10 Bands That Suffered Through Vicious Internal Feuds

Sometimes, it seems like rock stars live the most glorious life imaginable. Well, that’s true most of the time, if we’re being honest. They get to party for a living, are loved and adored by all the fans they come across, and make a ton of money doing it. Oh, and the groupies don’t hurt, either. Nor does the travel schedule—grueling though it may be at times, these rockers get to see the whole world. (And on the record company’s dime, no less!)

But behind the scenes, a great many rock stars struggle with their interpersonal relationships. And no, we don’t mean connections with loved ones or romantic partners, although there are plenty of those issues. We’re talking about seeing eye-to-eye with other members of their bands! Going on tour for months on end and/or being cooped up in a recording studio trying to perfect a much-anticipated album both create major stressors for musicians and their teams.

Inevitably, disagreements occur. And when they bubble up, they tend to fester. Over months (or years), those disagreements can get really, really vicious. So that’s what we’re here to take a look at today! In this list, we’ll take you through the stories of ten high-profile bands that suffered through absolutely brutal internal feuds. From the outside looking in, it might just seem to you like a few aging (and very rich) rockers getting into a catfight. But from the inside, these feuds represent years of pent-up rage, frustration, and anger. Yikes!

Related: Ten (Sometimes Tragic) Stories of Underappreciated Women of Rock

10 Metallica

The members of Metallica have fought with each other quite a bit throughout the years. In the group’s earliest days, they booted guitarist Dave Mustaine out of the band after they failed to get on the same page. He went on to found and front Megadeth—so maybe that was a bit of a miss on Metallica’s part. But their contention at the time was that he had major substance abuse problems, so they simply had to fire him. They had no other choice! That doesn’t mean Mustaine still isn’t pissed about it years later, though.

Even after more than two decades apart, Mustaine has still gone on the record at times to reveal how bitter he is that he was fired by Metallica. Take the 2004 music documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster as the perfect example of this. In it, Mustaine complained to Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich about how the band canned him. And not only that, but how Dave isn’t credited with any of his musical contributions. In turn, Lars publicly slammed Dave for whining. Ulrich noted that Mustaine “never played on a Metallica record” and needed to get over a fractured band relationship that had come to an end more than 25 years prior. Not bad advice…

Mustaine isn’t the only one who’s gotten mad at Metallica, though. The group’s former bassist, Jason Newsted, has also feuded with the group in the past. Back in 2000, Jason asked the band for a hiatus so that he could work on a solo project. But Metallica chief James Hetfield denied the request, noting that he wanted Newsted in the group. Hetfield didn’t care to have the talented bassist focus all his creative energies on something that wouldn’t help the band. So, in turn, Newsted decided to quit the group. And he never forgave Hetfield for not allowing him the free reign to strike out on his own!^[1]

9 Hall & Oates

For years, musicians Daryl Hall and John Oates seemed to be good friends. After all, they got rich and famous together as the legendary duo Hall & Oates. But in 2023, Daryl amazingly filed a temporary restraining order against John—and then all hell broke loose! As it turned out, despite outward appearances, the two men hadn’t been on good terms for years. Things then came to a head when John attempted to sell his half of the duo’s joint music partnership. Angry that John had tried to sell out from under him without his consent, Daryl popped off with the TRO. He basically wanted the courts to prevent the sale of music rights.

“John and I did not have a creative relationship for decades; the last song I wrote with John was in 2000, and that was with somebody else,” Daryl explained to Billboard Magazine after the restraining order request blew up in the public eye. “We toured, and we toured and toured, and it was very restrictive to me and to John. The real truth of it all is John just said one day, he didn’t want to do it anymore. I said, ‘OK,’ but the problem is [John] didn’t make the parting and breakup easy, and that’s where the difficulties lay and still lay, and that’s all it is.”

On the flip side, Oates told news outlets that he didn’t think that his decision to sell his portion of the music rights was that big of a deal. And in fact, he was shocked by Hall’s reaction—and the legal maneuver with the restraining order. Regardless, Oates admits that the pair haven’t been friends for years. It would seem that the legal battle over the duo’s music rights was simply the thing that catapulted their feud into the spotlight. A tough end for a formerly close pair of musicians!^[2]

8 Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath was just about to reunite after temporarily breaking up when drummer Bill Ward erupted into a feud with the other band members. At the time, Ward claimed he’d been offered an “unreasonable contract” to once again participate in the band that he said wasn’t “signable.” So he opted out of the reunion album. Then, he got into a massive public feud with Ozzy Osbourne. Fast forward a couple years after that, and Ward was still seething and angry when the group got ready to head out on their final tour!

“With a sad heart, I have to say I will not participate in any musical undertakings until a righting of the wrongs spoken against me has been achieved,” Ward said in a statement he released to the media about feuding with Osbourne and having no further part in Black Sabbath. “I have little to no expectations of this happening, but in the order of first things first, I’m looking for an honest accountability of all of Ozzy’s statements that I felt were untrue. I would want Ozzy to amend his opinions and exaggerations. I would want him to be forthcoming about his unrealistic viewpoints. And because I was chastised publicly, I would want him to amend publicly in his words, and not through an Ozzy representative, the nature of the wrongs.”

For what it’s worth, Ozzy never did “amend publicly his words” or decided to be “forthcoming about his unrealistic viewpoints,” as Ward had hoped for. Instead, the band played their final shows in 2017 in their long-ago hometown of Birmingham, England, without Ward in attendance. At those shows, Ozzy did acknowledge that it was “bittersweet” for Bill not to be there. But that’s as far as the Black Sabbath frontman would go. So the band rode off into the sunset with the feud still simmering and no end in sight.^[3]

7 Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd may be seen as one of the greatest bands of all time, but they’re also one of the most estranged. Very early in their musical run, the band butted heads with leader Roger Waters. He may have served as the group’s main lyricist and lead vocalist, but after a relatively short time, his creative views differed greatly from the rest of them. They butted heads regularly through the early 1980s. Finally, things came to a head in 1985 when he decided to leave the band. Then, he followed that up with a lawsuit seeking to legally dissolve Pink Floyd and stop the rest of the remaining band members from using that name and the musical ideas Waters had come up with before.

“I would be distressed if Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr made records and went on the road calling themselves The Beatles,” Waters argued years later about why he wanted Pink Floyd to dissolve after his departure. “If John Lennon’s not in it, it’s sacrilegious … To continue with [other band members] Gilmour and Mason, getting in a whole bunch of other people to write the material, seems to me an insult to the work that came before.”

After a prolonged and extremely bitter legal battle, Waters and the rest of the band eventually came to an agreement. Decades later, Roger even admitted to the BBC that he regretted taking things all the way to court. So, cooler heads prevailed—years later. But in the moment, rage consumed Waters, and the whole thing blew up in one of the most vicious rock band feuds of all time.^[4]

6 Guns N’ Roses

Axl Rose and Slash were two of the original members of the iconic ’80s rock band Guns N’ Roses. But almost right from the start, tensions rose between the pair over the creative direction of the band. For years, they feuded on and off about what kind of music the group should record. Then, in the early 1990s, things really came to a head when Slash agreed to hold a concert with Michael Jackson. This was just after Jackson had first been accused of pedophilia. Axl Rose hated the King of Pop for that—and, by extension, Slash for deciding to do the performance.

“Axl was molested by his father when he was two, and he believed the charges against Michael Jackson,” the band’s former manager Doug Goldstein later explained as to what started the feud. “When Axl found out Slash was going to play with Michael Jackson and that the payment was a big screen TV, he was devastated. He thought Slash would support him and be against all abuse. From Axl’s point of view, that was the only problem. He could ignore the drugs and the alcohol, but never the child abuse.”

Then, by 1996, things had gotten even worse. That year, the group was in the middle of contract renegotiations with each other and their recording company. Slash didn’t like the direction the group was taking, so he told Axl that he was quitting—and he walked away. Just like that. The two men then didn’t speak to each other for nearly two full decades. Finally, in 2015, they began to work on patching up their relationship. They even went on a limited run of concerts together, coming full circle again. But it was only after more than twenty years of vicious feuding in public and private.

“A lot of the tension has dissipated,” Slash told CBS after finally reconciling with Axl in recent years. “Over time, we all just got sick and tired of the black cloud. The biggest thing that happens when you have a breakup that is less than harmonious is you build up a bad energy because of the distance.”^[5]

5 Blink-182

Blink-182 has had multiple notable lows during their time in the spotlight. The first of those came in 2005 when differences and personal issues among the group’s members forced the rock band to break up. For a while, they had no hopes of reuniting. Then, three years later, in 2008, Travis Barker nearly died in a plane crash. After that, the trio had a massive change of heart and got back together to record music again.

“Up until that point, I had zero hope for Blink,” Barker explained to the Daily Beast years later about his plane crash. “It was something that I had really put behind me. My accident definitely made everyone think about things a little more clearly, especially me. It’s horrible that it took something like that for everyone to wake up, but we realized, ‘Man, life’s short!’ We were fighting about some bull s**t and not talking, and it wasn’t anything to be fighting over.”

For the next seven years, the group worked together. But in 2015, they once again parted ways. This time, it was Tom DeLong who left the band—well, maybe. After the second breakup, Barker and Mark Hoppus shared a statement with their fans that Tom wanted to “work on his other non-music endeavors.” Meanwhile, DeLonge denied that he quit but instead intimated that he was forced out of the band while Barker and Hoppus focused on recording yet another new album.

Regardless, Tom really did spend the next few years building a non-band-related company. And in his absence, Blink-182 kept on touring—with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba in the place of DeLonge. Once again, though, a tragedy brought them back together. This time around, the scary moment was when Mark was diagnosed with cancer near the end of 2021. The group reunited once again in 2022, began touring as a threesome once more, and even started recording more new music. What a long, strange trip it’s been!^[6]

4 Van Halen

The guys who brought together Van Halen promptly began feuding nearly as soon as the band took off. That would be founder and lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, of course. The pair butted heads on photo shoots, music videos, and side projects alike. Things came to a head in 1984 when David decided to launch a solo career. Right from when he broke away from the band, he started talking smack about Eddie and his way of managing the group—which immediately kicked off a massive, decades-long feud between them.

“Since my very first days with the band 11 years ago, I have always had the feeling that one day I would wake up in a cold hotel, all the rooms would be empty, and I would be stuck by a phone with a busy signal,” Roth complained to Billboard Magazine about feeling abandoned by Eddie Van Halen after splitting from the band. “From the first day. Nothing has changed.” And just like that, David was gone!

In response, Eddie made his case: that he wanted to cut back on touring and focus more on recording and releasing new music. David, he claimed, had instead wanted to focus on solo projects and even dip his toes into the world of acting in a Hollywood movie. Then, to tip the scales, Eddie confirmed that David had quit the group by explaining that he was “tired of putting up with [Roth’s] bull s**t.”

That didn’t sit well with David, and for the next couple of decades, the duo feuded publicly. Eddie quickly went out and got Sammy Hagar to replace David Lee Roth in the band and enjoyed some smashing success with the new lineup. To their credit, though, cooler heads eventually prevailed. In 2007, Roth and Van Halen finally reunited and even went back to being bandmates for a while until Eddie died years after that due to complications from throat cancer.^[7]

3 Oasis

We bet you’re surprised that you had to read this far down into the list to see Oasis’ name listed, aren’t you? We couldn’t very well write a list about bands feuding without including the brainchild of the Gallagher brothers. The first time Noel and Liam officially feuded on the record was way back in 1994 when the pair said they hated each other during an on-the-record interview with NME.

Sadly, things only got worse from there. Over the years, the brothers routinely fought with each other in public. They would hurl insults at each other during media interviews and shows. They would randomly skip out on concerts without any notice, leaving the other brother in the lurch. And in 2009, it came to a head when Liam destroyed a dressing room and Noel’s guitar for good measure. At that point, Noel had enough—and he quit the group.

“It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight,” Noel wrote on the band’s website. “I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.” And with that, the two were done with each other forever… Well, OK, not really.

Since then, the pair have only ever continued to take shots at each other in public. The brothers are fond of insulting each other in interviews and on social media alike. Things got so intense at one point that Liam even filed a libel lawsuit against Noel. He eventually dropped it without further pursuit after Noel apologized for his prior statements. But still, really?! A libel lawsuit against your own brother? You know the rift is deep, and the emotions are very significantly at odds when two brothers start filing lawsuits against each other!^[8]

2 Journey

The guys in Journey have been fighting with each other since pretty much the inception of the band. Take lead singer and frontman Steve Perry as the best example of this. Perry joined the group in 1977, but things were bad from nearly the start. Perry said years later that upon joining Journey, he nearly immediately lost his passion for music. Things got so bad with the other band members that he eventually walked away from the group ten years later. He was unable to take it any longer—and he hated how much he’d come to hate music while performing with Journey.

But that wasn’t the end of the story for Perry by a long shot. He eventually rejoined Journey in 1996, eager to give it a second try. But right from the start of his second tour of duty, things were once again messed up. This time around, Perry was suffering from a hip injury and needed to undergo significant hip surgery. He tried to postpone the procedure to help the band, but he was unable to tour because he could barely move. So the other band members kicked him out of the group—for good this time.

After Perry departed for the second time, Journey carried on with a new lead singer. But it wouldn’t be long before the other members started feuding with each other, too. In 2022, guitarist Neal Schon delivered a cease-and-desist letter to keyboardist Jonathan Cain a few months after Cain decided to perform “Don’t Stop Believin’” for Donald Trump down at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Then, two years later, during Journey’s fiftieth-anniversary tour, Cain and Schon started fighting over how their touring company was managing concert finances.

In the end, the pair released a public statement indicating that they “fundamentally disagree” about the strategy of their anniversary tour and the operation of its management company. That has resulted in a few canceled tour dates here and there, much to the chagrin of fans who are hoping to see Journey for possibly the last time. But as far as the band members are concerned, they just can’t seem to stop fighting and leave it all behind them. Not a great look!^[9]

1 Jane’s Addiction

Everything seemed as good as could be for Jane’s Addiction right up until September 2024. That month, singer Perry Farrell was performing in the middle of a show when he suddenly tried to attack guitarist Dave Navarro on stage. Farrell had to be restrained and pulled off the stage—right in the middle of the concert! In time, Perry’s wife revealed that the band had been playing their instruments too loud, which was leaving Perry with frazzled ears and a sore throat while he tried to sing loud enough to hear himself. That, apparently, was what nearly led to an on-stage brawl. Yikes!

In turn, Farrell later released a statement of apology for going after Dave in such a public way on stage. “This weekend has been incredibly difficult, and after having the time and space to reflect, it is only right that I apologize to my bandmates, especially Dave Navarro, fans, family, and friends for my actions during Friday’s show,” Farrell’s statement read. “Unfortunately, my breaking point resulted in inexcusable behavior, and I take full accountability for how I chose to handle the situation.”

The issue was a longstanding one, as Perry has dealt for years with tinnitus. And since he couldn’t even hear his own voice in his earpiece, he was apparently straining his voice to the point of near breakdown at each and every concert. But still, trying to punch Dave Navarro isn’t the way to handle that situation! Things were made even worse when bassist Eric Avery got involved and delivered his own punch to Farrell’s stomach. Ouch! In the end, less than 24 hours after the on-stage fight, the band announced that they would be “taking some time away as a group” and promptly canceled all of their remaining 2024 tour dates. Honestly, that’s probably for the best.^[10]