How does Steven Tyler quit a band that he's been with for 40 years? Pretty passive-aggressively, if at all. According to his band mates, Tyler stopped answering their phone calls following an October concert in Abu Dhabi, which is not unusual behavior for the frontman. Guitarist Joe Perry recently told the Las Vegas Sun that, "as far as I can tell," Tyler has quit. But the pseudo-split didn't last long: Perry and Tyler are now denying the story, with Tyler telling TMZ.com: "There's absolutely no validity to rumor that Aerosmith is breaking up, mutha f**ka!"
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Before Journey's Trial by Fire tour, scheduled for 1996, a hip injury derailed its falsettoed frontman Steve Perry. After two years of postponing, and with the opportunity to capitalize on the success of the album waning, the band presented Perry with an ultimatum—get a hip replacement or be replaced. Perry left the band, but he remained the vocal model for all later incarnations of Journey's lead singers. Steve Augeri, an eerie vocal clone, followed, and the band's most recent singer, Filipino singer-songwriter Arnel Pineda, was recruited after his tribute performances on YouTube convinced guitarist Neal Schon that he was authentic enough to sing Journey classics. "Arnel doesn’t sound synthetic and he’s not emulating anyone," Schon maintains.
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The hair metal pioneers started out with David Lee Roth in the lineup and had huge success until tensions between Roth and the band’s namesake guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, reached a boiling point. Roth quit in 1985 and was quickly replaced by Sammy Hagar, who led the band to more hit records, until he left in 1996 due to tensions over a greatest hits album and a lingering rivalry with Roth. Both Hagar and Roth did the breakup and make-up routine: Hagar came back for a short-lived stint from 2003-2005, and Roth from 2007 on. In spite of the split he had called a “bitter and ugly divorce,” Roth managed to patch things up with his ex-band mates for a much hyped reunion tour in 2007, the band’s most lucrative venture ever. "This is not a reunion. This is a new band....Usually when a band comes back like us it's rockers with walkers and this is everything but. Meet us in the future, not the past."
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Original 10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant left the alt-rock band DOA when she defected in 1993, after more than a decade with the ensemble, to pursue a solo career. Merchant's debut solo album was met with critical and commercial success—just two weeks after its release it went triple platinum. When Merchant decamped, she took her lyrics-writing skills with her. "After Natalie left...we toyed with the idea of putting out a really underground record with no singing on it," said keyboardist Dennis Drew. "But that was just a goofy idea." Though Merchant politely gave the members two year's notice, it wasn't until four years after Merchant left that 10,000 Maniacs released the aptly titled Love Among the Ruins."
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Before Ringo Starr, there was Pete Best (in white). In 1960, without a permanent drummer, Paul McCartney tapped Best to fill in for a gig. For two years, Best banged out beats to early Beatles tunes until a producer with Abbey Road Studios decided the foursome needed a more experienced drummer for studio recordings. That was enough to make John Lennon, George Harrison, and McCartney turn their backs on Best, who was pushed out two years after he had joined the group. The trio had never considered Best a permanent member of the team, or part of their inner circle, though jealousy may have also played a role in the backstabbing. Best's devoted fans were so upset by his dismissal that they held vigils and chanted "Pete Best forever! Ringo never!" outside one venue. Meanwhile, bassist Stuart Sutcliffe (in leather pants) is often considered the real “fifth Beatle.” It was Sutcliffe who named the band with John Lennon and played bass with the band in its early days in Hamburg. Sutcliffe left the Beatles to study art and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1962.
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A drug addiction and resentment of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards led to the tragic downfall of Brian Jones, founding member and early leader of the Rolling Stones. Andrew Loog Oldham's arrival as manager of Stones in 1963 heralded a departure from the blues roots Jones had cultivated, and a shift in power and attention to Jagger. Jones' slow marginalization heightened his addiction, and when a drug conviction stood in the way of his touring with the band in 1969, Jones was forced out of the group. Barely one month later, Jones was dragged out from the bottom of his swimming pool, his death ruled a "misadventure," though some have speculated the cause was murder. In 1995, when asked by Rolling Stone magazine whether he felt guilty about Jones' ousting, Jagger said, "No, I don't really. I do feel that I behaved in a very childish way, but we were very young, and in some ways we picked on him. But, unfortunately, he made himself a target for it; he was very, very jealous, very difficult, very manipulative, and if you do that in this kind of a group of people, you get back as good as you give, to be honest."
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Florence Ballard may be remembered best as a victim of Motown. The record label's desire for the Supremes to achieve commercial crossover appeal meant driving Flo into the background. Though Ballard was one of the founding members of the group when it was still known as the Primettes, Berry Gordy decided to spotlight Diana Ross, whose voice was thought to be more palatable to audiences than Ballard's booming vocals. When the Supremes became Diana Ross & the Supremes, Ballard grew bitter about being relegated to backup singer status and she was eventually replaced. Her solo career never took off, she drifted to alcoholism, and her finances ultimately spiraled into chaos. Ballard died at the age of 32 from coronary thrombosis, and her story is the inspiration for the Broadway musical and movie Dreamgirls.
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In some ways, Peter Gabriel, lead singer and founding member of Genesis, simply outgrew the British rock band. While Gabriel was under pressure to write songs for a new album ( The Land Lies Down on Broadway) and prepare for its subsequent tour, he was approached by director William Friedkin of The Exorcist about a film project. Gabriel abandoned his songwriting briefly, but returned eventually to the band with notice of his impending leave. He stayed on for another eight months through the duration of the tour before leaving to spend time with his wife and newborn daughter, who spent the first two weeks of her life in intensive care. In “Solsbury Hill,” Gabriel’s first single as a solo artist, he tells the story of his departure from Genesis and his ensuing fears about going off on his own. With Gabriel out of the picture, the band needed a new frontman. They found him in Phil Collins, who previously sang backup vocals and played drums for Genesis. Collins would lead the band to even greater stardom with hits like “Invisible Touch” and “Follow You Follow Me.” He left the band in 1996 for his successful solo career. Gabriel and Collins reunited with the band in 1999 for the CD Turn It On Again: The Hits.
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Robbie Williams may have left the British boy band in the dust when he was kicked out in 1995, but that didn't mean the manufactured pop group couldn't achieve success without him. Though they disbanded one year after Williams' departure, a 2005 documentary reunited Take That members, sans Williams, and rekindled their recording career. They've since risen to the top of the Brit charts and won multiple musical accolades. Williams himself went on to become an international superstar. Though he had originally been ejected for his bad boy behavior, and had even been fined for violating contract terms with the group, the story has a happy ending. Williams recently told a talk-show host that he has collaborated with Take That on some projects. When asked if there are plans for him to work with the band in the future, Williams said, "Yes, I hope so." His new CD, Reality Killed the Video Star, will be released on November 17.
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As the original singer, songwriter, guitarist, and founder of psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett was the team's backbone. Fans and critics wondered if the progressive rock group could survive after Barrett's firing in 1968. Pink Floyd's management team even went so far as to retain Syd, while dropping the rest of the members. Though Barrett released two albums post Pink Floyd, he eventually withdrew from society completely. It's unclear if mental illness or psychedelic drugs was behind Barrett's erratic behavior, but it eventually became too much for the band to bear. Barrett’s on-stage antics, while entertaining to fans, were frustrating for the group, and en route to one performance the band simply decided not to pick him up. Barrett died of pancreatic cancer in 2006.
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There's no brotherly love lost between Noel and Liam Gallagher, the duo that helped usher in the neo-Brit pop sound with Oasis. After a spat between the two following a show in Paris earlier this year—Liam allegedly slandered Noel's wife and daughter—Noel decided it was finally time to split from what had become essentially an abusive relationship. Following the altercation, Noel posted a message on the band's Web site saying, "I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer." Noel's departure drew the curtain on a long history of feuds between the brothers, who have come to blows multiple times, with one scuffle involving a cricket bat to Liam's head.
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David Byrne was the mastermind behind critically acclaimed 1980s band Talking Heads. The core founders, including Byrne, were Rhode Island School of Design alums and experimental artists at heart, so it seems almost inevitable that the group would eventually have to go their separate ways because of creative differences. In 1991, Byrne officially left the band to go solo, but they released an album without him, under the name, The Heads. Byrne has since morphed into something of a multimedia artist, with projects spanning from photography to opera to the Internet. His new book, Bicycle Diaries, was published in September.
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The story of the Guns N’ Roses lineup reads like an update of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Due to creative conflicts, a sea change in the world of rock, and a tyrannical frontman, members continually dropped out or were kicked out of the band beginning in the early 1990s, leaving Axl Rose as the only remaining original member. Perhaps the most notable former member is guitarist Slash, who was with the band from 1985 to 1996. When the group hit a creative standstill in 1994, Slash branched out with a solo LP, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, in 1995, and formed Slash’s Snakepit. His departure wasn’t formally announced until 1996, and was reportedly the result of conflict with Rose, who had become known for “in-concert temper tantrums” and wanted to take the band in a more “industrial and electronic” direction. As for Rose, he laid low and worked with a virtual revolving door of collaborators and new members until he reappeared in 2001 with a new band lineup, a new hairstyle, and a new face. The new GNR debuted to tepid reviews and interest, and their long-awaited CD, Chinese Democracy, sold well below expectations
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Big Brother and the Holding Company was a well-established band with a strong following in California before Janis Joplin was recruited to sing with them in 1966. For the two years before she became the poster child for hippiedom and the counterculture movement, Joplin was happily fronting for the blues-folk-psychedelic rock ensemble. Reception to "Piece of My Heart" and "Ball and Chain" was so strong that Joplin left in 1968 to go solo and helm, first, the Kozmic Blues Band, then Full-Tilt Boogie. Joplin's solo career didn’t last long. She was found dead in a hotel room in 1970 from a cocaine overdose. Though Joplin's career was short-lived, her posthumous album, Pearl, cemented her status in rock history.
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It turns out that beneath the angsty and raging din of heavy metal is a relatively peaceful and accepting collective. There was no bad blood that led to singer Rob Halford's departure from Judas Priest in 1991, just a desire to explore a solo career. In 2003, the group reunited after 10 years of having fallen out of touch. "We were at my house going through songs, there was a lot of emotion and it was the first time we'd been together in the same room for years," Halford said. And when the singer came out of the closet in the early '90s, the fan reaction showed him that "metal fans are just as compassionate and caring and tolerant as any other form of music fans are."
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