Just because musicians have good chemistry together doesn't mean they have to like each
other.
In fact, some of the most successful bands of all time have been fraught with tension.
These are some of the bandmates who just can't stand one another.
Various members of Smashing Pumpkins have been fighting with each other for almost as
long as the band has been around.
According to a 1995 Us Weekly article about the band, there had been strife for years
even then, starting with guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy Wretzky becoming a couple,
before breaking up during the recording of their debut album, Gish.
"I don't know what's the big deal.
You were, like, not a good sidekick to have."
Then there's Billy Corgan's knack for seeing the band as a glorified solo project.
For their second album, Siamese Dream, he did most of the interviews and played most
of the guitar and bass, despite having both a guitarist and bassist.
By 2000, after a good deal of squabbling and a number of roster changes, the Pumpkins had
disbanded.
According to E! News, Corgan tried to paint the band in a different light, saying:
Of course, plenty of other bands survived the fight against pop music just fine, so
it seems more than likely that Corgan wasn't being entirely truthful.
In 2015, Corgan reunited with long-time drummer Jimmy Chamberlin for a few shows, but that
only lasted about as long as any collab with Corgan possibly could.
In February 2018, the band announced a reunion tour without D'arcy Wretzky.
Sadly, ticket sales for the tour weren't exactly great.
Maybe everyone just got tired of the fighting.
Steve Perry has always had his own issues with Journey, which were largely behind his
departure from the band in the '80s.
"I was still singing good, but I wasn't connecting with it?
And as a result of that, I kept getting more empty and empty in my heart."
In recent years, however, Journey's remaining members haven't fared much better.
As documented by Ultimate Classic Rock, guitarist Neal Schon and keyboardist Jonathan Cain have
recently been feuding over the band's artistic direction.
According to Cain, Schon wanted to do a hard rock record, and the result, 2011's Eclipse,
didn't do all that well.
Cain feels they should never go that route again, but since Schon feels like he's the
main member of the band, he believes Cain should quit undermining him.
In 2017, he wrote on Instagram:
As if that weren't enough, Cain has also been performing religious music on the side ever
since marrying a minister.
Schon has issues with that as well, fearing religious and political slants could compromise
the band.
Considering Cain's wife spoke at Donald Trump's inauguration, that's probably not an irrational
fear.
New Order was basically the soundtrack for an entire decade, famous for their kick drums
and distinctive bass lines, but in everyday life the group was pretty much the opposite
of the cohesive, music-making machine they were on stage.
In an interview with Getintothis, former bassist Peter Hook said the band was pretty good at
putting aside their differences to make music.
He explained:
Unfortunately, those negative feelings went all the way to court, when Hook accused his
former bandmates of quote, "clandestinely" controlling not just the trademark for the
name "New Order", but also the trademark for their previous band, Joy Division.
Hook also said the band, which he'd left in 2008, owed him "millions of pounds" in unpaid
royalties.
Hook's former bandmates, however, said the dispute was about Hook's royalties from the
work the band had done after his departure.
The lawsuit was settled in 2017, but the animosity never went away.
"And somebody's to say to you, 'Would you all get back together again, you and him?' At that moment you would say, 'I would rather die.'"
Singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner told The Guardian:
You'd never know it, what will all those carefree and optimistic lyrics, but the Beach Boys
weren't all about the good vibrations.
In fact, according to Brain Sharper, the band was afflicted by insurmountable creative differences,
mostly between Brian Wilson and Mike Love.
The former thought the band's sound needed upgrading, while the latter thought there
was no reason to mess with what had made them successful.
But like all epic feuds, there was more to the rift between Wilson and Love than just
creative differences.
Love also disagreed with the fact that Wilson pretty much commandeered all the band's vocals,
even though Love was a perfectly capable singer.
There was also a pretty big difference in lifestyles between the two, Love once recalled
a time when the Wilsons wanted the whole band to try heroin together, an activity that didn't
appeal to him or the other members of the group.
And there was the usual disagreement over royalties, of course…but that, at least,
is pretty much par for the course for any famous band.
You don't use the word "surviving" in the title of the documentary about your life unless
you really think you lived through something.
Andy Summers' biographical film Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police documents
the "mind-warping few years" he spent as the guitarist for The Police.
And yet, despite the rather melodramatic title, Summers insists that the band's breakup was
more about burnout than about the personal relationships between its members.
During a Q&A screening of the film in Pasadena, Summers told the audience:
That's a pretty diplomatic way of saying that bandmates fought, a lot.
By the time they started working on Synchronicity, their fifth LP, things were pretty rough.
Producer Hugh Padgham told Sound on Sound:
Sparky chemistry, indeed.
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