‘Sex, drugs and legal contracts’: Five biggest Rock and Roll feuds from Oasis to Guns n Roses and the Smiths
- Rock and Roll has thrown some some of the best music the world has ever seen
- It’s also thrown up some of the most pathetic arguments
- MailOnline has taken a look at five top tier classic Rock and Roll feuds
Nothing says Rock and Roll like sex, drugs and decade long feuds and backstabbing’s over music royalties and Twitter account access does it?
Over the years, audiences have been treated to a smorgasbord of musical excellence from groups like Oasis and Fleetwood Mac – but often it’s been the behind the scenes drama that has captivated our attention.
Whether it’s meltdowns online, pithy open letters to former bandmates or just good old fashioned heavy rocking violence, we’re inherently attracted to the chaos behind some of music’s most accomplished performers.
With that in mind, MailOnline has taken a deep dive into five famous feuds from Rock and Roll history.
Oasis
‘He’s the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.’
Noel and Liam Gallagher’s feuding is the stuff of legends
As insults go, it’s a good one and one that’s atypical of the bile and abuse Noel and Liam Gallagher have spewed at each other over the years.
Since their rock and roll journey ended backstage at Rock En Seine in Paris in 2009 – caused according to Noel by a moment of clarity he had after Liam swung a guitar at his head- rumours have never stopped swirling about a potential reunion.
As with most brotherly feuds, it will never be known precisely where the bad feelings originate from – but Noel, 55, thinks he may know what pushed his younger brother over the edge.
Sharing his theory on The Matt Morgan Podcast in 2021, Noel explained: ‘Liam gave us a load of clobber, not just me, he gave the band it. I went straight to the charity shop and left it in the shop doorway.
Noel claims Liam didn’t take kindly to him mocking his Pretty Green clothing brand
‘He went f***ing mental. He said, ‘If you didn’t f***ing want it, you should have just said you didn’t f***ing want it, you c***.’
Ouch.
Of the two brothers, Liam, 50, has been the most keen for the group to reform and has repeatedly gone on record about his desire for the two of them to make up and bury the hatchet (preferably on a lucrative world tour).
And in fairness, Noel’s attitude towards the idea seems to have mellowed as well as he’s aged and his side projects have become less lucrative.
Although, it still seems a long way off as he told RadioX: ‘I’m not saying it won’t appeal to me in 10 years.’
‘You can go you’re own way’
Fleetwood Mac (Pictured left to right, John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and Lindsey Buckingham)
Buckingham sued Fleetwood Mac following his departure, which has since been settled
The Rolling Stones may have taken more drugs, The Who may have trashed more hotel rooms. However, when it comes to sheer rock’n’roll soap opera, no one holds a candle to Fleetwood Mac.
The band made mutual enmity into an art form with a string of bittersweet hits about their various failed relationships with each other, hardly helped by their industrial drug and alcohol consumption.
Indeed, many thought it was all this continual feuding and fury that made them the enduring success that they have become, 56 years and over 100 million album sales later.
Nicks denied Buckingham’s claim that she gave the band an ultimatum
However, in 2018 the British-American group finally imploded as one of its key members sued the others for sacking him.
Lindsey Buckingham — singer, songwriter and lead guitarist on and off since 1975 — was after millions of dollars in compensation from band mates Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and John McVie.
The mercurial musician, 74, who wrote and sang the 1976 mega-hit Go Your Own Way, made it clear he was not happy to go his own way in his 28-page lawsuit after he was booted from the band.
According to Buckingham’s lawsuit, each of the band’s five members was to earn around $13 million from playing 60 shows over two years and he wanted his share of the tour income because he still wanted to perform.
In an interview with Rolling Stone that year, Buckingham claimed Fleetwood Mac’s manager, Irving Azoff, phoned him two nights after his final appearance with the band in January 2018 to say: ‘Stevie never wants to be on stage with you again.’
According to Buckingham, Azoff told him that Nicks was upset by his angry response to the decision to play a recording of the hit song Rhiannon, which she wrote, while they took the stage.
She also accused him of ‘smirking’ as she made a slightly long-winded thank-you speech. Buckingham insisted it was a ‘standing joke that Stevie, when she talks, goes on a long time’.
He claimed Azoff told him Nicks, now 70, had given the rest of the band ‘an ultimatum: either you go or she’s gonna go’.
Nicks denied these claims – saying that Buckingham was ousted because he wanted to put off their tour for more than a year.
The lawsuit was eventually settled in December 2018 but Buckingham is yet to rejoin the band.
Guns N Roses
‘In a nutshell, personally I consider him a cancer and better removed, avoided – and the less anyone heard of him or his supporters, the better.’
Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose is not one to mince his words
Rose and Slash reportedly fell out due to creative and moral differences
As befits the aggressive form of his heavy metal music, Guns N Roses Axl Rose’s feuds are innumerable in their number and frankly bizarre in their complexity – but one stands out head and shoulders over the rest – his battle with one time band mate and best friend Slash.
The two rockers were instrumental in turning the band into one of the most successful acts of the 1990s and a force that sold over 100 million records worldwide thanks to tracks like Sweet Child of Mine and Welcome to the Jungle.
But it all came crashing down over a disagreement concerning a backing guitar track on a Rolling Stones cover and Slash’s decision to work with Michael Jackson – who had been accused of child abuse.
After hearing of Slash’s move, Axl, 61, – who had been abused himself as a child- was reportedly furious with his friend’s decision to work with Jackson but Slash, 57, himself had other issues – specifically with Axl’s control over the band.
Speaking to Piers Morgan in 2012, the shredder explained that conditions within the group had become so fractious and controlling that he had to leave.
He explained: ‘It wasn’t even me necessarily leaving the band … it was not continuing on with the new band that Axl put together that he was now at the helm of, which was the new Guns N’ Roses. I was given a contract to basically join his new band, and it took about 24 hours before I decided, I think this is the end of the line.’
And so began a biblical feud that saw Axl call Slash every name under the sun including a ‘cancer’ in a brutal 2009 interview – three years before he declined a request to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The two men would eventually make up and reform the band
In a letter to the hall, band fans and ‘To Whom It May Concern,’ Rose listed several reasons for not attending Saturday’s ceremony in Cleveland, including a feeling that the hall does not respect him.
In declining his own induction, he added: ‘I strongly request that I not be inducted in absentia and please know that no one is authorized nor may anyone be permitted to accept any induction for me or speak on my behalf.’
The hall inducted him regardless.
But there was a happy ending for the pair as eventually Axl extended an olive branch and the two made up.
According to Slash, all it took for the two halves to become one again was to talk and realise it was a ‘misunderstanding’ – there’s a lesson there.
The Smiths
‘Stop using my name as click-bait’.
The Smiths (L-R) Andy Rourke, Morrissey, Johnny Marr and Mike Joyce went their separate ways in 1987 after conflicts between the two members
There is a fight that never goes out: Morrissey (left) blasted The Smiths bandmate Johnny Marr in a scathing open letter accusing the guitarist OF ‘using my name as click bait’
Few bands have burned as brightly or fast as The Smiths for so short a time and lived on in the public imagination with such interminable prestige.
The seminal 1980s Manchester act made icons out of Jonny Marr, 59, and Morrisey, 63 but the group hasn’t played together for over 35 years – and a reunion isn’t likely.
After releasing four albums in five years between 1982-1987, a tiff over royalties from their now cavernous repertoire spelled the end of the quartet – who spent their last days as an act not on stage but in a court room fighting over craps of the estate.
But once bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce had got their fair share of Morrisey’s misery pie the real drama began.
The pair were bandmates for six years in the Eighties and released four albums together, but haven’t spoken for over 35 years (pictured in 1987)
Marr and Morrisey’s on and off again relationship was the subject of much tabloid speculation with rumoured reunions percolating the decades the group lay dormant for.
Although for much of this time, the group weren’t even on speaking terms let alone legal ones.
Finally an increasingly irritated Morrisey broke his silence on the matter in 2022 with a frankly terrifying open letter directed at Jonny Marr – who it’s fair to say was blindsided by the situation.
In a blog entry on his Morrissey Central website, the musician began: ‘This is not a rant or an hysterical bombast. It is a polite and calmly measured request: Would you please stop mentioning my name in your interviews?
‘Would you please, instead, discuss your own career, your own unstoppable solo achievements and your own music? If you can, would you please just leave me out of it?
‘The fact is: you don’t know me. You know nothing of my life, my intentions, my thoughts, my feelings. Yet you talk as if you were my personal psychiatrist with consistent and uninterrupted access to my instincts.’
Morrisey directed a chastening open letter (top) to Marr to which he jokingly responded (bottom)
Continuing in his lengthy rant, Morrissey told Johnny to ‘stop using my name as click-bait’.
He said: ‘Our period together was many lifetimes ago, and a lot of blood has streamed under the bridge since then. There comes a time when you must take responsibility for your own actions and your own career, with which I wish you good health to enjoy. Just stop using my name as click-bait.’
Morrissey concluded: ‘I have not ever attacked your solo work or your solo life, and I have openly applauded your genius during the days of ‘Louder than bombs’ and ‘Strangeways, here we come’, yet you have positioned yourself ever-ready as rent-a-quote whenever the press require an ugly slant on something I half-said during the last glacial period as the Colorado River began to carve out the Grand Canyon.
‘Please stop. It is 2022, not 1982.’
Marr, who has said there’s no way him and Morrisey would ever work together again due to their differences, responded bemusedly: ‘An ‘open letter’ hasn’t really been a thing since 1953, It’s all ‘social media’ now.’
Later in an interview with the Times, he admitted that he had been surprised by the attack but didn’t regret ‘defending himself’ from the ‘insulting’ letter.
This sounds like one feud that will never go out.
Pink Floyd
‘Are you going to carry on?’
Nick Mason, Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters and Rick Wright pose as Pink Floyd in 1973
Pink Floyd live at Hakone Aphrodite, Kanagawa, August 6, 1971 – 14 years before Waters’ dramatic exit
It was an innocuous comment from Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, 79, but it was the first brick in the wall between him and group co-founder David Gilmour that signalled the end of the road for the legendary band – in its current form at least.
Since their creation in 1965, the iconic prog rock band have sold over 250million records – but they’ve not been on speaking terms for most of that time.
Since Waters’ acrimonious split from the group in 1985, long frustrated fans have yearned for a reunion and been treated instead to slanging match after slanging match between the two rockers in what seems like a never ending feud.
Things first came to the head when Walters attempted to have the band disbanded after he quit – labelling them a ‘spent force creatively.’
Unwilling to pack up their things, Gilmour and the rest of Floyd told him they were going to carry on causing Waters to invoke a ‘leaving members’ clause in his contract and take the group to the High Court to dissolve them.
After an expensive two years, Waters settled with the band and resigned, going on to say that his hand had been forced by the ‘financial repercussions’ of legal proceedings.
And bar two charity gigs in 2005 and 2008, the original line up of Pink Floyd have never played together again.
The band reunited in 2005 for a one off charity gig but tensions remained high
Former Pink Floyd bandmates David Gilmour (left) and Roger Waters (right) have been at loggerheads online
In that time, the two men have bickered about things as serious as the Ukraine war and as trivial as access to the official Pink Floyd Twitter account.
This week, the battleground is different – Waters has defended himself from claims made by Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson, 60, that he is a ‘Putin apologist’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ – labelling them ‘wholly inaccurate and incendiary.’
Gilmour, 76, has now supported his wife’s claims on social media, saying that ‘every word’ of her tweet denouncing Waters was ‘demonstrably true’
In a further broadside, Walters announced he had secretly re-recorded 1973’s iconic The Dark Side of the Moon album in an interview this week, as he is adamant he can do whatever he wishes with it as ‘it’s [his] project and [he] wrote it.’
He also criticised Gilmour as a man with ‘nothing to say’ who wasn’t an ‘artist’.
2024 reunion not looking likely then is it?
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