni from kennywtelejazz for the above comment.

I would have given you one but somebody already beat me to it ...
Tell you what , if you can duck fast enough .......ah don't worry I' ll give you one anyway for this one
 
Kenny

@JohnKenn, getting a bit OT, but from what I can tell, seems to be the whole point of the CH. 
 
The Far East can be quite challenging, but the only place I had to hire a driver was in China, mainly because maps were completely useless (wild wild west days with everything under construction). The best one was a former policeman who made full use of all sides of the street, sidewalks, traffic signals be damned and often took "shortcuts" through active construction sites. I distinctly remember pondering the futility of beeping a horn when facing down a massive earth mover.
 
After finally making it onto a brand new 8 lane super highway and hitting top speed, I noticed something in motion head of us in our lanes. Turned out to be some old farmer herding a flock of (peking?) ducks across the road with 10 meter lengths of bamboo. We managed to stop in time and I could only imagine he had been doing this forever and wasn't about to let some stupid highway keep him from his "ancestral" path to market...
...
The only issue in Italy was other drivers and the occasional guardrail. 

...The cause of the accident was a small guy, in a small car with a big mouth...