With papers covering the breakup and alimony drama of Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger and his former common-law wife of seven years, Marianna Goriuk, we got to thinking about some of the more truly epic breakups and broken relationships in rock music. Sure, Marianna’s asking for $95,000 a month (and currently getting $25,000), and according to legal papers, she’s spending over $5k of that every month on “pet care,” but compared to some of the more legendary breakups of rock n roll, whether Kroeger has to pay for his ex’s limos, cocktail parties, and vet bills is small potatoes. Here are six of the most intense, protracted, ridiculous, and productive breakups in rock music history.
Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger
Marianne Faithfull, after brief relationships with three Rolling Stones in the 1960s, says she “decided the lead singer was the best bet.” Her husband at the time, artist and gallery owner John Dunbar, might have disagreed with her on that. While he gave her a divorce, Mick Jagger (along with Stones guitarist Keith Richards) gave her the hit single “As Tears Go By,” still one of her signature songs.
Hanging out with the Stones wasn’t great for Faithfull, and she quickly picked up a drug habit so intense that she became the inspiration for Rolling Stones songs including “Sympathy for the Devil,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and “Wild Horses.” In 1970, Jagger moved to France and Faithfull moved to the London streets—she was homeless for two years and her personal life was a shambles. In 1979, her comeback album Broken English was released, seeing her formerly angelic voice reduced to a Tom Waits-like rasp from years of cigarettes, drugs, and booze. Luckily, the record was a critical success and put her career back on track.
Moral of the story? Dating Mick Jagger can be great for your career, but not so much for your personal life.
Heather Mills and Paul McCartney
Among Beatles fans, she’s Paul’s least-favorite wife. Among the British media, she was Target #1 for a while in the mid-2000s, with the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the Evening Standard all publishing articles alleging that she was a shoplifter, had worked as an escort and starred in adult films, and had embellished or flat-out lied about her life story.
Part of the problem was that to Beatles fans, Paul McCartney is the object of deep-seated affection. He was the “cute one,” after all. Also, Paul and Linda McCartney were such a great couple: they got married in the 60s, they were in the band Wings together, and they were in love right up until she passed away from breast cancer thirty years later. Heather Mills had a tough act to follow, and she didn’t help matters by being incredibly unlikable, referring to her stepdaughter as “evil” and Paul as “a boring old fart.”
Although Beatles fans feared Mills could walk away with half of Paul’s fortune (estimated at up to a billion dollars), she left in the end with 16.5 million pounds, assets of 7.8 million, and 35,000 a year in child support. Paul, though, ended up better off: “There’ll be no more nagging, no more chaos, no more Heather… bliss. I have peace at last.” You can’t ask for more than that, really.
Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen
It’s debatable whether this counts as a breakup (depending on if you believe Sid stabbed Nancy during a fight, as part of a death pact they’d made, or if someone else stabbed her with Sid’s knife during a drug deal gone wrong), but Sid and Nancy’s relationship, ending in her death and his a few months later, is one of the most iconic in rock and roll history.
When Sid Vicious (born John Simon Ritchie) joined infamous 70s Brit punk group the Sex Pistols as their new bassist, replacing Glen Matlock, he couldn’t play the instrument at all. In fact, the Pistols’ only album, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols, featured Vicious on just one track, “Bodies.” It was Sid’s attitude and personal style which were his contribution to punk. While guitarist Steve Jones was a much more competent musician and his work on Never Mind the Bollocks was a profound influence on the next thirty-odd years of recorded music, most people think of Sid Vicious when they think “Sex Pistols,” or even “punk” for that matter.
The birth, heyday, and death of the Pistols was lightning-fast: Sid joined in February 1977, played his first gig with them in April, Never Mind The Bollocks came out in October, he met groupie Nancy Spungen in November, the Pistols went on tour to the States in January of 1978, and a couple weeks in, on January 14, the band split up on stage at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
Pistols singer Johnny Rotten wrote about Spungen that he was “absolutely convinced this girl was on a slow suicide mission… Only she didn’t want to go alone.” He was proven right in October of ’78 when Sid woke up in New York to find Nancy dead in their hotel suite bathroom, having been stabbed with Sid’s knife. Ten days later, Sid attempted suicide, and in February of ’79 he died of a heroin overdose.
Sid and Nancy’s story was made into the 1986 movie Sid and Nancy, starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb in the title roles. Interestingly enough, the movie features all five members of Appetite for Destruction-era Guns N’ Roses as extras.
Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher
While their relationship is fraternal, not romantic, their extremely public fights and eventual split makes the brothers behind hugely popular Brit-pop act Oasis one of our picks for rock music’s messiest breakup.
The Gallagher brothers never played particularly nice, with Noel Gallagher famously telling a newspaper 1995 he wished Damon Albarn of Blur (currently famous for his work with animated pop/rap group the Gorillaz) would “catch AIDS and die.” Liam wasn’t much easier to get along with, allegedly beating his brother with a tambourine while high on crystal meth during a 1994 performance.
Noel quit the band in the mid-90s but immediately reconciled with his brother and they reunited. Burning through a string of bandmates, Oasis started getting huge with the singles from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, whose hit tracks included Oasis signatures “Wonderwall,” “Don’t Look Back In Anger,” and “Champagne Supernova.”
Throughout the 90s and 2000s, Liam and Noel threw chairs at each other, smacked one another with cricket bats, heckled each other on live TV, occasionally flat-out refused to perform, and became infamous for starting violence with not only each other but also bandmates, members of the press, airline stewardesses (Liam was banned for life from Cathay Pacific Airlines after allegedly flipping out over a scone), and fans.
After more than a decade of dysfunction, (in 2008, Liam stated that he and his brother “don’t really have a relationship” and only speak to each other onstage), the brothers (and hence the band) called it quits for good. Like any good screwed-up couple, though, the brothers will no doubt reconcile to cash in on their unpredictable but usually brilliant stage show. Our money’s on Coachella 2012. Maybe 2013.
Ike and Tina Turner
Oddly enough, the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll wasn’t married to Elvis. Instead, Tina Turner took husband Ike on a journey across the top of the music charts with hits like “Proud Mary” and “River Deep, Mountain High.” Unfortunately, Ike was a great guitarist but a terrible husband, abusing Tina until she left him in 1976.
Her autobiography, I, Tina, served up the gory details of Ike’s years of alleged abuse and drug addiction, but after a few years of seclusion, she began making music again, and eventually returned to worldwide prominence with her 1983 cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” A new studio album, 1984’s Private Dancer—followed, and was a great success, with follow-up single “What’s Love Got to Do with It” hitting number one in the United States.
Without Ike, Tina became a bigger star than ever, playing with musicians like Bryan Adams and Eric Clapton, and acting in major Hollywood films like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Last Action Hero. This might not have been a breakup which changed the course of rock history, as Tina was famous beforehand and she was famous afterwards, but the details of Ike’s treatment of her make Tina an iconic survivor.
Everyone In Fleetwood Mac
In 1976, Fleetwood Mac was one of the biggest bands in the world. Their first album featuring their new lineup, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, was a major commercial and critical success, and the band settled into Sausalito’s Record Plant Studios to record the follow-up. That’s when everybody broke up.
See, Christine and John McVie (keyboardist/vocalist and bassist, respectively) had been married for eight years and then suddenly divorced. Singer Stevie Nicks and singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham were dating, then called it quits, then got back together, then broke up again, then repeated the whole thing several times. Add to this an unlimited budget and unlimited supply of drink and drugs, and then force everyone to work together every day on a highly personal album full of songs about relationships, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Something went wrong (or more accurately, went strangely right), and instead of disaster, Warner Music was left with the incredible album Rumours on its hands.
Drummer Mick Fleetwood, having been the only member of the band so far not to be involved in a messy breakup with a fellow band member, promptly started a secret affair with Stevie Nicks, which he then immediately broke off. Maybe he was just trying to fit in.
The band members’ failed relationships translated to huge commercial success for Rumours: the album spent 31 weeks at the top of the US Billboard 200, hit #1 in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, and after the hit TV show Glee paid tribute to the album in May 2011, it returned to the Billboard Top 20 at #11. The personal misery of the band became the soundtrack for multiple generations and entered into rock history as possibly the definitive breakup album.
Liked our list? Thought we missed somebody, or just plain got it wrong? Let us know in the comments below, or give us a shout on Twitter @showtimetickets.