Rock music's greatest careers are rarely a smooth ascent.
Even the most celebrated bands have faced internal conflict, shifting public taste, commercial missteps and moments when success seemed to slip through their fingers. While some bands have storied controversies, others have moments of misery that have been forgotten in the public’s imagination. Here are some of the highs and lows of the great bands from history…
These bands went on a rollercoaster of success and failure
1. Aerosmith
In the 1970s and 1980s, Aerosmith defined American hard rock (we named them one of the best bands of the 1970s), with Steven Tyler’s charismatic leading man act, the band’s electric live performances blazing a trail in the music scene of the day. Even during this era though, the band waged a challenging war against its own success, with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry given the nicknames ‘the toxic twins’ because of their drug habits.
The group even briefly disbanded on account of the toll taken by their lifestyle and behaviour, but they came back together in 1987 for the album Permanent Vacation, which revitalised their career and set the stage for the subsequent decades of domination.
But over time, public attitudes shifted towards Aerosmith, considering the band to be too formulaic in their musical stylings, despite their return from the brink and the unequivocal success of their 1980s albums. Fans of the group consider this to be one of the perils of a band gaining mass appeal, but the rhetoric around one of rock music’s most divisive bands continues to be split right down the middle.
To perfectly illustrate this debate, we named Aerosmith’s 1982 album Rock in a Hard Place as one of the worst albums by the greatest rock bands, but we also named their 1975 album Toys in the Attic as one of the most perfect rock albums of all time.
2. Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a band shaped by drama and turmoil – even at the height of their success, their foundations were shaky. The early years of Fleetwood Mac were riddled with endless line-up changes, notably the band’s founder, Peter Green, who left the band in 1970. In fact, they nearly broke up before getting anywhere. The firing of Danny Kirwan followed – one of the most famous firings in rock music – with Mick Fleetwood firing him on the spot after he refused to perform while on tour and smashing his guitar, destroying the band’s equipment.
After the success of 1971's brilliant Bare Trees, Fleetwood Mac had a ‘difficult follow-up album’ with Penguin. This was the year after Kirwan was fired from the band, and the new iteration of Fleetwood Mac was struggling to find their focus.
In 1977, the band released their most famous album, Rumours – probably the that year's greatest album. Despite its unequivocal brilliance, the backdrop to Rumours was painful, with both romantic relationships in the band – John and Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks – breaking down. Certainly, the genius of this album is shaped by the strong emotional charge at its core, but the conditions of its creation made it a deeply challenging time for the band members. We named it one of the best breakup albums of all time.
3. U2
Rising from post-punk roots to global superstardom, U2’s early years were shaped by grand successes – but, like many bands of their ilk, overexposure has tainted public perception over the decades.
Although their second studio album October was hardly a failure, the experience of putting it together was challenging for the band – with Bono losing a briefcase with his lyrics notebook. Amusingly, it was discovered 23 years later by Cindy Harris in the attic of her rental home in Tacoma, Washington. Nevertheless, the resulting album came to fruition – but certainly lacked the drama and anthemic quality of their debut, Boy.
Between their second and third albums, U2 experienced new challenges, with Bono, The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr becoming involved in a Christian group called the Shalom Fellowship, which led them to question whether they could consolidate their faith with their rock band career. In fact, they nearly quit. Fortunately for the enduring success of U2, they decided to pursue the band instead – with the tour for their third album War helping them hit the mainstream, thanks to their iconic performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado (considered to be one of rock music’s luckiest breaks).
With a career as long as theirs, it’s perhaps unsurprising that U2 have endured their fair share of ups and downs. In 1997, they attempted to merge rock with electronica and dance music in their album Pop, which received mixed reviews and is now considered to be one of their worst albums.
An unexpected flop faced the band in 2014, when they partnered with Apple to deliver a surprise, free digital download of their new album Songs of Innocence to over 500 million iTunes customers. A nice gift, perhaps? Some thought so – but many iTunes customers weren’t happy about the album being added to their music libraries without their consent.
4. Pink Floyd
It was the departure of founding member Syd Barrett that threw Pink Floyd into disarray after the release of their second album. Strangely enough, around seven years after his departure from the band, Barrett returned to the studio with Pink Floyd in a bizarre encounter, while the band were recording ‘Wish You Were Here’, a tribute to Barrett.
But Pink Floyd carried on regardless, with David Gilmour brought in as Barrett’s replacement – and the greatest years of the band were still to come. In fact, there are surprisingly few failings in their discography – we named Pink Floyd as one of the bands who never made a bad album. That said, the power struggles between Roger Waters and David Gilmour were no secret, with Waters leaving the band in 1985 – only to return in occasional reunion gigs.
After the global success of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd began an experiment project called Household Objects, which ultimately proved to be a complete failure. Setting out to create an entire album using the sounds of everyday objects, the band wanted to push its boundaries – but progress was slow and the results were unconvincing. They ultimately abandoned the project, but used some musical ideas in subsequent albums.
5. Metallica
As seems to be the case for many of these bands, it was the loss of a founding member that destabilised them – for Metallica, the death of bassist Cliff Burton was an enormous blow. He was killed tragically in a road accident while the band was on tour in Sweden. The band’s tour bus crashed, and Burton was thrown from his bunk through a window as the bus flipped. He was instantly crushed and killed by the bus landing on him. After the tragedy, Metallica regrouped with Jason Newsted on bass – bringing darker sounds into their repertoire.
Their fifth studio album, The Black Album, launched them into the mainstream, as one of the best albums released in 1991. It showed the band at the height of their powers, moving away from the thrash epics of their 80s albums and into simpler, more accessible structures.
The band has experienced many challenges since, with St. Anger (2003) met with mixed reviews. After years of mainstream success, the band tried to return to their roots – an attempt which many believe was a failure. It captured the band’s turmoil at the time – bassist Jason Newsted had left the band and frontman James Hetfield was in rehab – but many critics believe the album failed to translate that pain effectively.
In 2011, Metallica joined forces with Lou Reed to release the widely criticised album Lulu, which brought spoken-word poetry together with metal instrumentation – suffice to say, it didn’t work and has been parodied ever since.
6. Van Halen
When they were good, they were great, but when they were bad, they were really bad. The dynamic of Van Halen shifted relentlessly over the years, with tension between members a theme of the band’s entire history. David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen had very different musical approaches, with Roth mocking Van Halen’s seriousness and Van Halen frustrated by Roth’s ego.
Things came to a head in 1985, when Roth left the band to pursue a solo career, following the enormous success of the 1984 album. Roth was replaced by Sammy Hagar – but this appointment didn’t go too smoothly either, due to creative differences. He left in 1996, and was replaced by Gary Cherone, who stayed with the band for just one album: Van Halen III. This album was the band’s lowest-selling effort to date and was a critical failure – an album that nearly cost the band their career. It was their last new material for 14 years, during which time the band had internal struggles and their career stagnated.
7. Guns N’ Roses
The debut album from Guns N’ Roses was such a smash hit, that they found themselves chasing their own success thereafter. Appetite for Destruction was brilliantly original, telling true stories of their life in LA with their trademark energetic hard rock swagger. That album brought international stardom overnight – and perhaps that kind of meteoric rise only comes with a fall. Their second album, G N’ R Lies was criticised as being stripped-down and uneven after the high-octane excitement of their debut.
Drug abuse haunted the band’s career from their earliest days, and with this brought personality clashes and creative difficulties. Even when they emerged with their first album, they were thought to be one of the most volatile bands on Earth, their unpredictability and volatility a draw for fans. When the band opened for the Rolling Stones in 1989, Axl Rose said to the crowd: ‘Unless certain people in this band get their s*** together, these will be the last Guns N’ Roses shows you’ll f***ing ever see.’
With band members quitting and being fired left and right, Axl Rose was the only remaining original member by the mid-1990s, joined by a revolving line-up of musicians thereafter. Chinese Democracy (2008) was considered their biggest failure, costing over £13 million – one of the most expensive albums ever made – and 14-year-delayed production. The album effectively ended the career of Guns N’ Roses as a creative force.
A surprising reunion in 2016 saw core members Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan perform for the first time together since 1993.
8. Kiss
Say what you like about KISS, but they sure knew how to put on a show. With iconic face paint and pyrotechnic shows, their shows had real chutzpah – but perhaps their music didn’t... Indicative, perhaps, of their power in live music, their most crucial album is a live album: Alive! (released in 1975), which propelled them to superstar status.
KISS's first three studio albums had been only moderate successes, but this double album captured the raw energy of their live shows. The band enjoyed huge success in the late 1970s, but perhaps took it a step too far when they starred in KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, a 1978 film that showed their complete… lack of film-making talent.
In 1983, the band removed their make-up in an attempt to gain credibility and boost flagging record sales – but this only lasted until 1996, when the band returned to their classic personas.
9. Queen
It seems surprising today to think of Queen as anything other than unrivalled global stars, but they had their fair share of ups and downs over the course of their career, just like any other band. Their early years were challenging: before Sheer Heart Attack made them stars at the end of 1974 and launched them to global stardom, Queen were facing bankruptcy. They’d had a disastrous tour supporting Mott the Hoople, where Brian May had contracted hepatitis and nearly lost his arm to gangrene. It wasn’t looking great for them, until the success of their single ‘Killer Queen’ convinced them to keep ploughing on.
In the middle of their career, they experimented with different sounds – and suffered the occasional misfire . ‘Body Language’ from 1982’s Hot Space (one of rock’s most polarising albums) saw them adopt a synth-funk aesthetic, and the effect rang rather hollow.
Of course, it’s hard to forget about one of the most seismic tragedies of Queen’s history: the 1991 death of lead singer Freddie Mercury. The band took a pause, with Brian May and Roger Taylor continuing to work on projects before reforming in 2004 under the Queen name, performing with Paul Rodgers until 2009 and Adam Lambert since 2011.
All images: Getty Images
