Some of the most successful bands of all time seem to have discovered a toxic ticket to success: constant fighting. Several artists had creative and personal issues with one another that became insurmountable. While some former bandmates have been able to reconcile after their groups broke up, others still hold on to bad feelings. Here are five bands with members who couldn’t stop bickering.
Simon and Garfunkel: Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met as school children and began performing together in the 1950s. Early on, though, they began having problems. Garfunkel was deeply hurt when Simon took a solo deal. Several years later, Simon was upset with Garfunkel for choosing to act in a movie instead of making a new album.
They broke up and reunited several times over the years, but they kept running into the same problem: they didn’t like each other.
“You know, the music essentially stopped in 1970,” Simon told NPR in 2016. “And, you know, I mean, quite honestly, we don’t get along. So it’s not like it’s fun. If it was fun, I’d say, OK, sometimes we’ll go out and sing old songs in harmony. That’s cool. But when it’s not fun, you know, and you’re going to be in a tense situation, well, then I have a lot of musical areas that I like to play in. So that’ll never happen again. That’s that.”
Fleetwood Mac: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were in a relationship when they first joined Fleetwood Mac, but Nicks admitted they were on the verge of breaking up. They stayed together for the sake of their careers but their fighting led them to break up shortly into their time with the band.
After their split, the two musicians wrote pointed songs about each other. They would have screaming matches in the studio ahead of recording sessions and Buckingham once even threw a guitar at Nicks during a performance.
The pair left Fleetwood Mac at different points but eventually rejoined and seemed dedicated to ameliorating their relationship. In 2018, though, the band fired Buckingham after Nicks saw him roll his eyes at her during a speech. Buckingham blames Nicks for his firing, but she denies this.
“Following an exceedingly difficult time with Lindsey at MusiCares in New York, in 2018, I decided for myself that I was no longer willing to work with him,” she told Rolling Stone. “I could publicly reflect on the many reasons why, and perhaps I will do that someday in a memoir, but suffice it to say we could start in 1968 and work up to 2018 with a litany of very precise reasons why I will not work with him.”
The Beatles: John Lennon and Paul McCartney
By the time The Beatles broke up in 1970, all four members were sick of working together. The most well-known of these feuds is between former writing partners John Lennon and Paul McCartney. When The Beatles broke up, McCartney sued the band to wrest control from manager Allen Klein, which made many of their issues public.
Lennon and McCartney began writing barbed songs about each other, including “How Do You Sleep?” Lennon also took shots at McCartney’s solo career and wrote him angry letters. Outside of their musical and business differences, Lennon was furious with McCartney for how he treated Yoko Ono when they met. This kept the two former band members fighting with each other for much of the early 1970s.
Toward the end of Lennon’s life, he and McCartney reconciled, however. When they weren’t trying to make music together, they could get along.
Pink Floyd: David Gilmour and Roger Waters
In 1985, Roger Waters left Pink Floyd after years of butting heads with David Gilmour. Waters began legal drama, believing the band could not continue in his absence. In 1987, though, he settled out of court, allowing Gilmour and Nick Mason to continue Pink Floyd.
Though they were no longer working together, the tension between Waters and Gilmour did not abate. They have reunited over the years, but only for single shows. When the band was offered $150 million for a reunion tour, they turned it down.
“Why on Earth anyone thinks what we do now would have anything to do with [Waters] is a mystery to me,” Gilmour told Rolling Stone in 2014. “Roger was tired of being in a pop group. He is very used to being the sole power behind his career. The thought of him coming into something that has any form of democracy to it, he just wouldn’t be good at that. Besides, I was in my thirties when Roger left the group. I’m 68 now. It’s over half a lifetime away. We really don’t have that much in common anymore.”
The feud continues to flare up, even rearing its head as recently as 2023, when Gilmour’s wife called Waters “anti-Semitic” and a “Putin apologist” on Twitter. It seems like the band members’ fighting will keep them from ever reuniting.
The Ramones: Joey and Johnny Ramone
When The Ramones left the stage after a concert, they often wouldn’t exchange a word with one another. The relationship between Johnny and Joey Ramone was particularly tense; per Rolling Stone, they barely spoke once in the band’s 22-year history.
They disagreed politically — Joey was liberal while Johnny was an outspoken Republican — but their relationship hit a point of implosion when Joey’s girlfriend left him for Johnny. In response, Joey wrote the song “The KKK Took My Baby Away” about Johnny.
Their relationship never improved, either. After Joey’s death in 2001, Johnny refused to attend the funeral.
“I was in California,” he said, per Rolling Stone, adding, “I wasn’t going to travel all the way to New York, but I wouldn’t have gone anyway. I wouldn’t want him coming to my funeral, and I wouldn’t want to hear from him if I were dying. I’d only want to see my friends. Let me die and leave me alone.”
