Fleetwood Mac might be notorious for their romantic drama,
but would you expect the same from the Rolling Stones or Billy Joel?
These are some of rock 'n' roll's greatest conflicts of the heart.
As one of the original 1970s New York punk bands, the Ramones helped define the sound
of the burgeoning, provocative rock subgenre. They stripped rock down to its foundation
of guitar, bass, and drums and played their instruments with loud and reckless abandon.
They wore matching jeans and leather jackets, as lead singer Joey Ramone
wailed about the annoyances of modern life. The Ramones had a tight sound,
with each band member working hard to break the mold from the music they'd grown up on.
"It's not real anymore, it's not, ah, from the gut and soul anymore,
and you wanna do something about it changing it and making things better."
Offstage, however, the Ramones didn't always get along. According to Marky Ramone's memoir
Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, Joey Ramone and guitarist Johnny Ramone had a dispute that unfortunately
wasn't resolved before the deaths of both men. Billboard notes that Joey dated a woman named
Linda for more than two years. She then left him to couple with Johnny, ultimately marrying
him and taking on the name Linda Ramone. As Marky recalls in his memoir, the two didn't
speak to each other again and refused to sit near each other when traveling in their van.
After striking it big with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Stephen Stills embarked on
a successful solo career. He scored a top 20 hit in 1970 with "Love the One You're
With." Rita Coolidge, the sultry '70s soft rock songwriter known for "We're All Alone"
and "(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher," sang backup on Stills' hit.
Stills' bandmate, Graham Nash, was in the studio at the time the song was
being recorded. Nash and Coolidge casually chatted between takes, and Nash invited her
to come see their concert the next night. Nash was staying with Stills, and he asked Coolidge
to call him on the day of the concert to confirm the plans. When she did, Stills
answered and told her Nash suddenly couldn't make it — he'd escort her to the show instead.
They began dating, but the relationship turned rocky. After she called it quits with Stills,
Coolidge gave Nash a call, where she learned that Stills had deliberately interfered with
her plans with his bandmate that fateful night. After that, she began seeing Nash officially.
While staying in a motel, Stills wrote "Love Rita" on a bathroom mirror and took a potentially
lethal amount of pills which landed him in a hospital. After he recovered, Coolidge and
Nash went to see Stills at his home. According to Coolidge's memoir Delta Lady, she wrote,
Before they found the soft-rock sound that would influence countless albums and help
them achieve icon status in the '70s, Fleetwood Mac was part of the British blues band scene.
The band was founded in the late '60s by Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. The group brought in
numerous guitarists in its early years, hiring Bob Weston in time for their 1973 album Penguin.
According to Cosmic Magazine, Fleetwood married model Jenny Boyd in 1970,
the sister of model Pattie Boyd. Fleetwood and Jenny Boyd started a family, but the
drummer was so busy with his recording and touring schedule — while also in the
midst of battling a cocaine addiction — that Jenny Boyd was left unhappy and unfulfilled.
"Mick and I would pass each other on the stairs and not say hello or acknowledge each other."
While dealing with her own addiction issues,
Boyd began an extramarital affair with Bob Weston. According to The Guardian,
Fleetwood was so upset when he found out about the fling that he fired Weston from Fleetwood Mac.
Jenny Boyd then broke things off with Weston and tried to make her marriage to
Fleetwood work. By the end of the '70s, they'd ultimately divorce, remarry, and divorce again.
By the mid-1970s, the blues-oriented Fleetwood Mac reinvented itself as a
radio-friendly pop-rock band. They hired the romantically attached duo Buckingham Nicks,
composed of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks.
Fleetwood Mac's 1975 self-titled album sold seven million copies, bringing the group fame,
fortune, and the weighty task of having to write a follow-up to their hit record.
Their next album, 1977's Rumours, would sell 20 million copies and become one of the top-selling
LPs of all time. Billboard reports that many of its songs are about the relationship crimes the
members of Fleetwood Mac committed against each other during the recording of Rumours.
By the time the band shot a cover photo for a March 1977 issue of Rolling Stone,
Buckingham and Nicks had split up. Depicting the group all lying on a bed together,
Nicks refused to lounge next to Buckingham. Nicks said:
After the shoot, she and Buckingham reconnected. But the regrouping
didn't last. Nicks spoke of their turbulent relationship Oprah's Master Class, saying:
"No matter what it takes, we're gonna keep Fleetwood Mac together
and our breaking up is not going to break up this band."
Nicks and Fleetwood felt pulled to one another
and they had a brief romance during a tour break in 1978.
When they formed in the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones produced their innovative
combination of hard rock, R&B, and blues with a double rhythm guitar attack provided by
Brian Jones and Keith Richards. Not only would Jones and Richards play the same instrument,
but they'd find that they also shared the same taste in romantic partners.
In the early 1960s, 22-year-old Italian model Anita Pallenberg booked a job near Munich,
Germany, and her photographer suggested she see the then-up-and-coming group
the Rolling Stones that evening. At the show, she instantly bonded with Jones,
so Pallenberg accompanied the guitarist on a Stones tour. Jones was prone to suffering
waking nightmares from the drug LSD, and had a violent episode in Morocco. Pallenberg recalled:
That connection turned into a 15-year relationship, and the couple went on to
have two children. According to Far Out, it was around the time that Pallenberg dumped
Jones for Richards that the Rolling Stones fired him because of a problematic drug habit
and numerous arrests. A year later in 1969, Jones was found dead in his swimming pool.
Beginning as a folk act in the early '60s, and morphing into a hippie-based pop-rock outfit
from the late '60s, the Mamas and the Papas hit it big that decade. Their four-part harmonies
in powerful songs like "Monday Monday," and "California Dreamin'" elevated them
to counterculture classic status. The Mamas and the Papas' music was smooth,
gentle, and calming, but the inner workings of the band were chaotic and heartbreaking.
According to People, Papa John Phillips left his wife Sue early in the band's existence for
Holly Michelle Gilliam. Vanity Fair notes that, at the time, he was almost 30 and she was 17.
Phillips married the teenager and brought her into his vocal group,
where she took on the name Mama Michelle Phillips.
Meanwhile, romantic feelings swirled around the other half of the group. Mama Cass Elliot
harbored a huge crush on Papa Denny Doherty. But Doherty had strong feelings for Michelle,
and the two ended up having an extramarital affair, according to CNN. Elliot angrily
confronted Philips about getting together with the man she liked. The band broke up in 1970.
As the hair metal era was dying down in the early 1990s, guitarist Richie Kotzen joined
one of the genre's biggest bands, Poison. He replaced C.C. Deville, who was fired for his
substance abuse issues, according to AllMusic. However, Kotzen only played on one Poison album,
1993's Native Tongue. He was fired during the band's promotional concert tour,
which was apparently all well and good with the guitarist. He told Radio Forrest:
While Kotzen publicly makes it seem like he was happy to leave Poison, the rest of the band saw
things differently. Metal Edge reported that right before Poison was supposed to play a show
in Sacramento, California in July of 1993, drummer Rikki Rockett found out that his former fiancée,
who had called off their engagement, had been seeing Kotzen. Rockett said:
Billy Joel would eventually become a solo pop superstar, but in the early 1970s,
he was one-half of a psychedelic, progressive rock duo called Attila. The duo formed after
the demise of Joel and Small's previous band, the Hassles. Joel played organ and
keyboard while bandmate Jon Small played the drums. AllMusic describes the group's 1970
self-titled LP as, quote, "the worst album released in the history of rock & roll."
Attila never made another record and broke up later in 1970 amidst some tremendous band drama.
According to The New York Times, Joel got close with Elizabeth Weber, who returned the singer's
affections despite already being married to Jon Small. After divorcing Small, she and Joel
married in 1973. While the couple would divorce in 1982, the former Attila bandmates would eventually
patch things up. Small went on to direct four of Joel's music videos and two of his concert films.
"Jon Small is very active, and is a very good friend of mine and close friend,
and because we both share an ex wife, we have a lot of good stories to swap."
The artsy, brainy New Wave band Japan formed in the U.K. in the late 1970s.
They found some success in their native country with big top 40 hits
like "Quiet Life," "Ghosts," "I Second That Emotion," and "Visions of China."
They enjoyed only minor, cult-level fame in the U.S., splitting up in 1982.
According to The Guardian, frontman David Sylvian said Japan ended because
it had run its course creatively. But for bass guitarist Mick Karn,
there were other signs it was time to leave the band behind. In 1982,
Karn told ZigZag about his partner at the time, photographer Yuka Fujii, saying
However, much like his time in Japan, Karn's blissful love affair would not last. Reportedly,
the day before Japan was supposed to leave for tour, the band bickered
heavily about their stage layout and discussed breaking up. That same day,
Fujii informed Karn that, while he was off on tour, she would be moving her things out
of their home and moving them into the home of her new romantic partner, David Sylvian.