WHEN BANDS FIGHT: Rock’s Greatest Bust-Ups
Published on 20 September 2024
Why can’t we all just get along?
That’s something that must have been uttered by many a long-suffering band member when things start to go south in the behaviour stakes.
We’ve all seen innumerable YouTube ‘fail’ videos where local bands lose their cool and go mental on each other, sacrificing their cool, their professionalism, their dignity and often their instruments all at once as they give in to their petty anger. Check out this lot:
It’s great entertainment, but this type of belligerence is not reserved only for the DIY and amateur crowds: there has been plenty of bad behaviour from supposed professionals, too. People who really should know better.
(pic: Ray McClelland)
Many of us watched online recently as an inebriated and hostile Perry Farrell launched himself at his Jane’s Addiction bandmate Dave Navarro. Nasty business, and Dave handled himself like a gent and a professional, but that’s not always how these things go down.
Not by a long shot.
Today, I’ll look back at a decidedly selective history of intra-band feuding, and hopefully supply you with plenty of tips on how NOT to go about your business. The stage is a privilege and all that, eh?
Ok, I’ll see you in the mosh pit…
The Brawls in Brief
John 5 Has Had Enough of Marilyn Manson
The View Start some Onstage Boxing
“Only Three More Songs Till I Kick Your Ass” - The Eagles Hate Each Other
Ataris Singer Throws Drum Kit at Drummer
Brian Jonestown Massacre are a Trainwreck Once Again
Stone Roses Drummer Reni Walks Off Stage ‘and Goes Home’
Perry Farrell Loses It
It’s such a shame. At their height, Los Angeles alt-rockers Jane’s Addiction are about as good as it gets, but there has always been a volatile chemical reaction bubbling away between the original members. This has seen them split and reform a number of times over the decades, but things were starting to look really promising this year: Dave was back after a long illness, the original team were all involved and raring to go, and initial gigs were spectacular.
Then they weren’t. Reports started surfacing about missed vocal cues, forgotten lyrics, wine bottles, rambling political rants…all of which were directed in one particular direction. Things came to a head last weekend when a visibly enraged (and inebriated) Perry shoulder-checked a busy-playing Dave before attempting a punch. Farrell was taken down pretty quickly by the crew and bassist Eric Avery, but the remainder of the show was cancelled and the band have since called it a day again. As I say, it’s a shame.
John 5 Has Had Enough of Marilyn Manson
I can imagine it taking quite a lot to seriously ruffle the feathers of spectacular guitarist John 5, but whatever it is that pushes that particular button, Marilyn Manson knows it!
This famous scuffle sees a stilted and mouse-eared Manson harassing a clearly perturbed John 5 onstage at a festival performance, until one kick in the rear too many sees our man launching his guitar to the floor and putting up his dukes against his boss.
It’s a passionate display of righteous anger from John, but his better senses soon take the wheel and steer him back towards his guitar. He later stated that he’d been having a rough time in other ways, and that this moment was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m glad he restrained himself, but I’m also really curious to see how that situation would’ve resolved itself. Size versus righteous anger; it’s a tough call!
The View Start some Onstage Boxing
Dundee indie rockers The View were always on the verge of a scrap, so it’s not highly surprising that their bassist and vocalist ended up launching kicks and more at each other last year.
During a performance in Manchester, bassist Keiren Webster aimed a kick towards vocalist Kyle Falconer’s mic stand, causing a classic series of non-commital pushes and shoves amidst threats of killing each other. Further audience glee was ensured when the bassist fled the stage, only to be continually roasted over the mic by his opponent from the stage.
In true Dundonian fashion, they were back on stage together for the following show. Hatchet buried!
“Only Three More Songs Till I Kick Your Ass” - The Eagles Hate Each Other
It’s fair to say that many big bands don’t see eye to eye on everything. Fleetwood Mac are famously frosty offstage, for example, and Keef n Mick don’t talk much in their private lives.
There is, however, one band who are so famously sick of each other that their ‘Hell Freezes Over’ tour was so-named due to a comment about them only playing together if Hell indeed got frosty. I can’t comment on whether that happened or not, but there were definitely times when these professional, world-famous musicians acted like big old babies.
That immortal line I quoted in the heading - “Only three more songs till I kick your ass” - was uttered by a (presumably) fuming Don Felder after a gig’s worth of to-and-fro with Glenn Frey. Felder eventually ruined a guitar by attacking a wall with it, then left the stage and (possibly) kicked Frey’s ass.
Such soft, tuneful music, and such bitter, raging mayhem!
Oasis Fall Out Yet Again
They are the most volatile siblings in rock, and their inclusion here should come as no surprise to anyone. Rock n roll excess is kind of a cliche these days, but the brothers Gallagher were heroic proponents of, shall we say, overindulgence back in the day.
It’s 1994 and we’re in Los Angeles with Oasis, who are trying to break the US with shows like this one at the famous Whiskey-A-Go-Go. They’ve already taken heat for using naughty swear words during a radio interview, and they’d already thumped their chests at bouncers outside the Viper Room. So far, so par-for-the-course. It develops, though.
Desperately needing to top up on ‘marching powder’, the band instead ended up somehow with crystal meth, which I’d sparingly describe as a terrible decision. People call it ‘ninja speed’ for a reason. Anyway, what followed was a masterclass in awful performance: Liam gave up singing and sat through most of the set, Noel put on a silly voice for his backing vocals, the bass amp literally blew up, Liam repeatedly threatened to fight the audience and then hit his brother on the head with his omnipresent tambourine before prowling the stage like a caged monkey and still refusing to sing.
At the end of the woeful set, Liam bolted out the front door wearing a towel on his head. Noel quit the band entirely (for two weeks) and the audience, mercifully, were spared any more nonsense.
It’s all rock n roll though, innit?
GG Allin versus Everybody
This is one of those situations where you can basically do a search for any clips of this guy and instantly find gold. By gold, I mean Kevin Michael “GG” Allin being scarily aggressive, spectacularly inappropriate, nearly always naked and often self mutilating. There’s also ‘coprophagia’, which I’ll let you check out yourself if you dare.
Anyway, GG (birth name Jesus Christ Allin, and I’m not kidding) was as terrible to his own band The Murder Junkies as he was to the audience. Throwing punches was normal, as was attacking them with his mic stand, grabbing them and, without being too graphic, leaving ‘stuff’ around the stage and all over his body, if you get me? He was also known for breaking up glass on the stage floor. Good guy!
Whilst it seems that the audience were his main target, there’s no doubt that being in GG Allin’s band was an open invitation to be violated. Members left at every juncture. No wonder! Who on earth would be in a band with this guy?
(NOTE: Take a little caution here, and be ready for some quite graphic behaviour if you search for him on YouTube. It’s not hard to find footage, but in the interests of staying decent, I’ll let you do that yourself!)
Ataris Singer Throws Drum Kit at Drummer
There’s having a rock star ‘tantie’, and there’s being in such a massive huff that you throw another musician’s instrument at them. Sounds bad, but it’s worse when that instrument is a full-on drum kit, which is what occurred at an Ataris gig when frontman Kris Roe had had enough of his poor drummer. The Telecaster gets launched first, followed by the drums and cymbals, all for a reason that I’m not readily hearing on this clip.
It’s a heroic rage meltdown, and whilst I don’t approve of such behaviour, I will also admit to having watched this clip about six times in a row.
Brian Jonestown Massacre are a Trainwreck Once Again
How many people go to a Brian Jonestown Massacre gig in order to actually hear songs being played? They have a number of undeniably good tunes, but all of that is foreshadowed by the expected chaos of a typical BJM gig.
The band, which seems to be frontman Anton Newcombe plus whomever is prepared to put up with him, regularly descend into bickering onstage. It then often turns into chasing each other on and offstage, wrestling, pushing and other obnoxiously childlike behaviour before the gig is inevitably called off.
There’s an infamous scene in Dig - the documentary about them and the Dandy Warhols - where Newcombe boots an audience member square in the face, but it’s more often the band themselves who face the wrath of their difficult leader.
Stone Roses Drummer Reni Walks Off Stage ‘and Goes Home’
The level of mystique that surrounds legendary Mancunians The Stone Roses would make you think that they float about on clouds. I’m not actually saying they don’t, but there are certainly moments when their behaviour is more akin to sulkiness than transcendence.
Take a show in Amsterdam back in 2012 when the group had reformed. Everything seemed to be going well until Alan ‘Reni’ Wren, the group’s superlative drummer and backing vocalist, decided he’d had enough and casually left the venue.
It seems that sound issues may have been the problem, but other accounts blame an angry altercation with vocalist Ian Brown. Whatever the case, Reni bolted after the set and never returned for the encore.
Moody Musicians
This is obviously a tongue in cheek article, but it does always amaze me how ill-behaved our favourite musicians can be. There is so much that goes into putting a show on, from the promoters to the crew, before we even consider the artists themselves, that it often seems crazy that these types of situations happen at all.
There are many reasons why bands bust up, and I needn’t list them here for you, but at least we always have their incredible music, right?
