The Pettiest Drama Behind The Scenes Of ‘90s Bands
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The ‘90s will go down in history as a decade for groundbreaking cultural innovation. Blogs, message boards, and websites like Napster took off with the popularization of the internet. A funny little game called Tamagotchi introduced virtual reality to the mainstream. Friends took off in the ratings and inspired a haircut craze called “The Rachel.” And alt-rock and hip hop rose to prominence like never before.
But with great power comes great responsibility, and behind the scenes of the music boom, some artists just could not keep it together – even for the sake of a paycheck. And so for some bands and rap groups, their long-standing feuds and petty beefs have proven just as memorable as their music.
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1When The Black Album came out in 1991, Metallica had already established themselves as one of the greatest metal bands in history. But one big difference between the Metallica of the ‘80s and the Metallica of the ‘90s was its lineup: bassist Cliff Burton tragically lost his life in a tour bus crash in 1986, and Jason Newsted went on to take his place.
Despite being handpicked by the band for the role, Newsted was relentlessly hazed by Metallica for years. In one incident, his bass was turned down so much on 1988’s “...And Justice For All” that it can barely be heard in the recording. James Hetflied explained to Ultimate Classic Rock,
[We] took a lot of our resentment, a lot of our grief, a lot of our despair around Cliff’s death out on Jason. Right from the beginning there was a lot of hazing that just separated him, and he was always thought of as "the new guy." I wish that didn’t have to happen… We were brutal with him.
Too much drama?
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Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine were the original Taylor Swift and Kanye West, with their MTV VMAs drama dating back to the year 2000. That’s because when Limp Bizkit won an award for their single “Break Stuff” over Rage’s “Sleep Now in the Fire,” the latter’s Tim Commerford decided to climb a 15-foot stage prop in protest. He later remembered in an interview,
We were up against Limp Bizkit, one of the dumbest bands in the history of music. And I’m sitting there like, "If that camera doesn’t come over here, I’m climbing up that structure and I’m gonna sit there like a gargoyle and throw a wrench in this show.”
Commerford didn’t just throw a wrench in the awards schedule. His great ascent also sparked the split of his band, with member Zack De La Rocha announcing his departure just a month later. Of the decision, De La Rocha said in a statement,
I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage because our decision-making process has completely failed. It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively as a band, and from my perspective, has undermined our artistic and political ideal.
According to Far Out magazine, De la Rocha was “humiliated” by Commerford's behavior at the award show, and even left early. However, tension had been building amongst band members for some time, and it is likely Rage was always destined to burn brightly and briefly.
Too much drama?
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This English fivesome got their big break in 1996 with the release of their debut single, “Wannabe.” But two years later, one of the group’s members decided to burn down the house and quit the group at the peak of their fame. The reason?
“I was just being a brat,” apologized the offending member, Geri Halliwell-Horner, also known as Ginger Spice, during the group’s reunion tour in 2019. “I’m sorry. It finally occurred to me this afternoon.”
When Scary Mommy asked Halliwell-Horner, of Union Jack Dress fame, to elaborate, she explained, “I think we were just being dramatic for the stage drama.” But her former bandmate, Mel B, also known as Scary Spice, might disagree. Of Halliwell-Horner, she said during a television appearance, “I love her to bits, but she’s really annoying,” and went on to name Halliwell-Horner the “biggest celebrity d***head” she had ever met.
Then there was the falling out between Melanie Chisolm (Sporty Spice) and Victoria Beckham, also known as Posh Spice. It dates back to the band’s early days and almost resulted in Chisolm being kicked out of the band, she told In Style. The two continue to make digs at each other in the media even today, the latest occurring when Chisolm criticized Victoria’s husband, David, for working with the Qatari government.
Too much drama?
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“Wonderwall” by Oasis is arguably one of the greatest rock tracks to emerge from the 1990s. British broadcaster Radio X recently went so far as to crown the track the “Best British Song Of All Time.”
But while their music might be the product of brotherly love – two of Oasis’s members, Liam and Noel, are biological brothers – any warm and fuzzy feelings stopped when they left the studio. In fact, it was Liam and Noel’s estrangement that led to the band’s breakup in 2009.
Like their lyrics, the brothers’ jabs are ingeniously creative; Noel once called Liam a “football hooligan” in an interview with NME, and in a tweet earlier this year, Liam referred to Noel as “little fella aka potato.” In 1998, their heated relationship was so famous that it was hilariously reenacted in claymation on MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch.
Noel finally quit the band in 2009, and now, instead of shouting at each other backstage, the brothers just yell at each other on Twitter from time to time.
Too much drama?
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Blink-182 got their start in the '90s, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that they’d gained a true reputation for their dad rock style. But according to bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker, it was no thanks to their flaky guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge.
DeLonge was so unreliable, Hoppus told Rolling Stone, that the band received not one, but two last minute emails, 11 years apart, from DeLonge’s manager declaring, “Tom. Is. Out.”
The first note came in 2004 when Tom decided to embark on an indefinite hiatus, Hoppus remembered. While they managed to reunite years later, it was only a matter of time before DeLonge was ready to do his own thing once again. Hoppus said in the interview,
We booked Jan. 5 to go into the studio. On Dec. 30, we get an email from Tom’s manager saying that he has no interest in recording and that he wants to do his other, non-musical stuff and that he’s out indefinitely. There’s a flurry of emails going back and forth… and his manager sends back saying, “Tom. Is. Out.” Direct quote. That is the exact same email we got back in 2004.
In a surprising twist, the band came back together in 2023 and released their ninth studio album, One More Time… Perhaps it’s only a matter of time, then, before history repeats itself once more.
Too much drama?
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When Pearl Jam’s Vitology was released in 1994, it became one of the fastest selling albums in music history. You’ll know the project for songs like “Nothingman,” “Immortality,” and of course, “Better Man.”
But while “Better Man” went on to top the Mainstream Rock chart for a lengthy eight weeks, singer and songwriter Eddie Vedder had initially desired to donate the song to a Greenpeace benefit record. Record producer Brendan O’Brien later revealed to VH1,
I remember saying to the engineer, Nick [DiDia], “This is one of their best songs and they’re going to give it away! Can’t happen.” And we went to record it and I’m not going to say we didn’t try very hard, but it didn’t end up sounding very good. I may have even sabotaged that version but I won’t admit to that.
It took a few attempts to get “Better Man” to stick, O’Brien continued, and by then Pearl Jam was ready to let it appear on Vitology.
Too much drama?
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“Life is a journey. Life is learning. If everything’s great, you’re not gonna learn much,” said Rich Robinson in an interview with Louder. He’s referring to the reunion of The Black Crowes in 2019, which saw Rich and his brother, Chris, put to rest a 40-year feud that started in the 1980s. Chris added,
Rich and I would fight in the studio, fight on tour, we’d fight at the hotel… We’d argue over anything. Which restaurant to go to. How to get to the restaurant. Horrible, stupid stuff.
They finally parted ways in 2015, but the venom didn’t stop there. Instead, Rich and Chris founded new, competing bands, and each brother made sure to slam the other at any opportunity. Chris called Rich’s endeavor, The Magpie Salute, a “Black Crowes tribute band”; Rich responded by telling Rolling Stone that Chris’s group, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, was a “half-*ssed jam band playing watered-down Grateful Dead music.”
Eventually, the brothers decided they were better together and reconciled in the spring of 2019. According to Louder, they met for breakfast in Los Angeles, started hanging out again, and that fall, took the stage in New York for their first performance together in years.
Too much drama?
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8The most recent downfall of Live is a tale of two Chads: Chad Taylor, the band’s original guitarist, and Chad Gracey, its drummer. They started out as childhood best friends, eventually founding Live in the early 1980s alongside Patrick Dahlheimer and Ed Kowalczyk. But in 2017, after the band had already reunited after a seven-year split, a pot of mac and cheese tumbled off a kitchen counter and set off a chain of events that left the Chads on non-speaking terms.
According to an in-depth investigation by Rolling Stone, the boiling water in the pot caused Gracey to jump, and he tore his right triceps tendon in the fall. With a series of big dates on the schedule for Live, Taylor called up Kevin Martin from Candlebox looking for a replacement drummer. Taylor remembered, “‘He was like, 'Yep. I got you a guy. I’ve been using Robin Diaz on drums.’”
For the first performance, Gracey and Diaz were set up side-by-side on drum risers, and Gracey played with his left hand while conducting Robin with his sling. “We decided to keep Robin around until I was healed,” Gracey said.
Robin ended up staying on with Live through the end of 2018. And when the band set out to record a new EP in 2019, they secretly tapped Diaz to record its drum parts instead of Gracey. The task fell on Taylor to break the news to Gracey. He told Rolling Stone, “I probably failed him in that moment as a friend.”
As Gracey remembers it,
Chad gaslit everybody and told them I wasn’t mentally able to do it, and management believed him… At the time, this is the worst thing anyone’s ever done to me personally. And he was just kind of like, "Tough luck."
Kowalczyk announced in 2022 that Taylor had been fired from Live, and later that year, it was confirmed that Gracey and Dahlheimer had been let go, too. The new touring lineup includes none other than Robin Diaz on the drums.
Too much drama?
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9When Lisa Lopes, better known as Left-Eye, decided to dedicate TLC’s third album to their fans, she had no idea that she’d only appear on three of its eventual 17 tracks. Apparently, after the band reunited in 1999 following a bankruptcy filing and multi-year hiatus, Lopes no longer felt aligned with collaborators Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas.
Left-Eye told Vibe in 1999,
I cannot stand 100 percent behind this TLC project and the music that is supposed to represent me. This will be my last interview until I can speak freely about the truth and present myself on my solo project.
According to GRAMMY.com, Lopes challenged the other women to also record their own solo albums, and promised to award $1.5 million to whomever sold the most copies.
Unfortunately, Lopes passed away in a car crash during a 30-day spiritual retreat in Honduras. While both Watkins and Thomas did release solo singles, Lopes remains the only TLC member with a full solo album.
Too much drama?
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Since its founding in 1992, hip hop collective Wu-Tang Clan has had so much beef it could fill an entire history book. There was the time RZA pitted members against each other to appear on his beats, the MTV interview when Inspectah Deck compared ODB’s signing to Roc-a-Fella to “fighting on Iraq’s side,” or the 2005 lawsuit when Ghostface Killah sued RZA for unpaid royalties.
Later, when U-God also sued RZA for unpaid royalties, Method Man hilariously quipped, “They said U-God is suing Wu for 170K… That’s it?”
Lest we forget it’s Wu-Tang Forever because, despite their internal issues, Wu-Tang Clan has managed to work through the drama year after year. They even went on tour with Nas in 2023.
Too much drama?
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When Pixies lead vocalist Black Francis announced on BBC Radio 5 that the band had split, no one was more shocked than his bandmates, who were coldly informed via fax.
Francis later called the decision a cliché, telling The Independent,
Every band gets five years and it all kind of blows up,and basically that was our schedule. There was just a lot of unhappy people… And especially a band with a producer situation, there is a lot more agenda. There’s a bunch of cooks in the kitchen now going, "Well, is it soup yet?"
In a different interview with NME, Francis revealed it was one cook in particular – bassist Kim Deal – with whom he didn’t get along. He even threw a guitar at her on stage in 1989. "Kim and I just didn’t get along well after a time,” Francis said in an interview. He went on to explain,
[Kim Deal] always had her own ambitions and became comfortable in a leadership role in her other band. It must have been hard for her to be in a band where some other guy was always pulling at the reins.
Deal went on to form a new band, The Breeders, and left Francis and his kitchen behind.
Too much drama?
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After three hit albums that transformed its members into heartthrobs, *NSYNC’s five members were indisputable household names. It was a monumental time for pop music, and one member, Lance Bass, compared the experience to “pop college” in an interview with Huffington Post:
It was almost like going to college in a way, growing up with these different artists who were pretty much the same age and all starting at the same time: Destiny’s Child, Mandy Moore, Britney (Spears), Christina (Aguilera), Backstreet (Boys). We all worked together, toured together, and became kind of family.
But in 2002, *NSYNC went on spring break and never came back. Originally, the boy band planned to take six months for “evolving and maturing,” Bass remembered. But one member, Justin Timberlake, felt differently.
“I was growing out of it. I felt like I cared more about the music than some of the other people in the group,” Timberlake told The Hollywood Reporter. The entertainer took the hiatus as an opportunity to start a solo career and said “Bye, bye, bye” to *NYSNC for good.
Too much drama?
