It was, for decades, the smoothest of musical marriages. But earlier this month, an arbitration panel quietly closed the book on one of pop music’s most quietly enduring – and suddenly poisonous – relationships: Daryl Hall and John Oates.
The duo, whose blue-eyed soul once commanded the airwaves with effortless charm, ended not in a farewell tour or misty-eyed hug, but in restraining orders, corporate wrangling and the sort of legalese more at home in rooms of high-powered lawyers than backstage.
In the end, Hall accused his long-time partner of betrayal – of attempting to sell his share of their joint venture to a music rights company in breach of their agreement. “Painful and disappointing,” Hall called it. Oates, for his part, kept his counsel. The result: a decades-long partnership dissolved in the cold light of a contract dispute, their legacy still gilded in gold records, but the friendship torn like an old setlist.
They are hardly alone. Pop and rock history is littered with such tales – equal parts artistry and animosity.
The Beatles fell apart as the decade they defined drew to a close. Creative tensions, personal entanglements and a baroque dispute over management shattered the Fab Four in 1970. Lennon bristled at McCartney’s control; McCartney recoiled at Lennon’s fixation on avant-garde experimentation and his new partner, Yoko Ono. By the end, barbs were being traded not just in interviews but in song lyrics. The band broke up quietly; the aftermath rang on for years.
Fleetwood Mac seemed almost to thrive on their dysfunction. While recording Rumours in 1976 they were a tangle of breakups, affairs and recriminations, all stirred with a steady pour of cocaine. Bizarrely, the turbulence only sharpened their songwriting. Go Your Own Way was as much instruction as radio hit.
Oasis were less subtle. For years Noel and Liam Gallagher conducted their feud as public theatre, moving from sarcastic asides to flying fists. In 2009 it ended with one final backstage row in Paris; guitars didn’t just get tuned, they got smashed.
In Guns ‘N’ Roses, Axl Rose and Slash played an equally combustible duet of ego and grievance. When Slash dared to collaborate with Michael Jackson – an artist Rose had publicly criticised – Axl never forgave him. Their split was protracted and profane.
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and David Gilmour unravelled in an orgy of control disputes during The Wall. Waters tried to dissolve the band after quitting; Gilmour battled to keep the name. Even their late-life rapprochements – a charity gig here, a one-off there – have usually dissolved back into pointed remarks in the press.
For The Eagles, the breaking point came long before they officially split in 1980. Guitarist Don Felder questioned the dominance of founders Glenn Frey and Don Henley; Frey responded with the cool brutality of re-recording Felder’s parts with someone else’s voice, and telling him on stage: “Only three songs left, you’ll be out of here.”
The Smiths ended almost as suddenly as they began. In 1987, Johnny Marr was blindsided by press rumours suggesting he was leaving – stories he suspected came from Morrissey’s camp. He promptly made them true. The two have never seriously spoken of reuniting.
The roll call of bitterness is long: Simon & Garfunkel’s on-again, off-again iciness; Van Halen’s revolving-door singers; the destructive warfare of the Allman Brothers.
And yet, in each case, behind the squabbling lies a reminder: the intensity that creates great music is, all too often, the same force that pulls its creators apart. The band may stop playing together but the stories, like the songs, endure.
Proudly Australian owned and operated