Least amicable band split stories...

[Len_derby]

Around five years ago we had a guitarist who was a habitual drink-driver. His average intake on gig nights was four pints of beer, after which he’d drive home. Looking back, we cut him too much slack. He was younger than the rest of us and we tried advice and persuasion on him, to no avail. Eventually we sacked him, but in his eyes we were the bad guys. 

[colleya]

21 hours ago, Jackroadkill said:

I once left a band by going to the toilet during a rehearsal and escaping through the toilet window.

 

Did they not get suspicious when you took your bass with you?

[AndyTravis]

Was with a girl of questionable morals who bedded the singer in my band.

 

So I broke the singers nose.

 

I think that was a pretty acrimonious split.

 

I dumped her too. Then shagged her best mate.

 

seemed appropriate at the time.

 

 

[SimonK]

55 minutes ago, AndyTravis said:

Was with a girl of questionable morals who bedded the singer in my band.

 

So I broke the singers nose.

 

I think that was a pretty acrimonious split.

 

I dumped her too. Then shagged her best mate.

 

seemed appropriate at the time.

 

 

 

That's the most "rock 'n roll" so far - certainly compared to sneaking out a toilet window!

[Jackroadkill]

52 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

That's the most "rock 'n roll" so far - certainly compared to sneaking out a toilet window!

 

Oi!!

[AndyTravis]

1 hour ago, SimonK said:

 

That's the most "rock 'n roll" so far - certainly compared to sneaking out a toilet window!

Me between 1998-2008 was glorious.

 

In all honesty i much prefer my life now, but some of the stuff i did.

 

That was one of the less fun episodes.

[Boodang]

I've told this before ages ago but it's my fav band breakup story so here goes...

We had a song where the lyrics before the solo was 'call out my name'. The drummer and I had developed the habit of calling out 'w@nker' at this point, the vocalist not being our fav person (the reason at end of story). Well, on this occasion it's gets to that point in the song, I shout out said word with more gusto than normal, the drummer decides for some reason not to join in and the band goes unexpectedly quiet at this point. Much to the amusement of the audience the vocalist lunges at me during the solo while I try to keep playing the bassline and fending off the attack with the pointy end of my bass whist running around the drum kit as far as my lead will allow. 

At the end of the gig the vocalist just walks straight out. Apparently he stormed off in a huff but as he always left straight after the gig and never helped pack up the gesture was lost. He never returned and I, unfairly in my opinion, got the entire blame for the episode. The band didn't survive after failing to find another vocalist. 

[Jackroadkill]

22 minutes ago, AndyTravis said:

Me between 1998-2008 was glorious.

 

I had a similar experience in that same period.  I look back on it and wonder how the hell the fallout isn't still with me.

[paul_5]

8 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Still, life's too ridiculous for short grudges!

Fixed. 😄

[AndyTravis]

1 hour ago, Jackroadkill said:

 

I had a similar experience in that same period.  I look back on it and wonder how the hell the fallout isn't still with me.

I’m still waiting for a knock on the door from Nicky Campbell (he’s a knob BTW) or Davina McCall…

 

”you didn’t know it, but here’s your spare son”

[BigRedX]

Considering that I've been playing in bands for almost 50 years now, I have only been in one acrimonious split.

 

It brought about the end of a band that I had been involved with for 13 years through numerous line-up changes that had seen every member except me replaced at least twice and had left me as the "de facto" band leader, although I had always been one of the main motivating forces behind the band. The falling out occurred between myself and singer, who was a complete diva and simultaneously very insecure musically, unlike me who knew exactly what I wanted musically and if anyone didn't agree with me, then they could f- right off. (I'm a lot more relaxed these days.) I had actually tried to leave the band a few months earlier as I had become completely fed up with having to organise the other band members musical lives, but they had talked me out of it and things were actually looking quite promising as we were on the point of securing a development deal with a studio owner who was also a member of a reasonable successful 90s band. I don't recall what set the agreement off, and therefore it was probably something completely trivial but it ended up with the two of us screaming at each other. This happened at my house where we also rehearsed and recorded and I'm surprised that none of my neighbours called the police thinking there was a domestic going on. Eventually the singer stormed out and the rest of the band made their excuses and left looking very sheepish. Considering how desperate the singer had been to "make it" at the time, as far as I can tell, she's done almost nothing musical since. I've run into her twice in the last 20 years when we have said "hello" to each other and that's been it.

 

Interestingly the demise of the band led to a very interesting musical development which involved being asked to put together a retrospective CD compilation by the very first band I was in for a US indie label and took up the best part of the next two years of my life. When I was ready to join another band I found one where I could just turn up and play bass and not have any involvement beyond that. That kept me occupied for another 4 years until I joined The Terrortones.

[Paul S]

I joined a start-up band which went through a couple of personnel changes but the singer - new to bands but actually a good front man - was becoming increasingly difficult.  LVS struck deep - he'd had a few promotions at work and started to believe his own PR, treating the rest of the band as lackies.  It came to a head at a birthday gig we did.  It is well known amongst my friends that I get grumpy if I don't eat regularly.  This gig he said we were to help ourselves to the buffet before we started.  Kick off time was raidly approaching, no sign of buffet.  He lied, said no mention of buffet had ever been made, I got cross and we ended up having a nose to nose just before going on.  I may have said a few things about his attitude and, as I recall, finished up threatening to throw him off the fire escape.  Never a realistic prospect, what with my bad back and his obesity but there you go.  Immediately afterwards he said I had to go, the band fell in with that so I got sacked.  They didn't find another bassist.  Shortly afterwards the singer left as his wife had a baby, they asked me back, we got another singer.  But it was never the same, really.  

[SimonK]

...in another band we went through two or three members after fall-outs due entirely to arguments in the car park after load out. I think it was just a case of everyone being a bit tired (and sometimes alcohol was involved). Decided that for the long term good of the band we wouldn't speak to each other during load out - just pack everything and go!

 

Sadly COVID did for that band in the end as we got out of the habit of playing together and then people moved on to different projects.

Edited 12 hours ago by SimonK

[Oopsdabassist]

A good few years ago I joined a scratch band, and because no one really knew each other we exchanged emails as a means of passing around song ideas set lists etc, the drummer gave us his work email, but a  later told us to stop sending him emails as his work didn't like it.  Transpires he worked for a bank and they ended up firing him (so he says) for all these emails he was getting with dodgy attachments  (mp3 files ie songs) He then ranted at all of us for losing him his job and demanded that we started getting at least 4 gigs a week because he was jobless and it was our fault. Given we were playing about 2 gigs a month at that point and happy with that we kindly asked him to move along.....eejit!

[bass_dinger]

7 minutes ago, Oopsdabassist said:

He then ranted at all of us for losing him his job

But... he asked you to use that email address!

[Leonard Smalls]

We had to sack a guitarist because of a combination of serious substance-abuse problems (*), poorly cared-for gear (we never knew if it would work!) and erratic playing where sometimes he'd completely forget what he was meant to be playing, or launch into a loud and unrelated solo in the middle of a verse.

After quite a while of tolerating this and attempting to get him to change his ways we saw nothing was changing and had to boot him out.

He still doesn't understand what the problem was, despite having been told numerous times!

 

 

* once we were playing in Manchester... About 30 minutes before we were due to go on there was no sign of him. I rushed out, and knowing what he was like, searched the nether-regions of Piccadilly station where I found him sniffing white powder with some ne'er do wells. He didn't play well either!

[PaulWarning]

On 22/08/2025 at 10:45, Len_derby said:

Around five years ago we had a guitarist who was a habitual drink-driver. His average intake on gig nights was four pints of beer, after which he’d drive home. Looking back, we cut him too much slack. He was younger than the rest of us and we tried advice and persuasion on him, to no avail. Eventually we sacked him, but in his eyes we were the bad guys. 

so did you sack him just because of his drink driving? not very rock and roll

[mcnach]

1 hour ago, bass_dinger said:

But... he asked you to use that email address!

 

are you trying to use logic?

 

are you new to bands?

 

[tauzero]

7 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

We had to sack a guitarist because of a combination of serious substance-abuse problems (*), poorly cared-for gear (we never knew if it would work!) and erratic playing where sometimes he'd completely forget what he was meant to be playing, or launch into a loud and unrelated solo in the middle of a verse.

 

You never said you were Roger Waters.

[Dan Dare]

The previous band to the one I'm in now started just prior to the Covid shutdown. We were all experienced (i.e. ancient) and competent and hoped we would be past the issues mentioned in various posts above - substance/alcohol abuse, tantrums, etc. We played classic soul and R&B.

 

When Covid hit, we decided to continue, work up a repertoire and hit the ground running when everything returned to normal. We initially played together online via Jamulus and soon decided to actually meet at one of our houses (tut, tut, although none of us lived with anyone vulnerable to the plague) to rehearse. Two of us had home studio set-ups with enough space that made it easy to get together and play.

 

All went well and we were ready and raring to go when everything opened up again. We did a couple of gigs, after which the singer decided that we were his backing band and started trying to lay down the law. He managed to run off the guitar player (they had never really got along) and brought in someone he had played with previously, who turned out to be very good, so onwards and upwards, we thought. However, he became increasingly diva-ish and took to threatening to walk unless we did exactly as he wanted. To give an idea of how hard he tried to be the boss, despite the fact that I own a quality PA that I was quite happy for us to use, he insisted on using his (which wasn't as good as mine), so he could be in charge of the sound. 

 

The rest of us met for a pint and a discussion, at which the guitar player informed us that this was the singer's standard modus operandi. So we called his bluff at the end of the next gig when he once again threatened to take his ball home if he didn't get his way. He looked shocked that we didn't crumble, then packed his stuff and left.

 

He proceeded to bombard us with emails, claiming we'd fired him, how unfair it was, how disappointed he was, how much effort he'd pit in, how unappreciated he felt, etc, etc, blah, blah. We replied that he could either be a member of the band, but not the boss/BL, or we'd look for a replacement singer. The email exchange dragged on and on. He obviously really wanted to continue - we had gigs in the book and the band was decent - but his stupid pride wouldn't allow him to climb down. Shame, as he was good.

 

We got someone else (not as good, but a sensible human being) and carried on for a while, until I decided to sell up and move out of London to spend my dotage in the country. Last I heard, the singer was doing one man band gigs with his keyboard and laptop in old peoples' homes and grim social clubs.

[SimonK]

9 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

Last I heard, the singer was doing one man band gigs with his keyboard and laptop in old peoples' homes and grim social clubs.

 

...regardless of what he was like in your band that's pretty dedicated!

[Dan Dare]

1 minute ago, SimonK said:

 

...regardless of what he was like in your band that's pretty dedicated!

 

I suspect he had little alternative. He was quite comfortably off and didn't need to work (his missus is quite wealthy, too), but he loved to perform and I guess had no other options. Which makes it all the sillier that he walked away from something good because he couldn't get his way.

[EliasMooseblaster]

Apologies in advance if anyone remembers me moaning about this when it was actually happening - though it was probably about 11 or 12 years ago now!

 

The guitarist and drummer, I knew from a jam night I used to frequent, and the singer had been a semi-regular attendee before I started showing up. The guitarist and singer shared a mutual friend who'd suggested they should start playing together, and further down the line the drummer and I were recruited as a rhythm section. An EP was recorded, we played a lot of 'toilet circuit' gigs around London, and people seemed to like what we were doing. We made an album, we started playing further afield, and just as it felt like we were getting ahead, tensions started to bubble between the singer, the guitarist, and the mutual friend who'd introduced them in the first place.

 

Theories abounded: the drummer was convinced that the singer and mutual friend both had eyes for the guitarist. The singer, however, had a long-term partner at that point, who was nice enough, but quite open about his propensity for Columbian marching powder, so I wondered whether she was joining him on his sessions, and becoming more argumentative as a side-effect. Whatever the reason: after several bad-tempered weeks, and attempts on all sides to straighten things out, the singer quit. 

 

Then...tried to un-quit, a week or two later. The rest of us phoned each other and agreed it was a "thanks, but no" from all of us. Only, later that evening, she tried to take control of the band's social media pages. And then she tried to release one of the songs from the band's album as her solo single.

 

The email exchange that followed, I can only describe as agonising. Not least of all because I ended up writing most of them. We got on the blower to MU: (Can she do this? She wrote the song, but we all paid for the studio time...they're separate entities? Right...) And to be fair, it was a useful crash course in copyright and ownership. But however politely-but-firmly I tried to explain our position, but every reply seemed to be more stroppy and vitriolic than the last.

 

There is an adage that arguing with some people is like trying to play chess with a pigeon: it's incredibly frustrating because the pigeon doesn't understand the rules; all it can do is knock over the pieces and cr*p on the board, but it still struts about like it's winning. This was the level the email exchange reached.

 

Eventually, she got tired of trying to argue her case, and we found a new singer. It was a huge relief. And, I'm glad to say, the only band breakup I can remember which actually became acrimonious, so I've probably got off lightly if this thread is anything to go by!