The 10 Messiest Band Breakups

When you put a bunch of junkies and a megalomaniac in a band together, the shit will hit the fan sooner or later. In the case of Guns N' Roses, that moment came pretty quickly. The group hit it big with the release of Appetite for Destruction in 1987, but just three years later they pushed out original drummer Steven Adler due to his severe drug addiction. GNR carried on, but Axl Rose started showing up for shows ridiculously late. According to Slash and Duff McKagan, he refused to go onstage one night until they signed away the rights to the band's name. (Axl refutes this.)

Whatever happened, when the Use Your Illusion tour ended in late 1993, the group members went their own separate ways. Since then, things have only gotten worse between the original crew. Axl called Slash a "cancer" and refused to even attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction because his ex-bandmates would be in the room. As Taylor Swift would say, they are never, ever, ever getting back together.

No one fights like brothers. Imagine spending decades with your sibling as a business partner and creative collaborator: there's no place to hide. After a long tour, you look across the table at Thanksgiving and there he is. Have a big fight, and all of a sudden, Mom is on the phone telling you to apologize. It would drive anybody crazy.

The Everly Brothers managed to hold it together during their first 20 years, but things came to a head when Don showed up drunk to a show in Hollywood in 1973. He kept screwing up the lyrics until Phil smashed a guitar over his head and stormed out. The only time the brothers spoke during the next decade was at their father's funeral. The brothers patched things up in 1983 enough to embark on a lucrative nostalgia tour, but tensions remained. They haven't performed together since a brief European tour in 2005. 

The Gallagher brothers fought like crazy during Oasis' early days, but by 2009, it seemed like they had settled into a profitable groove. They released a new album every two or three years and played massive gigs across Europe to fans who were nostalgic for those magical days in 1995 when Noel and Liam Gallagher seemed like the new Lennon and McCartney.

In August of 2009, however, two decades of frustration boiled over backstage at a festival in Paris. Accounts vary, but the brothers got into some sort of physical altercation and called off the gig. Shortly afterward, Oasis was finished. "It is with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight," Noel Gallagher wrote shortly after the canceled show. "People write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer." According to witnesses, the brothers were arguing fiercely backstage when Liam smashed one of Noel's guitars. Then they started pummeling away at each other. They haven't spoken to each other since. 

The Police were formed in 1977 by drummer Stewart Copeland, along with schoolteacher Gordon "Sting" Sumner and guitarist Andy Summers. Within a year, they were rock's next big thing, but tensions began bubbling over as Sting took control of the band. The others began to feel like his employees and they began fighting like crazy, even as the band got bigger and bigger.

In his 2006 memoir, One Train Later, Summers recalled a fight while the band recorded their 1981 LP Ghost in the Machine. "Sting goes berserk on me," he wrote. "Calling me every name under the sun with considerable vehemence, leaving everyone in the room white-faced and in shock." Sting summed up the group's problem in a 2007 interview with Rolling Stone. "We didn't have a great deal in common," he said. "We were different generations, in Andy's case, welded together by a flag of convenience . . . Part of the frustration was that Stewart and Andy were driven to write. It's difficult to tell somebody it's not a good song, and it was usually me." Sting pulled the plug in 1984 after a long stadium tour in support of their massive album Synchronicity. "It wasn't my intention to punish Stewart and Andy in any way," Sting said. "I was following my instincts."

By 1980, the Eagles were the biggest band in America, but their success took a horrible toll on the group. Don Henley and Glenn Frey were intense and driven men, and original members Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner had already quit because the atmosphere had become toxic. Joe Walsh was often too drunk and stoned to complain about his lack of control by this point, and new bassist Timothy B. Schmit was wisely obedient. But guitarist Don Felder couldn't stand being treated like a second-class citizen.

Tensions flared all throughout the tour in support of 1979's The Long Run, but they got even worse at a 1980 benefit show for Senator Alan Cranston. Felder didn't want the band involved in political causes, and when the senator's wife visited the band backstage, he said, "Nice to meet you . . . I guess." Those last two words sent Glenn Frey into an uncontrollable rage, and onstage that night, the Eagles were actually threatening each other on mic. "That's three more, pal," Frey said. "Get ready." He was actually counting the number of songs remaining before he administered a backstage beatdown. Felder split in his limo before a fight could break out, and it was the last time the band played together for 14 years. 

Like the Police, the Clash had a difficult time dealing with success. Their 1982 single "Rock the Casbah" turned them from a popular punk band into MTV superstars. Ironically, it was written by drummer Topper Headon, who'd been forced out of the band due to his heroin addiction before the song even started climbing the charts. When the Clash opened for the Who on their "farewell" tour, Strummer and co. saw it as a sad glimpse into a possible future: playing old hits for big bucks in football stadiums. It didn't seem appealing. 

Even worse, the bandmates were unable to agree on a future musical direction. Guitarist Mick Jones was becoming enamored with hip-hop, bassist Paul Simonon liked reggae and frontman Joe Strummer wanted a return to punk. Jones and Strummer were barely talking when they returned from a long hiatus to play the US Festival in 1983. The show didn't go very well, and the Clash felt like sellouts for playing the corporate gig. Jones left the band soon afterwards, and the less said about the Clash's 1985 swan song, Cut the Crap, the better.

Few bands are true democracies. There are usually one or two people who call the shots, and the other members learn to live with that. When they can't, things can get very ugly. Smashing Pumpkins leader and main songwriter Billy Corgan insisted on playing most of the guitar and bass on the band's 1993 breakthrough, Siamese Dream, which didn't sit well with bassist D'arcy Wretzke and guitarist James Iha. The Pumpkins held it together until 1996, when touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin died of a heroin overdose. Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin overdosed that same night, and was thrown out of the band. He came back in 1999, but shortly afterwards D'arcy left. The Pumpkins called it a day in December of 2000.

Four years later, Corgan explained what happened. "The truth of the matter is that guitarist James Iha broke up the Smashing Pumpkins," he wrote online.  "Not me, not drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, but James. Did it help that bassist D'arcy Wretzky was fired for being a mean-spirited drug addict, who refused to get help? No, that didn't help keep the band together, not at all." He went on to explain that Iha left the final show without saying a word to him. "He didn't say goodbye to the two people he had won and lost and traveled the world with," he wrote. "So, I won't be protecting him anymore and I won't be protecting a whole lot of other people anymore."