The most scandalous rock band break-ups including lead singer ‘throwing a coffee table’

Few bands have a history as conflict-ridden as Guns N’ Roses (Picture: Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

There’s just something about a man with a perm and an electric guitar that leads to drama.

The history of rock and roll is littered with urban legends and true stories of guitar-smashing, dressing-room showdowns, drug-fueled brawls, and lots of hurt feelings.

One of the most dramatic examples is the infamous case of Guns N’ Roses and their notoriously volatile frontman Axl Rose.

While the band – which was one of the biggest of the 80s – broke up in 1996 when guitarist Slash left the band, followed quickly by bassist Duff McKagan, the beginning of the end came in 1990 when founding drummer Steve Adler was fired.

Rose and Adler locked horns countless times in their decade of stardom, with one famous incident coming when the band lived together in the 80s.

As the story goes, Rose was asleep on a couch in the evening, shortly before the band were set to play an LA show. Adler started passive aggressively cleaning up, making a racket.

Steven Adler and Axl Rose butted heads throughout the 80s (Picture: Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Things escalated, and Rose threw a coffee table at his drummer, and soon the pair were locked in a fistfight.

Even more shockingly, Rose recorded himself having sex with Adriana Smith in 1987, who had previously been dating Adler. He then used the audio in the background of the song Rocket Queen as a dig at Adler, further making the battle lines clear.

In 1990, Adler was fired from the band as he struggled with a heroin addiction.

Rose told MTV in 1990: ‘Steven didn’t leave the band. Steven was fired. We gave him every ultimatum, we tried working with other drummers. We had Steven sign a contract saying if he went back to drugs, he was out. He couldn’t leave his drugs. And other things have happened involved with Steven that Steven is basically someone I used to know.’

But the conflict didn’t end there, and Rose became harder and harder to work with as the years passed.

‘After a while, I could barely show up  because the animosity was so crippling,’ Slash later wrote in his autobiography of the band’s eventual breakdown. ‘It was so negative.’

Axl Rose continued performing under the Guns N’ Roses name with a rotating cast of musicians in the years that followed, but the band’s iconic lineup never truly reunited for the long term.

While Guns N’ Roses’ breakup was certainly contentious, they aren’t the only band to have ended explosively. Here are some of the most dramatic band breakups in music history.

Everly Brothers Phil Everly and Don Everly released a string of hits in the 50s and 60s (Picture: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

A true oldies rock act, the Everly Brothers – Phil and Don – had a string of hits including Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Susie, and Cathy’s Clown in the 50s and 60s. 

But the biological brothers never truly managed to get along, and things finally came to an explosive end in 1973. 

Already certain the show was their last, a California gig saw Don taking the stage obviously inebriated, infuriating his brother. 

‘I was half in the bag that evening — the only time I’ve ever been drunk onstage in my life,’ Don later told Rolling Stone. 

The brother’s careers came to a screeching halt after a disastrous final show in 1973 (Picture: Michael Levin/Corbis via Getty Images)

‘I knew it was the last night, and on the way out I drank some tequila, drank some champagne — started celebrating the demise. It was really a funeral.’

Don – whose addiction to Ritalin made things even more tense with his brother – was slurring the words and struggling to keep up as the show progressed. Soon, his enraged brother smashed his guitar on the stage, shocking the audience as he stormed off stage, leaving his brother in the lurch. 

While the brothers eventually buried the hatchet, performing together again a decade later, they truly said the tone for dramatic rock band breakups. 

As Phil Everly said in 1970: ‘We only ever had one argument. It’s been lasting for 25 years.’

Oasis How could we write a list like this without including Oasis? (Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns)

Of course, no list of band breakups would be complete without mention of Noel and Liam Gallagher.

Their dramatic breakup in 2009 was preceded by countless instances of the brothers taking aim at each other both on stage and off, with Noel eventually leaving the band and declaring he simply couldn’t work with his brother anymore. 

In a statement released at the time, Noel wrote: ‘It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.’

He continued by aiming one more creative insult at his brother: ‘He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.’

Reportedly, an altercation at Paris’ Rock en Seine Festival was the final nail in the coffin for Oasis. 

Liam reportedly smashed one of Noel’s guitars in the midst of the fight, and soon after Noel left for good. Subsequently, Liam sued Noel for statements he made about the breakup. 

Fans are hoping the brothers will be able to keep the peace throughout their upcoming reunion tour (Picture: PA Wire)

Liam resented his brother for leaving him behind, later telling The Guardian that Noel’s claims that Liam’s behaviour led to the end of the band were absurd because, ‘that was my behaviour since day one.’

He continued: ‘That’s what made Oasis what it was. I wasn’t any different, but all of a sudden, he’s turned into Ronan Keating or some soft c***, going: “We can’t have that behaviour.”’

He continued: ‘I was sitting at home with no management, no office, and no one to really speak to, while Noel was still walking into his big management office having everyone running around after him, getting smart and dissing people.

‘Looking back with hindsight, you can go: ‘You’re a big boy’ and all that, but when you’ve had all that stuff for 20 years… I could barely tie my shoelace let alone run my business or my life. All that support was taken away, but little Noely G had it all still there.’

Fleetwood Mac Fleetwood Mac has never been able to recover from Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s contentious relationship (Picture: Richard E. Aaron/Redferns)

Mick Fleetwood, co-founder of legendary rock band Fleetwood Mac, has shared his hopes for reconciliation between ex-bandmates Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham in recent months after the band’s infamous decades of drama.

Former guitarist Lindsey, 74, and frontwoman Stevie, 76, have had a turbulent relationship over the past five decades and beyond.

This included a love affair throughout the 1970s that ended around the creation of the band’s renowned 1977 album, Rumours (which featured Lindsey’s iconic break-up song Go Your Own Way).

But as Lindsey and Stevie’s personal and professional relationship deteriorated over the years, everything came to a head in 2018 when Lindsey suddenly ruptured from the band.

The former flames have not toured together since with Mike Campbell and Neil Finn taking Lindsey’s place.

‘It’s no secret, it’s no title-tattle that there is a brick wall there emotionally,’ Mick, 77, said in a recent interview about the feuding duo.

‘Stevie’s able to speak clearly about how she feels and doesn’t feel, as does Lindsey. But I’ll say, personally, I would love to see a healing between them – and that doesn’t have to take the shape of a tour, necessarily,’ he added to Mojo magazine.

Whether they will bury the hatchet remains to be seen but in 2021 Lindsey opened up about his perspective of why he was dumped from the band to the LA Times.

‘It would be like a scenario where Mick Jagger says, “Either Keith [Richards] goes or I go.”

‘No, neither one of you can go. But I guess the singer has to stay. The figurehead has to stay.’

‘I think she saw the possibility of remaking the band more in the Stevie Nicks vein. More mellow and kind of down, giving her more chances to do the kind of talking she does onstage.’

The band’s lineup – Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, John McVie – was plagued by interpersonal conflict (Picture: GAB Archive/Redferns)

Stevie, however, fiercely hit back against Lindsey’s retelling calling it ‘factually inaccurate’.

She continued: ‘To be exceedingly clear, I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired.

‘Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being. I was done. If the band went on without me, so be it.’

Van Halen UNITED STATES – JANUARY 01:Photo of VAN HALEN(Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns)

The original lineup of Van Halen, featuring brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen, bassist Michael Anthony, and front man David Lee Roth, burst onto the music scene in the late 1970s with their self-titled debut album, quickly becoming a bonafide cultural movement and some of the biggest icons of the decade. 

But they were quickly plagued by conflict, with Eddie infamously throwing a bowl of guacamole at David backstage in 1978. He missed the singer entirely and instead hit Steve Perry, who cried, according to Runnin’ With the Devil, a 2017 memoir by Van Halen’s former manager, Noel Monk.

In another instance in the same year, the band destroyed the entire seventh floor of a hotel in Wisconsin. The chaos began when Eddie came back to his room to discover that David had thrown the table and chairs from the room outside into the snow. 

The tension between David and Eddie came to a head in 1985, following the release of the hugely successful album 1984, which featured hits like Jump and Panama. 

Roth was was replaced by Sammy Hagar (center) as lead singer (Picture: Paul Natkin/Getty Images)

Although the album was a commercial triumph, behind the scenes, David and Eddie were barely speaking, with their communication mostly limited to musical disagreements that would turn to shouting matches and even more property destruction.

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David decided to leave the band, citing creative differences and a desire to pursue his own music as a solo artist.

He told Billboard in 1985 that he never truly felt welcome in the band that he helped make famous, saying: ‘Since my very first days in with the band 11 years ago, I have always had the feeling that one day I would wake up in a cold hotel, all the rooms would be empty and I would be stuck by a phone with a busy signal. From the first day. Nothing has changed.’

But Eddie later claimed it was David’s ego that broke the band up, telling Rolling Stone in 1986 that David said: ‘I can’t work with you guys anymore. I want to do my movie. Maybe when I’m done, we’ll get back together.’

Sonic Youth Sonic Youth, (L-R)was comprised of Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley and Kim Gordon (Picture: Frans Schellekens/Redferns)

Unlike other groups on this list, the conflict at the heart of Sonic Youth was between a husband and wife.

Formed in New York City in 1981, the iconic rock band was originally comprised of Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar), Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals).

Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore were happily married for decades, successfully working together within the band as they churned out hits.

But in 2010, Gordon was left blindsided and heartbroken as she discovered text messages on Moore’s phone from another woman, leading to their divorce after 27 years of marriage.

Married couple Gordon and Moore split up in 2010, and the band soon ended as well (Picture: AJ Barratt/Avalon/Getty Images)

She detailed the traumatic incident in her memoir Girl in a Band, writing: ‘One morning I got up to do yoga. Thurston was still asleep, and I looked down at his cell[phone]. It was then that I saw her texts about their wonderful weekend together, about how much she loved him, and his writing back the same things.’

Obviously distraught, she eventually went onto his laptop and found more evidence of the affair including a ‘porno-like’ video.

Soon after, the pair divorced, and the band called it quits.

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