Hindsight can be a wonderful thing. For us regular people the magnitude of our decisions related to our daily dilemmas are often restricted to trying to choose what you want out of an assorted bag of lollies and looking wistfully on, tearfully mourning what could have been as your friend eats the last sour worm in the pack while you’re stuck with a chico baby (these little shits are as offensive to the senses as an erupting septic tank I’ll have you know) which will probably lead to years of mental anguish despite both sugary offenders being violently digested in the end anyway. For these people, their decisions/scatological behaviour/tendency to be dipsomaniacal and perpetually high led to them missing out on money, groupies, novelty bobbleheads with their face on them and everything else that comes with being a superstar in the public eye.
It’s not all despair though, not all of these people were force-fed a shit sandwich to choke on to the point of annihilation and some made themselves a career, albeit not even in the same level of superstar status their previous bands managed to attain.
It’s not all despair though, not all of these people were force-fed a shit sandwich to choke on to the point of annihilation and some made themselves a career, albeit not even in the same level of superstar status their previous bands managed to attain.
#8 Paul Di’Anno – Iron Maiden
Funny story about the audition of this fella is that it went tits up before he even sang a word due to him flashing a knife in public and rather unluckily being apprehended by police before he even made it to the studio.
He contributed lyrics and music to the first two albums (being the self-titled Iron Maiden and Killers) and was a popular figure in the metal circuit, especially in the bands home in the East End of London. Things began to go citric and sour when the band had to abruptly cancel shows due to Di’Anno’s inability to perform due to a variety of things ranging from being baked to apathy about the rigours of touring.
This lead to a termination and as a result, he fell into obscurity touring with several small time bands but never came close to reaching the heights Maiden did after the release of Powerslave. (Top record I say I say) Di’Anno wasn’t the only member to get pissed off from the band just before they hit the heights of grandeur either. Guitarist Dennis Stratton was also defenestrated from the band due to a personality clash with the band’s manager Ron Smallwood after a tour around Europe opening for Kiss.
#7 Jack Irons – Red Hot Chili Peppers
A founding member of the band of the Chili’s (or Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem as they were originally known) Jack Irons featured on only one record being The Uplift Mofo Party Plan because he and the band’s guitarist Hillel Slovak had another band and considered that one to be more of a serious operation. Oh how hilariously wrong they were.
After returning to record The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and traveling about on the subsequent tour, Hillel Slovak regrettably overdosed on heroin and front man Anthony Kiedis was lucky not to go down the same path, Irons quit the band not being able to handle being part of a band in which his friend died. Kiedis recalls the situation in his biography Scar Tissue (Buy it now if you don’t have it! Buy it farken!) as being surreal since Irons was a rather quiet lad as it was he that called a band meeting (something he’d never ever done) and resigned his post on the spot and missed out on having all his wildest dreams of avarice and excess realised.
He later joined Pearl Jam which I guess is the best outcome of anyone on this list and managed not to fade into the crepuscular darkness of maudlin obscurity, but only lasted one album before walking.
#6 John Rutsey – Rush
Unfortunately for Rutsey, he suffered from diabetes and the band’s management feared the rigours of touring across the USA (complete with all the drinking and sloppy orgiastic adventures) could lead to his premature demise so much to his despair his time in the band was up shortly after the first album was released. (In the band’s documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage musical differences were also cited but this appeared to be a secondary concern to his poor health)
He was replaced by the cephalopod limbed drumming deity that is Neil Peart who is considered by many as one of the greatest drummers of all time and Rush went on to become a cult favourite and have influenced a cornucopia of bands ranging from Nine Inch Nails to Symphony X. As for Rutsey I hear you ask?
He went on to be an amateur body builder after giving up music for good and disappearing into a dim cavern of obscurity and unfortunately his diabetes caught up with him and he died in his sleep in 2008.
#5 Syd Barrett – Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd being one of the best-selling bands of all time and considered sanctum sanctorum (in my house at least) were led by this man before they hit the stratospheric heights of fame and splendour that allows you to destroy your own property because you know you can afford a million more complete with chocolate jacuzzi.
Barrett was a very interesting musician in the way he experimented with guitar techniques such as feedback and warped distortion which gave the band their psychedelic ambience in their first two albums.
His demise could be due to something as simple as being an incredibly lazy cluster of atoms but a more likely (and a more right) reason is that due to being a part of the scene in the late sixties (flower power, free love, fuck Vietnam and all that) this also meant he enjoyed to trip balls and excessively munch acid as if what he was eating was a bag of funny skittles and unfortunately this predilection led to him completely roasting his brain.
Towards the end of his stint in the band he was known to stand on stage staring blankly at the back wall strumming the same chord over and over, which to the enjoyment of the crowd who somehow found this monolithic display stupidity having artistic merit.
Since he had written the majority of the band’s material it was harder to cast him into the flames of unemployment and doom and he was originally intended to be kept in the band on a non-touring basis, such was his incompetent boobery on stage but this didn’t last predictably enough and the band drafted the honourable David Gilmour then less than a decade later the band basically reinvented themselves with Roger Waters at the helm and came up with a crazy little record called The Dark Side Of The Moon which set the band and their descendants up for the next mega annum.
#4 Scott Raynor – Blink 182
He chose the former option and much his dismay got the ass anyway for the much more talented Travis Barker (he learned the band’s entire setlist 45 minutes before his first show with the band. That is what we call an ubermensch.
Although I guess being pop punk you could train a monkey to play the drums for you. Probably not in 45 minutes though) and Blink exploded to such heights of fame around the turn of the millennium after this appointment and everyone lived happily ever after in houses made of gold with ten Lamborghinis in the garage. Except Scott. Who went on to do diddly squat. That is to say he managed to get a gig playing for several small time bands wondering what could have been as he cries himself to sleep and presumably writes emo poetry to pass the time. Which is unfortunate because frontman Tom DeLonge is renowned for lampooning around on stage like a pissed up seaside donkey so an element of consistency appears to be lacking here.
#3 John Kiffmeyer – Green Day
Being the only adult member of Green Day in their incipient stages, Kiffmeyer was the man who sorted the band out in regards to getting shows and appearances in and around the San Fran Bay Area and a venue they frequented was his college where they were quite a hit among the alumni there. As a result of this excursion into the local community college, they were recognised by music producer Larry Livermore and signed to record label Lookout on the basis of their live set.It was shortly after the release of their first album 39/Smooth (completely different to the pop punk noncery they come up with these days) that Kiffmeyer made the explosively, apocalyptically, stultifyingly ill-informed decision to leave the band and go to university in northern California shortly after the band’s first US tour and is now a photographer presumably with an Insta page somewhere out there complete with photos of chairs and trees which automatically makes him deep and brooding.
He ended his association with the band by assisting with the production of their sophomore effort Kerplunk which was famous for being played on out of tune instruments interestingly enough and he featured on a quad of songs released on the bonus reissue in 2007. In conclusion, I can confirm all your suspicions and say that the name Green Day refers to smoking reefer.
#2 Pete Best/Stuart Sutcliffe – The Beatles
Departing the most influential band of all time is something that’d really chafe. Original drummer Pete Best and bassist Stuart Sutcliffe did exactly this, although for differing reasons. Sutcliffe thought that it’d be a good idea to leave the band in July 1961, a year and a half before the release of their first album Please Please Me and pursue a career as an artist in Hamburg and perished not long afterwards as a result of a brain aneurysm. The band honoured him by placing him on the cover of their magnum opus (in the eyes of Rolling Stone at least the Bandersnatch munchers) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Pete Best however had his exodus from the band foisted upon him like a cake made out of poorly formed stools and in his case and as with most band departures, there are conflicting tales as to what happened. Producer George Martin only intended to hire a session musician to record the band’s inaugural album although Paul McCartney recalls Martin pulling the band aside and saying Best wasn’t up to standard. Either way, the rest of the band saw this minor indiscretion as a prime opportunity to swing the axe and it seems that Best didn’t realise the sword of Damocles dangled precariously over his head until foot met ass and he was unceremoniously booted from the group just months before they released their first album and orgasm rocketed to the top of the charts and became one of the biggest groups of all time. Bigger than Jesus himself if John Lennon is to be believed.
#1 Jason Everman – Soundgarden and Nirvana
In the most bizarre display of self-flagellation, capitulation and sabotage of self I think I’ve ever seen in my born days, this man here wasn’t just in one but TWO headline acts. Seriously. This kind of career seppuku is akin to screaming ‘GERONIMO!!’ and then jumping into a volcano with pentaerythritol tetranitrate strapped to your chest. Again, he was not the only musician to miss out on riding the gravy train piloted by Kurt Cobain. Drummer Chad Channing was excreted in liquid form from the bowels of Nirvana during the pre-production sessions of the famous little album with a baby’s penis on the front cover called Nevermind. Joining Nirvana in 1989 as a second guitarist (fuck knows why they’d need two guitarists in that band) he didn’t actually record any tracks on their debut Bleach but he can say he contributed by paying a cool $606.17 for the album to be recorded as the other members of the band were skint or spent their money on weed instead.
Mister Cobain and friends never paid the sum back (sarcastically citing mental damages) despite having enough money a few later to pay him back in the form of a large sculpted marble phallus for his backyard or something. He was shitcanned after a brief period of five months.
This would be heartbreaking enough but he managed to secure a job as Soundgarden’s bassist (he was able to play bass instead of his favoured guitar because as Dave Mustaine puts it, "The bass isn't a difficult instrument to play. It's one step up from the kazoo isn't it?" I’m such a troll. Fight me. If this means I’m going to have my door kicked down and get executed on the catherine wheel by a gaggle of apoplectically raging bassists, I consider this the martyrdom of saint me.)
He appeared on a live release called Louder than Live but again after a short period he annoyed his bandmates with his menstrual level moodiness and antisocial behaviour and for the second time, the sack of unemployment dropped over his head like a deflated scrotum and Everman joined the green berets and served several tours in the Middle East shooting Arabian children in the name of freedom and cheap oil.
I guess as long as he’s happy and hasn’t wrapped his lips around a shotgun death cock (as of August 2014 that is) feeling lachrymose about what could have been. Whatever floats your boat is the mantra here. I guess you could say good on him for not milking this unfortunate story like a champagne bottle with testicles and feeding the public his crycakes about his personal tragedy.
