MAKING it in the music industry is tough, and the rewards for those who hit the jackpot are immense.
But what if you are the original group member dumped by your bandmates and then forced to watch as they make it big, idolised by screaming fans and raking in millions?
In his new book The Rejects: An Alternative History of Popular Music, music writer Jamie Collinson delves into the dark flipside of fame and the torture of being the one of rock and pop’s cast offs.
Here Jamie, who worked in the music industry for 20 years, reveals the bitterness, depression and drug addiction that has dogged music’s might-have-beens...
“IT was soul-destroying…I was very close to not being here,” was how musician Andy Nicholson described being fired from the Arctic Monkeys.
He was the indie rock band’s original bassist, there for their explosive rise – playing on the fastest selling debut album in UK history and appearing in the brilliant video for I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.
And then, suddenly, it was over.
He was called to a meeting, and the flesh-crawling realisation hit him that he was there to be sacked.
Recalling the experience on a podcast in 2019, he said: “I just thought, ‘This is a big, organised plan. We’re gonna get him in here, then he’s gotta sit there...’”
Nicholson had missed a 2006 tour to deal with “family stuff”. The next thing he knew, his temporary replacement – Nick O’Malley of the Dodgems – was a permanent one.
Nicholson was left traumatised, struggling to recall the period after his departure.
“It’s weird, I don’t know what I did,” he said. “When I think of those years, it’s dark.”
The people who’d fired him were his childhood friends.
“We’d had a life before we’d even known how many strings were on a guitar.”
At his lowest in those grim years, he contemplated suicide.
The memories that remained came in stark images: “I remember when they headlined Glastonbury, I was in my house, and it’s dark.
“I was just sat on my own… just crying.”
Being sacked from a group isn’t like being fired from a job. Bands are strange, unique social organisations, based in varying degrees on friendship, business and creativity.
They often form in youth, and their breaking apart signals a terrible, adult hardening.
I remember when they headlined Glastonbury, I was in my house, and it’s dark. I was just sat on my own… just crying
Andy Nicholson
Bands might not always be the close-knit gangs we like to think they are, but they often start off that way.
Firing a member breaks primal rules around never leaving anyone behind, and everyone deserving a second chance.
Martyn Ware described being sacked from The Human League by his best friend Phil Oakey as like “being hit with a brick from behind”.
But if the effects of being fired are always horrifying, the causes are hugely varied.
In reality, a member might’ve had many second chances before they’re finally let go.
Steven Adler of Guns N’ Roses was the band’s original drummer.
A boyish, beaming character who never really grew up, his blond mane and huge smile lit out from the sleeve of Appetite for Destruction, the band’s incendiary debut album.
To my ten-year-old mind in 1990, he was a permanent cornerstone of my favourite band. He was fixed – quite literally – on the cross tattoo on ’s arm, adorned with each bandmate’s skull.
So, when I heard he’d been fired, I couldn’t believe it. Surely this was like the arguments we’d have in the playground, and Steven would soon return?
But Adler had sunk into one of the worst drug addictions I encountered writing my book, The Rejects.
At this point, I could see that Steven’s mental and physical health had become questionable... We’d forgotten that he needed someone to look out for him. He was like a curious kid you couldn’t leave alone in the house
Slash on Steve Adler
He’d been a wild child, running unsupervised around LA, trying drugs and sleeping with older women when in his early teens. Eighties LA hard rockers reached a nadir of hard living, childishly imitating their heroes, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith.
Motley Crue, whose orbit Adler occasionally entered, set the precedent by indulging in unprotected group sex, violence, heroin and coke.
There were deaths in car crashes, unhinged drinking, guitar necks up girls’ bottoms, overdoses, egotism and chaos.
Like them, Adler came from a broken home, and was ill-equipped to deal with fame.
Being given a lower royalty rate than his bandmates damaged his self-esteem, and he spiralled into heroin, crack and coke addiction.
He was unable to play properly during the Use Your Illusion sessions.
“At this point, I could see that Steven’s mental and physical health had become questionable,” Slash wrote in his autobiography.
“We’d forgotten that he needed someone to look out for him. He was like a curious kid you couldn’t leave alone in the house.”
The band’s internal ethic kicked in: “You could do whatever you wanted to yourself, but you had to deal with the repercussions.”
GNR forced him to sign a sobriety contract. When he failed to keep it, he was stripped of his royalties and fired.
In some ways Adler had the last laugh. He successfully sued the band for $2.5million and got his royalties back.
During the court case he frequently went to the toilets to take drugs. It’s questionable whether the money did him any good.
He sank into the most extreme addiction, finding himself wandering the street in a dressing gown, not knowing who he was, so filthy that even the cops wouldn’t pick him up.
His half-brother Jamie got a doctor to lance the foul pustules all over his body, the smell so bad that no one else could bear it.
Eventually he had a stroke, leaving him with a permanent slur in his speech.
Happily, Adler eventually got sober and even made a brief appearance to play with the reformed GNR in 2016.
And there’s an argument to be made that without Adler, Guns N’ Roses were never quite as good.
Drugs are at the heart of many a musical firing, but they’re only one of several common reasons.
In 1972 Mick Fleetwood thought he’d solved Fleetwood Mac’s ongoing personnel problems when Bob Weston joined on guitar and vocals.
Weston was very good looking – with his square jaw, wavy hair and piercing eyes, he looked a bit like a seventies-rock Michael Fassbender.
At first, these looks presumably seemed an upside. Then Mick discovered that Weston was sleeping with his wife Jenny.
For a little while the group gamely attempted to carry on. But it was never going to work, and one morning after a gig, Fleetwood decided Weston would have to go.
“I hadn’t even had a cup of tea,” Weston said. “Next thing, there’s a knock at the door and the entire road crew was there, all looking daggers at me, very menacing… It was the most expensive affair I’ve ever had. Cost me a career, that did!”
The reasons for firings are often financial, too.
Beyonce is the queen of modern R&B – but she has the “splinter of ice” that all great bandleaders require.
In 1999, Destiny’s Child members LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson tried to break away from the group’s manager – Beyonce’s father Mathew Knowles.
They believed he was focusing his energies on his daughter at their expense.
The sword of Beyonce descended. But there was a problem: no one told Luckett and Roberson.
I hadn’t even had a cup of tea... Next thing, there’s a knock at the door and the entire road crew was there, all looking daggers at me, very menacing… It was the most expensive affair I’ve ever had. Cost me a career, that did!
Bob Weston
They only found out they’d been fired when the video for Say My Name appeared – and they weren’t in it.
Both women eventually settled in new, non-musical careers, but only after Roberson had sunk into depression and alcoholism.
“It was very difficult,” she said. “We saw the video on TV and that’s how I found out I was no longer in the group.”
I often wondered, when researching these stories, why the fired members had struggled so badly.
Wasn’t the amazing experience they’d had already enough? But I realised it came down to ambition: the drive that got these people there in the first place made it impossible to let go.
Not all the stories I encountered were tragic though. In fact, the one that inspired the book is a happy one.
We saw the video on TV and that’s how I found out I was no longer in the group
LaTavia Roberson
As a teenager from a broken home in Washington state, Jason Everman fell deeply in love with punk music.
After a spell doing brutal work on his dad’s fishing boat in Alaska, his dream came true: he was asked to play guitar in Nirvana.
He also paid for the recording of their debut album, Bleach, despite having not played on it.
But on tour, a problem arose. Jason was silent and moody, and the other band members couldn’t bear it.
He was fired straight after it finished.
But it didn’t matter, because another band recruited him, this time on bass: Soundgarden, whose music he actually preferred.
But the same depression dogged him and once again the band found him too moody.
This gave him the unwelcome distinction of being fired by not one but two massive bands.
In Everman’s case though, another dream had arisen.
He “sloughed off the shackles of cool” and joined the military.
His new career quickly took off, and he became a highly decorated Green Beret, fighting in the relentless raids in Afghanistan and large-scale battles in Iraq.
After leaving the army he completed a degree at Columbia University, becoming a real-life warrior-philosopher.
I interviewed him for The Rejects and found him to be one of the most fulfilled and inspiring people I’ve ever spoken to.
The lesson? Like every kind of rejection in life, it boils down to tenacity and to picking yourself up and carrying on.
As I realised after speaking to Everman, life might have high adventure in store for all of us yet.
The Rejects, by Jamie Collinson, is published by Little Brown and is on sale now.
