Box Car Racer – Tom DeLonge
Any side project is almost necessary for artists to take on. No one can be married to the same group of guys forever, and if they want to stretch out and make something new, it’s better to have it under another name rather than alienate their fan base. And while the last thing that any Blink-182 fan was asking for was wounded heavy punk rock, it turned out that Tom DeLonge bit off a little more than he could chew when he started working on Box Car Racer with Travis Barker.
Then again, when anyone is working in a power trio, doing something without one member will always be a sore spot. Take Off Your Pants and Jacket had been doing well for Blink, but there was always a sticking point knowing that tunes like ‘I Feel So’ and ‘There Is’ weren’t right for Mark Hoppus, who only got the chance to sing on one song. Blink was undoubtedly capable of pulling this stuff off, but after Delonge left the group following his attempt to make it all work out on their self-titled album, he eventually pointed the finger at Box Car Racer when discussing the tension in the group.
It did have a silver lining when the band reunited for One More Time, though, eventually resurrecting the song ‘Terrified’ from the Box Car Racer sessions to throw onto their new record. There’s a lot to enjoy about Box Car Racer, but looking back on how everything was handled and the lack of communication among everyone, it’s hard not to look at it as the catalyst for everything going wrong.
Use Your Illusion – Izzy Stradlin
It would be a tough sell for any member of Guns N’ Roses to get on board with what Axl Rose had in mind for Use Your Illusion. They had wanted to spread their wings more than their debut, but becoming a massive bloated stadium rock act out of the blue was a bit of a stretch from the usual development process. While Izzy Stradlin was more than ready to tackle something new, it didn’t take him long to figure out that he faced an uphill battle every time he played.
Despite getting a few co-lead vocals with Rose on the record, like on ‘Dust N’ Bones’, the lights came on for Stradlin as soon as the band hit the road. The entire tour took them around the world more than once, but as soon as he got sober midway through everything, Stradlin wasn’t willing to put up with Rose’s antics any more, eventually quitting midway through everything and the band having to hire Gilby Clarke in his place.
No disrespect meant to Clarke, but when you look at the raw construction of the group, Stradlin leaving meant that they were losing their resident Keith Richards figure whenever they performed. He may have been quieter than anyone else in the group, but without that sense of calm in between the chaos, it wasn’t exactly shocking once things started to spiral out of control for them later.
Band on the Run – Wings
Any competent musician would think of jamming with Paul McCartney as the height of their technical prowess. It doesn’t get much better than performing with a Beatle, and for the first time since the band broke up, seeing him with Wings felt like a more intimate side of Macca’s life that no one saw very often. But working with McCartney also means working with a perfectionist, and one only needs to be told what to do so many times before they start thinking they could be doing something better.
Although Band on the Run is considered a masterpiece today, you’re only listening to the group at half-capacity. Right before everyone was about to board the plane to head to Nigeria to cut the record, drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough ended up quitting on the spot, saying that they weren’t in love with the idea for the record and were sick of being ordered around one too many times.
Having an entire band quit would have already been a massive hurdle, but McCartney managed to pull off a Herculean task in Nigeria, recording most of the album despite going through a bronchial spasm and being mugged at knifepoint in the middle of recording. The road to making great albums might have seemed difficult during The White Album sessions, but McCartney making his magnum opus after facing every possible setback was the best revenge he could have asked for against his naysayers who claimed he had lost his edge.
One of These Nights – Bernie Leadon
When someone gets their first taste of fame, it can be like strapping themselves to a rocketship. It might be a fun ride while it lasts, but there comes a point where everything starts going way too fast and the pressure inside becomes a bit too much to bear. Every member of Eagles was ready for that kind of gamble whenever they got onstage, but it starts to become a little bit of a chore when you don’t enjoy the music you’re making.
And once Bernie Leadon got to One of These Nights, he had finally reached his breaking point. The idea of being a countrified rock and roll band seemed like a good idea, but now that they had Don Felder in the group to provide some guitar solos, Leadon seemed less and less relevant, to the point where he had to force the rest of the band to record the song ‘I Wish You Peace’ so that he could get something on the record.
As the tour was about to come to a close, though, Leadon put the final nail in the coffin when he poured a beer over Glenn Frey’s head when he started to talk about the new direction they needed to go in on Hotel California. Everyone in the group wanted to do a great job on every record, but since the producer remembered Leadon walking out of the studio midway through mastering the album, it was clear that all the brotherly love between the members was completely gone.
St Anger – Jason Newsted
Not every rock and roll is ready to have the hard conversations whenever they enter the studio. Tensions can boil over about the most minute details of a mix, and while it’s easy to sleep on it and come back refreshed, it’s another thing to deal with it for years at a time. That creates a powder keg waiting to go off, and as soon as Metallica decided to deal with their issues, they had pushed Jason Newsted too far away for him to care about what they said anymore.
There had already been a rule about no side projects, and despite Lars Ulrich being able to lend his talents to bands like Mercyful Fate, Newsted was forbidden from working on an album with his side band, Echobrain. The music itself was completely different and was never going to interfere with what Metallica were doing, and since he was only getting two riffs on a record at the best of times, Newsted wasn’t going to continue to roll over and play the basslines he was being instructed to play.
He also left with a few potshots levelled against the rest of the band, saying that he thought it was incredibly lame that the band couldn’t find it in their hearts to talk to each other and getting a therapist to deal with their troubles instead. St Anger may have been a necessary bridge for Metallica to cross to keep themselves alive, but Newsted may have also been thankful that he didn’t have to be there for a piece of emotional vomit in music form.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – Peter Gabriel
Dealing with the loss of a frontman is like removing the heart from any great rock and roll band. It’s easy for someone to try their best to step into a guitarist’s shoes, but since the singer is the mouthpiece of the group, getting to know someone completely different is usually the sink-or-swim moment for any band. But in the case of Genesis, Peter Gabriel leaving didn’t only mean reshaping the band. It meant having to do a complete overhaul of the entire stage show.
Suffice to say, Gabriel was known for more than a few antics when he went onstage, and once he started donning elaborate costumes like a fox’s head, a flower, and an STD, no one cared about what the rest of the band looked like. It was a PR rep’s dream, but family comes before anything else, and when The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was over, Gabriel felt that his time would have been better served being back home taking care of his daughter than touring around the world.
While Genesis did manage to do right by their fans by having Phil Collins step up and turn them into something completely different, it also serves as the dividing line between when Genesis left their prog side behind and began working on something more mainstream. Fans may have been outraged, but there was a way to enjoy tunes like ‘Dance on A Volcano’ while jamming to ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘Big Time’.
Standing on the Shoulder of Giants – Bonehead
By the end of the Be Here Now tour, all Oasis really needed was a break. They had been working their asses off for years trying to be one of the biggest bands in the world, and while they had fulfilled every single promise that they had made, it was clear that everything had become too chaotic for them to manage. It was time for them to come down from years at the top, and while Noel was ready to put a pin in their 1990s material, Bonehead wasn’t willing to go along with the program.
As soon as the sessions for Standing on the Shoulder of Giants started, though, Noel was the one who wanted to change first. He had faced major setbacks and came close to dying due to his drug abuse, and after getting clean, he was convinced that the only way for the band to get their act together was for everyone to get sober. The biggest hurdle should have logically been Liam, but the minute that Bonehead spilt a bottle of wine over someone during the sessions, Noel decided to call him a taxi and never speak to him again.
Then again, it’s not like the clean living lifestyle was meant to last, either. Liam would be back on the wagon as soon as he reached their infamous gig at Wembley Stadium, and whereas the band had carried themselves like a proper gang before, over the course of one album, they had turned into a committee more than a proper group.
Tango in the Night – Lindsey Buckingham
It’s practically a miracle that any member of Fleetwood Mac could speak to each other once the sessions for Rumours wrapped up. Staying in a band with one of your exes seems like the last thing anyone would want to do, and yet the band found time to make something like Tusk, which was somehow made under more creative distress. The best thing that they could have done was take a break from each other, but even with everyone making their own solo projects, Tango in the Night was the kind of fractured band that Lindsey Buckingham was tired of tying himself to.
The album itself is phenomenal on its own, but the only reason it worked was that everyone had to be accommodated. Stevie Nicks had already reached some of the highest peaks that she could ask for in her solo career, and having to work around her schedule was enough to piss off the rest of the band, to the point where Buckingham called a band meeting before the tour started.
After getting into a major fight with Nicks over the direction of the band, Buckingham eventually left for his solo career, leaving the band to put out a handful of embarrassing albums before The Dance came out in the 1990s. Even though Buckingham and Nicks worked much better together than apart, the moment a physical fight breaks out is normally when everyone should call it off.
Nevermind – Chad Channing
There’s a good chance Kurt Cobain could have called Nirvana his solo band, and no one would have batted an eye. Every member of the group was interpreting his tunes, and even when the others had a good riff, it was always Cobain who put the final melody over everything. While Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic would eventually have some clashes over royalties, Chad Channing’s days were already numbered before the band hit the big time.
The drum stool in Nirvana was already vacant far too often, but Channing at least seemed promising when he started working on Bleach. Since he was more interested in writing with the group, he was already on the chopping block with Cobain. And it’s not like he was the best drummer in the world, either. He served the songs he played on perfectly and even came up with some cool moments like the opening drum fill of ‘In Bloom’, but listening to him next to Grohl’s John Bonham-esque swing is like night and day.
Channing bringing his own song ideas into the mix may have been interesting, but considering how huge ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was going to be, bringing in another songwriter at this juncture could have tanked their reputation. Cobain didn’t go along with many parts of the music industry, but he did at least understand the importance of the phrase ‘don’t fuck with the formula.’
The entire appeal of Van Halen lived and died on how Eddie played guitar. David Lee Roth was the perfect sideshow attraction whenever he got onstage, but as soon as Eddie launched into one of his tapping solos, nothing else mattered in the world as far as most guitarists were concerned. So when one of the greatest fretboard masters in the world suddenly found himself behind the keyboard, Roth wanted to put his stamp on it as soon as possible.
There were already flirtations with keyboards on songs like ‘And the Cradle Will Rock’, but Eddie’s ideas for tunes like ‘Jump’ and ‘I’ll Wait’ were too alien for Roth. This was Eddie’s band, though, and after he put his foot down and insisted that the band move to his studio to make 1984, all of the compromises ended.
Roth would be out the door by the time the tour finished, and considering the fact that he titled his debut album Eat ‘Em and Smile and recruited fellow guitar genius Steve Vai into the band, it wasn’t like he was above being a little bit petty about the whole thing. It would have been impossible to replace someone like Roth, but once Sammy Hagar joined, Eddie learned that there were a lot of people out there who still cared about the music rather than Roth’s onstage antics.
