Stage smoke sickness, misogyny in hip-hop, and alcoholic meltdowns.
Whether these reasons were outside of their control or out on stage for everyone to see,
each of them caused musicians to be ousted from their lifelong career.
Brian Jones died in 1969, about a month after he was fired from the Rolling Stones,
the band he helped start. The circumstances surrounding his firing are a bit mysterious,
with Rolling Stone reporting that Jones left the band in order to have full control over his music.
But that wasn't quite the case. Over the years, more came out about the parting
of ways that was actually a firing: In various documentaries and biographies,
the Stones said that while they definitely all took drugs, Jones was relying on them to the point
where the rest of the band felt they couldn't count on him at all. He seemed to check out,
and when arrests put restrictions on the traveling he could do, the other Stones
headed to his home and told him his services would no longer be needed. A month later, he was gone.
Years later, Mick Jagger would talk to the BBC about what had been at the root of his problems:
"Fame doesn't sit very comfortably on anyone's shoulders. But some people's shoulders,
it doesn't seem to sit on at all, and he was one of them."
Even Keith Richards spoke to Jones's struggles, saying that as time went on, he started to change.
"Someone you didn't suspect lurked in there… he became more self-destructive.
I'm one to talk about that, right? But I'm still here,
and Brian went for it all the way, and once he was down that path, there's no stopping."
Drummer Charlie Watts later expressed regret, saying:
"I felt even sorrier for him, for what we did to him then. We took his one thing away,
which was being in a band. That’s my opinion."
Yes founder Jon Anderson told Rolling Stone that he didn't even know he’d been
replaced with Benoit David, a singer from a Yes tribute band — at least,
not until a friend told him he was kicked from the band. He admitted to the magazine:
"They didn't tell me anything. They were just off and running. But what can you do?"
So why was he dumped from his own band after 40 years? It happened in 2008,
and in an interview with Rock History Music, Anderson says it was because he was sick.
Anderson explained that it was the oily smoke from the stage lights at their live
shows that caused him to start coughing up black mucus. It took such a heavy physical
toll on him that he pitched the idea of putting together an acoustic album
instead of continuing on tour. Anderson said that when he asked for a break to recover,
he was unceremoniously dumped from the band he'd founded, adding:
"I was coughing so much that the only time I wasn't coughing was onstage. I
just needed a break, but the guys were upset about that… People get into that
place where they don't care about people. To them, it's just business."
Anderson said that it wasn't business for him, though, so the firing broke his heart. Still,
despite how upset he was about it, he knew he had to hit the reset. After leaving Yes,
Anderson opted to tour at a more relaxed pace, alongside his wife,
which ultimately provided a silver lining to a very painful experience, reminiscing:
"It was the most precious fun I've ever had."
There was a time when the Bay City Rollers had the potential to be the
biggest thing of their era. Just as the Beatles kicked off Beatlemania,
the Bay City Rollers had Rollermania — but it ultimately burned out as fast as it started.
"In the era after Beatlemania, they caused Rollermania."
In 2005, The Guardian tried to track down the band to find out what had gone wrong,
but they had particular difficulty getting an interview with lead singer Les McKeown.
When they did, McKeown revealed that nearly four decades after being fired from the band,
he was still bitter about the experience.
McKeown was dropped from the band in 1978, and the official reason given was that he
didn't want to do a TV show. The increasing popularity of punk meant that groups like the
Bay City Rollers needed to get with the times or fall by the wayside, and McKeown admitted that
he was more interested in a drug-filled lifestyle than the survival of the band.
But behind the scenes, he was dealing with some heavy stuff: In 1975,
McKeown was behind the wheel of a Mustang when he hit and killed an elderly neighbor.
Those who knew him say it devastated him, and only helped fuel his addiction issues. McKeown
admitted to The Guardian that he still struggled with the guilt, sharing:
"There's elements of what happened then that have something to do with the head trips today."
McKeown spent the next several decades trying to recover royalties he believed he was owed,
which in 1978 were already roughly $2 million, give or take. In 2005,
he still hadn't seen the money, and in 2021, his family announced his death via Twitter. He was 65.
Kate Schellenbach hit the music scene early; by the age of 15,
she had become a founding member of a group that would become world famous: The Beastie Boys.
Schellenbach, though, wasn't allowed to experience that success. Just as they were
poised to hit it big, Schellenbach was fired from the group for one simple reason: she was a girl.
In 2019, Adam Horovitz and Mike D sat down with PBS NewsHour and explained the thought process
behind firing Schellenbach. Or rather, the lack of a thought process. While they had nothing but
good things to say about her, the two explained that as they transitioned from punk to hip hop,
they also began focusing more on both the "Beastie" and the "Boys" part of their image.
So they just figured she wouldn't want to be part of it anymore. And rather
than actually ask her if that was the case, they fired her. Both spoke to fame turning
them into people they didn't like or recognize, with Horovitz explaining,
"We started becoming these dudes that were gross. I don't know how else to say it."
He went on to add,
"We kicked Kate out of the band because she didn't fit in with
like this new dude thing that we were doing."
Since then, fences have been mended, and the Beastie Boys
have collaborated with Schellenbach and her band Luscious Jackson. They
even signed Luscious Jackson to their Grand Royal label in the 90s.
"Having Mike D in the picture helps because he's been in a band, or he's in a band, so he
understands what it's like to tour, to deal with a record company, so he's very sympathetic to us."
Danny Kirwan was just 18 years old when he joined Fleetwood Mac, and he played on a series of albums
before he was fired during the middle of 1972's Bare Trees tour. According to Rolling Stone,
the band cited increasingly erratic behavior stemming from problems with
alcohol as the reason for giving him the boot. The tipping point was a backstage
meltdown that Mick Fleetwood detailed in the book Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac.
"He got up suddenly… and bashed his head into the wall, splattering blood everywhere. I'd never seen
him do anything that violent in all the years I'd known him. The rest of us were paralysed,
in complete shock. He grabbed his precious Les Paul guitar and smashed it to bits. Then
he set about demolishing everything in the dressing room as we all sat and watched."
What happened to Kirwan after leaving the band suggests that there was much
more going on with him than perhaps the other members of the band even realized.
In 1993, Mick Fleetwood realized that no one had seen or heard from him in a long time,
and actually contacted the UK's Missing Person Bureau.
After they found Kirwan, he sat down for an interview with the Independent, saying that
since he had left the band, he had been homeless or living in a hostel for much of the time.
He said,
"I was lucky to have played for the band at all… but I couldn't handle
the lifestyle and the women and the traveling."
Kirwan was not present when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame with the rest of Fleetwood Mac in 1998. When he passed away in 2018,
his obituary cited lifelong struggles with mental health issues.
Syd Barrett was the original frontman for the legendary band Pink Floyd. He wrote
many of their early songs and even helped the band create its unique identity. Tragically,
though, he was eventually fired from the band due to serious mental health
issues that ultimately led him to quit music and become a recluse.
Considered by some fans to be a groundbreaking musical genius,
it was Barrett who came up with the name Pink Floyd in 1965. But by 1968, Barrett's regular
LSD use had made him increasingly unpredictable, but, there may have been more to it than just the
LSD use. It's now believed that Barrett may have had either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Whatever the cause, the effects were devastating nonetheless. At the same
time he was writing songs that sent Pink Floyd's popularity skyrocketing,
Barrett would sometimes become catatonic. He occasionally couldn't recognize his bandmates,
and often was unable to play coherently at their live shows. The band ultimately
brought in David Gilmour as a second guitarist to cover for Barrett's lapses.
Gilmour told MOJO that the end came one day while they were preparing to go to a live gig.
"Someone said, 'Shall we go and pick up Syd?' And someone else,
probably Roger, said, 'Naaah, let's not.' And we didn't, and we drove off to Southampton."
And so ended Syd Barrett's connection with the band that he started. Gilmour further explained,
"He wasn't capable or willing to do what was needed and when you're
young and ambitious you're also pretty callous, and we just got on with it."
Barrett was officially fired in 1968. In 1975, he surprised the band by showing up
unexpectedly at a recording session; other than one brief chance encounter at a department store,
none of the members of Pink Floyd ever saw Barrett again. After moving back in with his mother,
he reportedly spent his days painting and gardening. He died in 2006 at the age of 60.
Guitarist Chad Taylor was one of the four founding members of Live, so fans of the
band were pretty surprised in June of 2022 when lead singer Ed Kowalczyk posted on Instagram,
"As of last evening, I own 55% of Live. Chad Taylor is
fired. He will never stop the music again."
So what happened? Well, that depends on who you ask, because everyone has a different
story. Drummer Chad Gracey laid the blame squarely on Taylor, calling him a narcissist,
while Taylor himself said the blame really lies with his business partner Bill Hynes.
Taylor accused Hynes — who has a criminal record for stalking and assault — of stealing somewhere
around $10 million from the band. Taylor called him a con man, explaining to Rolling Stone,
"I was a sucker. I have people that depend on me,
and I trusted a person that hurt us. I failed as a husband. I failed
as a father. I failed the families of my bandmates. I have yet to forgive myself."
The band's meltdown didn't end with Taylor's firing, though. After taking control of Live,
Kowalczyk ultimately fired fellow founding members Gracey and bassist
Patrick Dahlheimer too, hiring a whole new band. Lawsuits are reportedly being filed,
so this drama apparently has yet to reach its end.
Sometimes, it's amicable when bands split. And then there's
what happened when Styx fired their original lead singer, Dennis DeYoung.
Unsurprisingly, there are two different stories about why DeYoung left Styx.
When band members Tommy Shaw, James Young, and Lawrence Gowan spoke with Dan Rather,
they addressed the firing. Young said that things came to a head in 1999:
"We had offers galore to go out and perform live, and Dennis refused to leave the house…
he said for a medical reason… And I said, 'Well, we're going with you or without you.'"
They famously went without him, but according to a 2000 Chicago Tribune interview with DeYoung,
there was so much more going on. DeYoung said that life started going sideways in
1997. It was the year he lost his father, best friend, and sister-in-law in just a
few months. Not only was he devastated, but he contracted a strain of the flu that made
him unable to do anything he was able to before, explaining to the Chicago Tribune:
"I was just so fatigued all the time, and my face was always hot. I went to doctor after doctor,
and it took me eight months to figure out that I had become sensitive to light:
bright overhead lights, sunlight, anything like that made me feel feverish."
DeYoung said he was feeling better by the following year,
but not 100% — which is when he was fired from the band.
In 2014, Rolling Stone spoke with Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick
Mason about the band's final album, "The Endless River." It was, in large part,
built around the work of Pink Floyd's late keyboard player and founding member Richard
"Rick" Wright, with Gilmour crediting him for creating the background of
pretty much everything the band did... Well, while he was with them, at least.
Wright had been fired from the band in 1979 after the
end of the recording sessions for their seminal album "The Wall." Why? Yet again,
there were two different versions of the story: Roger Waters' version, and everyone else's.
Listen to Waters tell it, and he’ll say that Wright just simply wasn't
good enough to cut it. Music producer Bob Ezrin has a different take on it,
saying Wright was just a victim of Waters' cruelty, explaining to Rolling Stone:
"No matter what Rick did, it didn't seem to be good enough for Roger. It
was clear to me that Roger wasn't interested in his succeeding."
Wright agreed to leave the band, but most fans didn't know he had
left… because he hadn't. Even though he had been fired as a band member,
Pink Floyd then immediately hired him on as a session musician for their live tours,
meaning he continued to play with the band as though he had never left,
just on a salary instead of splitting the profits. That turned out to be a stroke of luck,
as the band actually lost a small fortune when the tour for "The Wall" went wildly over budget.
After Waters left the band in 1985, Wright began contributing more to the band's recording process
as well, but was contractually barred from rejoining the band. He was finally able to
become a full member of Pink Floyd again in 1994 and continued with the band until his
death in 2008. Some of his old recordings were used posthumously to create "The Endless River."
"Having lost Rick, it was that thing of it really brought home what a special player he was."
In 2013, Rolling Stone spoke to Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Wieland,
who assured them that rumors that he was on thin ice with the rest of the
band were false. The next day, the band fired him.
The truth was, he had been let go because of his increasingly erratic behavior and
troubles with law enforcement. The lawsuits and counter-suits that followed were publicized and
ugly. Weiland later told Rolling Stone that his drug use contributed to his firing, explaining:
"[W]hat ended up happening is the more I indulged in drugs,
the more it became a dependency and a crutch. I became overwhelmed,
and I lost the ability to feel. I started feeling like there was a blanket over my heart."
Tragically, Weiland passed away in 2015 from an accidental overdose. After his death,
his widow Jamie Weiland told Billboard that ongoing mental health issues had also played
a role in the singer's instability. While he had spoken openly about the fact that he had
been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Jamie shared that it had been a struggle to find medications
and dosages that worked for him. The last message she got from him was a text that said,
"I'm so in love with my beautiful wife."
Guitarist and singer Dickey Betts Helped found the Allman Brothers
Band in 1969 and was one of the group's driving creative forces.
So he was gobsmacked in 2000 when he was fired from the band by fax.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Betts revealed that the band claimed the decision was
due to substance abuse issues that had plagued Betts for years. But Betts claimed that he no
longer had a drug problem, and that the band was just using that as an excuse. The excuse,
Betts claimed, was used to cover up what he thought was the real reason;
they wanted to bring in guitarist Jimmy Herring,
who was playing with several Allman Brothers Band members in a side project called Frogwings.
In 2017, though, Betts told Rolling Stone that the conflict had actually kicked off
in earnest after he started asking questions about the band's finances,
suggesting that he was ultimately fired for requesting an audit.
But Allman Brothers Band drummer Jaimoe, who is the only other surviving founding member,
says that Betts is just avoiding the reality of how his addiction
affected the group. Jaimoe told Rolling Stone,
"He would say, ‘I need to go get myself straight,’ and that’s what
he would do. This time he didn’t do it. He didn’t get fired. He quit."
Wherever the truth lies, fans can at least take solace in the knowledge that
Betts and Gregg Allman reportedly made amends before Allman's death in 2017.
If there's anyone who seems like they were born to be on stage, it's Jimi Hendrix. But fans almost
missed out on the whole Hendrix experience for an unlikely reason: he missed his bus.
In 1964, the young guitarist was looking for his big break and it
seemed like he had gotten it when he joined Little Richard's band. But he
lasted less than a year with the group before being fired in July of 1965.
Why? In spite of the fact that he was so clearly gifted, he reportedly struggled
with the day-to-day of touring — and according to those who saw him working
alongside Little Richard, he wasn't all too happy about the rules and regulations put
in place. He viewed schedules and timetables as optional, and that was a massive problem.
In "The Life and Times of Little Richard," Little Richard's brother Robert Penniman
explained that he had personally fired Hendrix. The final straw came when Hendrix was so late
that he missed getting on a tour bus and was left behind in New York City. Penniman said,
"He was a damn good guitar player, but the guy was never on time. He was
always late for the bus and flirting with the girls and stuff like that."
It could have been the end for Hendrix, and heartbreaking for music history. Luckily,
though, less than a month after being fired,
Hendrix got his first solo recording contract. Little Richard said in a 1973 interview that
he never had the chance to make amends with Hendrix before the guitarist's death in 1970.
"He’s always wanted to be this big star. But you know I never got a chance to see
him after he made it. They would never let me come back, I used to say, why? What did I do?"