Bands or musicians you broke up with

[IanR]

Hi,

Tell us about a band or musician that you broke up with.

I have lots, but here are a few to start with:

Rod Stewart - as a kid I first heard Rod singing Maggie May and I loved it. I found all of his early recordings with the Faces, Long John Baldry, and Jeff Beck and they all had the passion, poetry and rootsy feel that attracted me to Maggie May but something happened when Rod crossed the Atlantic. He became more focussed on himself rather than his music and he lost the connection to me. Sorry Rod, I had to let you go. My choice was vindicated later on when he released the sucession of American covers albums. The Andre Rieu of pop music. Yuck.

Queen - the first five or six albums these guys produced, right up to "A day at the races", were driving, articulate, creative masterpieces. You never knew what was coming. But when I got to The Game, my ties to the band were cut. It was pop drivel, made to be played on commercial radio. It was bland, dreary and safe. I did not buy another Queen record after that and it was a long time before I even went back to the earlier albums. I regret the outcome of this relationship but I had to be true to my feelings.

I could add a lot more examples, such as: The Rolling Stones, REM, Miles Davis, etc, etc.

What are yours? Maybe you could post a great song, then post the song the song that killed things for you.

Cheers,

Ian

[bruno]

Music is very strange at the moment. I think the internet age has taken away the personal commitment to bands and brands. I find stuff that floats my boat, eat all I can eat, and then depart. For bands that I have once loved, I always seem to find something worthwhile to listen to, even after parking for many years. May need to skip an album or two, but normally something that lights the flame. Many bands shift and change over the years, some for the better, some for the worst - but there normally something there if you stick at it.

Mrs B always says there is normally one great song in every artist :-) Re Rod Stewart - I too loved his Beck period, however a man's gotta eat, and I can't critize him for taking the path he did. The Rythmn Of My Heart (a Marc Jordan song - a songwriter that I adore) - is a truely wonderful song. So there is hope for them all!

B

[Johnny Robbo]

For me the biggest musical break-up of my life was with Gary Moore. I first heard his music in 1984 when I went to college & a lad I was sharing a room with had the "Victims Of The Future" album on cassette. This track was the one which perked my ears...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGTsBiw4o5c

The instrumental section - classical guitar solo, into fretless bass solo (courtesy of the wonderful Mo Foster), then the big, melodic solo played on (I think) a Les Paul just floored me. I instantly began searching out his earlier music... Parisienne Walkways etc. & discovered Thin Lizzy along the way. Literally everything he did was fantastic as far as I was concerned. This was round about the time (the mid 80s) when I was starting to develop as a guitarist and I was in awe of Gary. Tracks like The Loner and Out In The Fields blew me away & still do.

I caught a lot of flack from my fellow blues aficionados for listening to "cheesy hair metal rock" but I could hear in Gary's playing that there was a greater depth than you got in the music of bands like KISS and Motley Crue. Then... Lo & behold in 1990, he released an album of blues songs - Still Got The Blues & I was in heaven. This remains one of my favourite albums to this day. This album was his peak, as far as I'm concerned. The follow up (After Hours) just felt a little less spontaneous & perhaps a bit contrived, then he did the Blues For Greeny album. On paper it was a winner - Gary Moore using the Les Paul that he got from Peter Green to play an album full of Peter Green songs. That's got to be fantastic, right?

Erm... no. Something had happened to his voice. He had begun to sing in a particularly nasal manner with an faux-American accent that was so "false" sounding. It really bugged me & meant that I couldn't listen to his music without cringing. See if you can see what I mean on this track:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqTc8BOs9h0


Then he went off on a weird tangent with an album of electronica & dance beats which was one of the most awful albums ever released by anyone in my humble opinion. I stopped paying any attention to what he was up to at around this point. Even when he returned to his blues & rock with albums like Back To The Blues and Power Of The Blues, that nasal fake accent was still there... and so was my cringing reaction to it. I just couldn't get past the awful way he sang in the studio... and it WAS only something he did in the studio, it seems. Live he sounded just like he always did, as can be heard on this wonderful version of Black Rose from the Phil Lynott tribute gig from 2005:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HixdocH1tPc

When I heard that he'd died, I was really sad that a huge influence on me was no more. But more than anything else, I was gutted that the hope that he would get back to the sort of form that ignited my love for his music had also died. RIP Gary...

[Mike_S]

I would have to say U2. I was about 18 when "The Joshua Tree" came out. I thought they were great at the time and loved the album. Their popularity went through the roof with that album... but I think pretty much everything they did after this was/is pants. Having made a lot of money and gained superstardom I think they started trying too hard for critical acclaim in the music world above and beyond just being a good rock band. They started dabbling in many different styles which didn't suit them in this quest and started adding backing singers and the like.

A lot of artists do this when they seem to reach a peak of some sort. The start adding backing singers, string sections to songs, the obligitory unplugged album just to say... "Here We Are"... officially amazing aren't we, and here is our unplugged album to prove it, whether our music suits it or not, because its not about you the listener, its about us and our fabulousness!!!

[Hook]

Hair metal after the 8th grade.
REM after Green.
Smashing Pumpkins after Melancholia & The Infinite Sadness
Like Mike, U2 after Rattle & Hum. I have almost the same story as him. The Joshua Tree Concert is still one of the best shows I've ever seen. I did enjoy All that you ever leave behind (was that the name of the disc?)
Genesis after Invisible Touch, I know I lasted a long time.
Many more probably.

[ODH]

This thread seems to be turning into 'when / how you broke up with U2'.  Here's my take on it.

I was in the sixth form doing my A levels when I discovered the Boy album, which was their only one at the time (this is about 1982ish).  I fell in love with it and they were 'my' band, nobody else had heard of them and I had the monopoly on liking them in my school.  I stayed with them through the WAR album but then soon every Capri-driving, mullet-haired, pixie-boot-wearing oik was a U2 fan (this is by about 1985).  At this point I abandoned them (by this time I was a firm Smiths fan anyway) and I've not had any desire to reacquaint myself with them any time since.  In 2006 we took a bunch of visiting clients from the BMW Audio team (we were the OEM audio suppliers for Harman/Kardon to BMW and I was Project Manager) to a U2 concert in Cardiff Millennium Stadium.  Blinding concert but nevertheless still have no affection for U2.  They don't do themselves any favours

[Oldrottenhead]

when i was a teenager i liked a bit of heavy metal, i associate heavy metal with adolescent boys, a lot of my adult friends have not grown out of it yet and i can't understand their continued love of the genre.

my break up came via judas priest, i saw them about 1978 at the glasow apollo i think they where touring to promote either stained class or killing machine, i thought they where fabulous. i then went to see them again a year or two later, when they where promoting british steel.

rob halford rode onto stage on a harley davidson, decked in leather (with hindsight it was very camp) and cracking a long whip over the audiences head. Someone in the audience caught it and pulled on it and he fell of the bike. that was the moment the illusion was cracked, i sat through the concert bored shitless.

for the life of me i can't understand why folk get excited by the likes of ozzie osbourne as it all seems so false and juvenile, i see a parallel with WWE wrestling it's just so fake and all show business.

[Hook]

What do mean? Wrestling is fake? That's a flat out load of $!=÷×/&£_=#_*£×¥=_÷&$£×_×=÷¥=¥=€€=€€÷_÷£%**=£=_! £=¥=£=£=£=€=&&#^!/@/^÷&*=¥#₩^*#&'^^$%$€×¥^¥*÷€=*=*%*/*/*#*/*#£/£%*=¥#£=*
I just don't believe it!

[fenderbender]

You cant be serious about wrestling being fake xxxczxzxzxzxzxzxzzzzzzzz

============================
Well me being from a long gone era
I was a rock and roll kid -the drain pipes and Elvis quiff-but I was foremost a Buddy Holly fan
Until that fateful day. Rock became watered down-So I kind turned to country music and reluctantly pop music
Bobby Vee and all those cheesy guys with little baby voices.

Fat forward a year or two and I chanced my arm and talked my way into a semi pro band
We played everything from Latin American to rock and roll.
Then the Beat boom came along so I got into that.
I actually preferred the Stones to the Beatles.

Best live act I ever saw I think was Johnny Kidd and the Pirates ( what a sound)on a show in Dublin with Brenda Lee-and others-

As I said I drifted back into country music------
Plenty of gigs so I was happy enough-

Biggest letdown for me was seeing Roy Orbison on one of his Irish shows -there would have been more life in a cardboard cut out of him on stage --he just stood there and sang -brilliant voice but........

When I was in a beat group we used to play the first 2 hours at weekends in a place called "The Stella"
on Saturday nights the normally the main attraction would be a group from the North -these groups were all into blues and were always blxxxdy good. 
One of the groups was Van Morrison & Them  -within a couple of weeks they shot to fame in the UK charts and the promoter guy guy still had them on the original money.

Must say I got interested in the Blues for a while but it was a passing fad for me.
I still kept drifting back to country music.
Then country music changed and became all mainstream-creamy ballads-bah
Now music is changing again --

So I reckon a site like this is the place to be and music can change all it wants.
As someone above said -our music heroes changed with the times and not always for the better.