Imagine you're a member of one of the biggest bands in the world. You're riding high. Then, because of your own behavior or the band just wanting to go in another direction, you're suddenly not part of the group anymore. That's a tough pill to swallow. Of course, for some musicians, getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to them. Take Ozzy Osbourne, who turned his firing from Black Sabbath into a huge solo career. But that's the exception, not the rule. For many of the people fired from huge rock bands, it's a blow that is nearly impossible to bounce back from. Here are just a handful of examples of rock stars who fell into tragedy after getting fired.
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00:00Sometimes, getting booted out of a world-famous band can lead to feelings of frustration and
00:05shame, leading the ousted musician to spiral even further. Let's take a look at the rock
00:10stars who fell into tragedy after getting fired from the band.
00:15In 1981, during a taping of the BBC comedy Radioactive, Philip Pope famously quipped,
00:22"'Maybe Ringo Starr wasn't the best drummer in the world. All right, maybe he wasn't the
00:26best drummer in the Beatles.'"
00:28And while Starr joined the legendary band in 1962, whatever happened to the Beatles'
00:33original drummer, Pete Best? According to AARP, when firing Best, the Beatles' manager
00:39Brian Epstein reportedly told the drummer,
00:41"'I don't know how to tell you this, but the boys want you out and it's already been arranged
00:46that Ringo will start with the group this Saturday.'"
00:49Best told AARP in 2010,
00:51The golden apple was within my grasp and it was taken away from me."
00:56Best went on to add that the severity of the situation left him weeping. It's no wonder
01:00that Best was an emotional wreck. After all, that same year, the Beatles signed a recording
01:06contract with EMI, and the rest was history. Remarkably, Best still doesn't have a clue
01:11why he was sacked from the Beatles. As he explained to AARP, allegedly Paul McCartney
01:17is the only person who has a reason for it, but the pair have never discussed it. As for
01:22Best, after an attempt to kill himself in the mid-'60s, he appears to have finally found
01:27peace. The ex-Beatle has a family which now includes grandkids, and formed his own act,
01:33the Pete Best Band.
01:35Rhythm guitarist Brian Jones was a founding member of the Rolling Stones. In fact, he
01:40was the one that came up with their name. In 1962, 18-year-olds Mick Jagger and Keith
01:46Richards came across Jones one night at a London performance, and eventually formed
01:51the band along with Dick Taylor, Ian Stewart, and Mick Avery. As the group's former bassist,
01:57Bill Wyman, reflected to Daily News, Jones was very influential during the band's formative
02:03years yet slowly lost it.
02:05But I'm not really sort of satisfied, either artistically or personally.
02:11As Wyman explained, he just kind of wasted it and blew it all away. At the time, Jones
02:17had a crippling drug addiction and was showing up to recording sessions incoherent and unable
02:22to play. Jones announced on June 9, 1969 he was no longer in the band, meeting his demise
02:29less than a month later. According to Rolling Stone, the co-founder of the band was found
02:34dead on July 3, 1969, after being pulled unconscious out of the pool at his home.
02:41The coroner ruled the death, drowning by immersion in fresh water associated with severe
02:46liver dysfunction caused by fatty degeneration and ingestion of alcohol and drugs. The tragic
02:53event has remained a mystery among fans in the years since, with some even alleging Jones'
02:58death wasn't an accident.
03:01Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland may have had more than one firing from the
03:05iconic band. Per Fuse, Weiland exited STP twice under acrimonious terms, yet it's his
03:12ejection in 2013 that seemed to be the most tragic, as he claimed he found out from the
03:18press. Weiland wrote in a statement at the time,
03:21"...not sure how I can be terminated from a band that I founded, fronted, and co-wrote
03:26many of its biggest hits."
03:27Weiland's firing shouldn't have come as a surprise. After all, the problematic singer
03:32had a history of drug use and mental health concerns. Along with his well-documented heroin
03:38addiction of the 90s, the final 10 months of the singer's life included going through
03:43two cancer diagnoses of his parents, the death of a friend, along with severe financial troubles,
03:49estrangement from his children, and mental illness.
03:54Weiland died in his RV on December 3, 2015, from an accidental drug overdose. He was 48.
04:01As STP guitarist Dean DeLeo recalled to Billboard of hearing the news,
04:05"...it was a feeling I had never experienced. My heart dropped. It felt like a part of me
04:10fell out."
04:12It turns out Weiland had lost touch with members of the band a few years prior. Sadly, STP
04:18faced another tragedy in 2017, when Weiland's replacement, Chester Bennington, apparently
04:24took his own life.
04:26Ah, Motown, the record label that churned out legendary stars and created one of the
04:31most influential sounds of the 20th century. Although the company graced the world with
04:37the sounds of iconic acts such as Diana Ross and The Supremes, The Jackson 5, and Marvin
04:43Gaye, to name a few, it was also home to real-life tragedies of its musicians.
04:48David Ruffin of The Temptations is no exception. Ruffin joined The Temptations in 1963 as a
04:54replacement for Eldridge Bryant, taking the lead on celebrated tracks such as My Girl
05:00and I Wish It Would Rain. From there, The Temptations' success only grew, and they quickly
05:05became Motown's most successful male group, rivaling the glory of their female counterparts,
05:11The Supremes.
05:12Unfortunately, fame only went to Ruffin's head, and he began feeling bothered by a lack
05:17of preferential treatment for himself, at one point even demanding that the band be
05:22renamed David Ruffin and The Temptations. That, coupled with his incessant cocaine use,
05:27led to his ejection from the band in 1968. Ruffin's solo career was nowhere near as successful
05:34as his time with The Temptations was, and according to the Associated Press, his career
05:39was plagued by drug problems and arrests, eventually leading to his tragic death in
05:441991 due to an apparent drug overdose.
05:48Roger Keith Sid Barrett was one of the key members of Pink Floyd, having joined the band
05:53early in their careers in the mid-1960s. Acting as the band's guitarist, Barrett defined their
06:00sound, also becoming the main writer for their 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of
06:05Dawn. According to Biography, as brilliant and as innovative as Barrett was, the sounds
06:11he was creating were coming to him by way of taking LSD, and because of his incessant
06:16drug use, Barrett was already losing his tenuous grasp on reality.
06:22In January 1968, Pink Floyd began avoiding Barrett by playing concerts behind his back.
06:28By April of that year, the band officially announced that Barrett was out of the band.
06:33Barrett tried going the solo route, yet heartbreakingly told Rolling Stone in 1971, quote,
06:40In the same interview, Barrett went on to add,
06:43"'I'm sorry I can't speak very coherently. It's rather difficult to think of anybody
06:48being really interested in me. But you know, I am totally together.'"
06:52As another piece by Rolling Stone reveals, it was shortly after that interview that the
06:57creative genius truly disappeared from the music world. Barrett wound up back in Cambridge,
07:03England, where he was originally from, and chose to go by his birth name again. He took
07:08on painting, but mostly remained out of the public's eye before dying from pancreatic
07:12cancer in 2006.
07:15Tony McCarroll didn't join the Manchester-based Oasis after the band was already recording
07:21music. He was there from the start. McCarroll was Oasis's original drummer, and present
07:26for the band's highly successful debut album, 1994's Definitely Maybe.
07:31So what happened? Spoiler alert — lead guitarist and vocalist Noel Gallagher wasn't exactly
07:38easy to deal with. According to Irish Examiner, the singer would regularly make snide jabs
07:43aimed at McCarroll's drumming, with the latter suddenly finding himself blanked out of the
07:48band in 1995. Confused, McCarroll tried seeking out his bandmates at local pubs, looking for
07:55any sort of reason for why they suddenly sacked him. However, nobody was willing to say anything.
08:01The musician ended up moving across the pond, and as he told Manchester Evening News, he,
08:07quote, got drunk for three whole years.
08:10McCarroll eventually decided to lawyer up. In 1999, he ultimately accepted a settlement
08:16of £550,000, which translates to roughly $760,000, in exchange for giving up any future
08:24royalties on the Oasis tracks he worked on. In a 2019 interview with Manchester Evening
08:29News, McCarroll had this to say about the whole situation,
08:33If you're asking when I got back to normality, maybe I'm not normal. You're reminded every
08:38day of Oasis.
08:41Fleetwood Mac has had a revolving door of members throughout the years. As The Observer
08:45wisely points out, the band already had three distinct groupings before bringing on Lindsey
08:51Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975, with only bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood
08:58remaining from 1967. Along with McVie and Fleetwood were Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer,
09:05and Danny Kirwin, with the latter joining in 1968. Sadly, he only lasted four years.
09:12As revealed by The Independent, Kirwin was a clutch contributor for the band's early
09:17sound, making contributions to the lyrics, vocals, and instrumentation on their 1969
09:22album Then Play On.
09:24Unfortunately, behind the scenes, the guitarist was struggling, in particular because the
09:29band's lineup began changing, and he found himself carrying the weight of songwriting
09:34responsibilities. After one particularly vicious argument with new recruit Bob Welch, coupled
09:40with his heavy drinking, Kirwin was fired. The songwriter attempted going solo and would
09:45go on to release three albums. However, none of Kirwin's solo work compared to his success
09:51with Fleetwood Mac. His former band lost touch with him until 1993, when the Missing Persons
09:56Bureau finally located him at a London hostel. At the time, he told The Independent he had
10:02lived at the hostel for four years. Tragically, Kirwin died in June 2018, still homeless and
10:09living in a hostel at the age of 68.
10:12While some may view the songs of Journey as cheesy 80s ballads, there's no denying their
10:17impact. As Rolling Stone so succinctly puts it,
10:21"[Journey basically invented the power ballad.] And with Steve Perry fronting the band with
10:25his iconic voice, the San Francisco-based group produced some of the most well-known
10:30songs on the planet. Journey was first formed in 1973, achieving little success until hiring
10:37Perry in 1977."
10:39With a plethora of hits, tours, and eight multi-platinum albums, Journey was everywhere,
10:46yet Perry grew exhausted. He left the band in 1987 on his own accord. Perry then released
10:52two solo records and would eventually go on to reunite with his old friends in the mid-1990s.
10:57It was a dream come true to be in Journey, you know."
11:01Per Rolling Stone, after a hike in Hawaii, the singer found out he had a degenerative
11:06bone condition that would require hip replacement surgery, and flip-flopped with when exactly
11:11he would have that done. Ultimately, the band grew impatient and booted Perry out of
11:16the group, replacing him with sound-alike Steve Ageri. What followed for the former
11:21frontman was utter and complete loneliness. With most of his family members dead, Perry
11:26visited their graves and wept. Perry told Rolling Stone,
11:30"...I used to think that if I became a performer and everybody loved me, that I wouldn't have
11:35to go through these things. But guess what? There's nowhere to run."
11:40But even Adler's road to recovery from his heroin addiction wasn't easy. The former
11:45Guns N' Roses drummer was famously fired from the hard rock band in the early 90s after
11:50a series of questionable behaviors, including taking a stumble into his drum kit during
11:56one performance. The main incident that gave Adler the boot, however, was during the 1990
12:02recording of their song, Civil War. As Adler himself recalled to Ash Avildsen and Boo Boo
12:07Stewart on Mom, It's Not Devil's Music, he one day decided he was going to stop using
12:13heroin. Cold turkey, yet didn't realize that.
12:16"...If you do heroin and then you stop doing it, you get violently sick."
12:21Although he begged his manager and bandmates to hold off on recording the track, they still
12:26forced the drummer to come in, and he kept ruining the session due to his health. Ultimately,
12:31due to that session, Adler was out of the group. Since his ejection, things haven't
12:36exactly been easy for Adler. The drummer appeared on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew
12:41in both Season 2 and Season 5, and in 2019, TMZ reported that the former Guns N' Roses
12:48drummer was taken to the hospital after accidentally stabbing himself.
12:53If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
12:58Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK or 8255.
13:04If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance
13:07Abuse and Mental Health Administration's 24-7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.