In the music business, it’s easy for the most underground bands to get lost in the shuffle. As much as their hardcore fans might love them, there’s no telling when a band might have a great song break through to the mainstream or get stuck playing for the rest of their lives. While REM had the kind of career trajectory that most bands only dream of, Bill Berry knew there was no way he could continue playing the kind of music that they were doing for the rest of his life.
But looking back on Berry’s exit, there was never any bad blood. He had been around for all of their classic albums like Automatic for the People and Document, but over time, the band started to get less and less interested in making music with the traditional four-piece rock band approach, even resorting to using a drum machine instead of natural drums. Berry might not have been as needed as before, but he’s also the reason why the band are still going strong today.
When talking about taking a step away from the band, Berry made sure that everyone in the band promised to carry on, saying that there was no way he was going to leave if he would be known as “the schmuck that broke up REM.” While the alt-rockers did eventually close the book on their career respectfully, Berry has always been around during those rare occasions when they decide to get back together to have a jam session.
Meg White – The White Stripes
The entire journey of The White Stripes always had a recurring theme about them growing up. Jack White had always envisioned the band having a child-like innocence to them whenever they performed, and by the time that they had reached albums like Elephant, they had practically dismantled everything that rock and roll was supposed to be for the casual nu-metal and pop-punk fans. They had finally reached the big time, and that was not a place Meg White felt comfortable in at all.
Aside from every purist drummer claiming that she was one of the worst drummers on the face of Earth, Meg was always extremely uncomfortable with the spotlight, which didn’t help the friction she already had with Jack whenever they played together. But as soon as they went their separate ways after Icky Thump, Meg figured that the solo stardom wasn’t for her, electing to live a more private life back home.
And looking back on their final performance on Conan O’Brien’s talk show, it’s clear that Jack could feel the pain of all those years suddenly coming to an end, to the point where he seems on the verge of tears as the song ends. Jack is certainly more than capable of being a solo star these days, but there are a few moments where people wonder where that raw power of Meg’s drums have gone.
The power trio will forever be the hardest band dynamic to manage. If it’s only in the hands of three people, every song has to act as a tripod where every member is holding up equal weight, lest anything collapse over top of them. And while Rush always had a great balance of work amongst everyone, there was always something missing when John Rutsey formed the band in the early 1970s.
Let’s get one thing straight first: Rutsey was not a bad drummer. He was the one responsible for booking the band a handful of gigs in the early days and even served as the band’s de facto frontman when Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson didn’t want to talk, but given how much he struggled with his juvenile diabetes, there was no feasible way to keep him on the road and work around his schedule, especially when that involves getting loaded every night before a show.
Everything could have gone as planned without any problem, but the real tragedy would have been not getting Neil Peart behind the drum kit. Rutsey may have stuck to the quiet life up until his death and played the odd show here and there, but when you look at the drumming on ‘Working Man’ compared to ‘La Villa Strangiato’, there’s no contest in terms of who was pulling their weight more.
Al Sobrante – Green Day
In all the punk circles that Green Day played in, pop-punk either didn’t exist or was only spoken about in hushed tones. The idea of signing to a major label would have been considered taboo, but Billie Joe Armstrong didn’t get into the business to make a few songs 12 people would hear. He knew there was some power behind his music, and if he was in it for the long haul, he knew that the band needed someone with the same type of passion that they had behind the kit.
That being said, it’s not like Al Sobrante was a terrible choice behind the kit. He helped double as the band’s manager in the early days and had connections in some of the clubs that they played in, but as Pete Best would know, networking can only take someone so far. So when Sobrante figured he would leave Green Day to go to college, he had to make sure that he brought in the right kind of wild man to replace him, and the band lucked out by getting the punk rock equivalent of Keith Moon.
Despite Tre Cool being a kid compared to the rest of the band, the difference between their first and second albums sounded like they grew up by ten years in the course of one record, especially listening to Cool adding some good-natured humour to every song he’s on. It would take an adjustment period before everything settled in for when Dookie roared up the charts, but Sobrante was more than happy to have played with the band for those formative years as well.
As soon as bands like Green Day broke down the door for pop-punk, it was open season for anyone wanting to get a record deal. The punk ethos may have become much more of a fashion by that point, but whereas a lot of kids were putting safety pins through their cheeks and claiming to be punks, Sum 41 was the real deal, almost acting like a strange combination of Ramones and Beastie Boys whenever they played. So, how did one of the members with the most charisma walk away from it all?
While the band had already gone through a fair amount of shakeups getting their metallic album Chuck finished, Screaming Bloody Murder was the moment where Stevo32 felt the wheels starting to come off. He had spent years on the road and had grown into a great drummer and a hilarious MC, and despite having some inventive drum parts on his last record, he knew that things had to change now that he had a child to support.
It might still suck not seeing him there during the band’s final run of shows before they called it a day, but Stevo32 was always appreciative of his time in the group, especially now that he has entered the phase of being a lovable dad who is more than happy to talk about his badass band. But no matter how much the rest of his buddies grew up while making records like Order in Decline, the touring life got the better of him after too long.
Pat Smear – Foo Fighters
Anyone who claims to pass up the opportunity to perform with Dave Grohl in their lifetime is either delusional or downright lying. Aside from being one of the most lovable musicians to work with, Grohl has always fit right in no matter who he’s playing with, whether that’s laying down a thick groove working with Queens of the Stone Age or screaming like a madman in Foo Fighters. But Pat Smear had been through it all, and once he realised that the rest of his life was touring, he wasn’t going to roll over and agree to live his life in hotel rooms.
He had already thought about quitting the music business after Nirvana broke up, but the demo that Grohl sent him of the first Foo Fighters record gave him hope that there was room for him to grow. But since he was being asked to do an entire record over again after Grohl insisted on recording over William Goldsmith’s drum parts, Smear grew sick and tired of having to go on for months without a break, only touring the record for six months before bringing in Franz Stahl to replace him.
In this case, though, Smear couldn’t resist the call of the wild whenever he heard a new Foos record come out, ultimately rejoining the band as their third guitarist on Wasting Light in 2011. For true fans, though, Smear never really left, so when he came back into the fold, most people were more than happy to welcome him back with open arms than make him fight for his position all over again.
Christine McVie – Fleetwood Mac
Every band needs a rock of stability to keep it afloat. Even when bands change members faster than Spinal Tap, there needs to be someone at the helm so that they still feel like a band rather than a committee of musicians. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie have always served that role in Fleetwood Mac, but Christine McVie was definitely in that conversation for most of her career as well.
Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks may have helped get the band on the radio, but Christine never wrote a single bad song for the group, always having a track record of bringing the right tracks to the studio. While she weathered her way through some of the embarrassing albums like Time, she realised that she was in no state to tour anymore by the time the classic lineup came back together in the 2000s.
The Dance was a great way to see all of them together again, but it was certainly a one-off, with Christine citing her fear of flying as the main reason she wanted out. She would still play music occasionally and write a collaborative album with Buckingham after the fact, but she followed the lead of people like The Beatles by realising that going on the road was never meant to last forever.
Ron Blair – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Rock and roll has never been an easy genre for the sensitive hearts. There have been plenty of people who have muscled through their pain every single time they make a record, but there’s also a handful of artists who would rather throw their instruments down and walk away than have to deal with the sliminess of the business. And for a band that favoured integrity as much as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ron Blair wouldn’t sit around and watch a bunch of sleazy businessmen take over their lives.
While the band wasn’t punk by any stretch of the imagination, Blair was in it purely for the music, and by the time he finished up Hard Promises, he knew that he couldn’t handle both the pressure of playing well and working with every single suit that came in asking for money. But the real pivot came in what he did afterwards, eventually leaving the whole music business and opening up a bikini store in California.
Blair was never meant to be gone for long, though, and when Howie Epstein tragically passed away, he was right back onstage when Petty offered him his job back before working on records like Highway Companion and Mojo. The job was a lot more technical than when Blair started, but he knew that he could manage it a lot better now that he had a few years of business under his belt.
Krist Novoselic – Nirvana
The fact that Dave Grohl managed to do anything after Nirvana is practically a miracle. Kurt Cobain was always more than the heart of the band; he was their friend on and off the stage, and when he took his own life, it left a gaping hole in the hearts of every fan who loved their music. But for Krist Novoselic, this was something a lot different. This was personal, and when his best friend left this world, all of his passion for his craft seemed to leave him as well.
Then again, that’s not to say that he didn’t have some projects here and there. He was never going to sing, but he did have those odd moments of turning up with a side project like Sweet 75 to keep his creative juices flowing in the late 1990s. But when looking at the band’s posthumous appearances in 1994, it’s easy to see that Novoselic is a vacant shell of his usual goofy self, as if every feeling of fun had been blown away after their last show.
Novoselic did have his moments where he would appear on the odd Foo Fighters song or make a record with a few of his Seattle friends, but after going into the political sphere, he has nothing but fond memories of his little band that happened to change the world. He had been vocal about wanting to see change in the world, but if he couldn’t be heard with a bass in his hands, he could at least do what he could from the congressional floor.
Syd Barrett – Pink Floyd
The thought of any member of Pink Floyd continuing without Syd Barrett would have been unthinkable in the 1960s. Barrett was the one who wrote all the songs and captured their musical charm perfectly on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, so there wasn’t any reason to think that they would implode for any reason. But when they reached the 1970s, Barrett didn’t have a choice when it came to leaving the group.
After spending the 1960s taking acid and possibly suffering from schizophrenia, his drug abuse ended up getting the better of him when he started having mental trouble in the studio. Everyone would be looking to him to come up with whatever new song they had in their arsenal, but there was no way for them to argue with someone who detuned all the strings on their guitar or struggled to even get through a song and hold onto their guitar pick.
So while the band had no choice but to bring on David Gilmour as a replacement, they knew it was best to stick by their old friend, often writing about their disillusionment with never being able to say goodbye properly. Roger Waters and Gilmour would go on to steer Floyd through some of the greatest projects that any rock band would ever conceive of, but there was always going to be an asterisk next to their success, knowing there wasn’t one important person there to share it with.
