A Brief And Salacious History of Bad Band Break-Ups, Dokken Edition (And More)!

Photo attached to metal band Witchrot's break-up tweet

Bands break up every day and, while not as many bands ever break up as need to, it is always fun to revel in yet another band biting the dust because that frees up a little space in the cosmic jukebox for someone new to fill the void and flourish.

Of course, sometimes, a good old-fashioned firing is just as good.

Moody shoegazers The House of Love got so fed up with moody guitarist Terry Bickers that they kicked his moody arse out of the band, AND THE VAN, on the way to a moody shoegaze gig.

In Bickers' defense, they were never the same after that and Guy Chadwick has said as much. If only young Guy had thought about that before ditching his mate by the side of the road.

Lords Of The New Church singer Stiv Bators fired the entire rest of the band DURING a gig in '89 and, yes, there is video of the event (above). While the stunt made the Europe tabloids, it not only ended the career of this one-time Dead Boy, but ultimately continued the downward spiral that led to the end of the singer's life as well.

Sadly, Bators would pass away from injuries sustained when hit by a car in Paris less than a year after the band's break-up.



That same year, an entirely different reason led to the split of The Bears, the power pop band featuring Adrian Belew: Success.

It seems that once Belew struck gold with daughter Audie on the single "Oh Daddy", Belew had little time to carry on the power pop struggle and "went solo".

Of course, 1989 saw a lot of other great bands break-up aaaaand some not-so-great bands, too. Who can forget hair metal act Dokken (rhymes with "rockin'") calling it quits?

Even more surprising than their break-up was how the band had managed to stay together for as long as they had considering the fact that guitarist George Lynch hated Don "Rhymes With" Dokken with a white-hot passion.

Don Dokken, right, with a topless Debbie Gibson 

Hell, Lynch took up weightlifting, martial arts, and trash-talking for the sole purpose of laying waste to Mr. Dokken in the eventual duel-to-the-death for control of the band and then, boom, the hair metal bubble popped like a Dollar Store condom on a Friday night at the Coconut Teaszer.

For this same reason, Quiet Riot, Night Ranger, Black n' Blue, and Screeching Weasel all chose to call it a day.

"I came in like a wrecking ball!"

Metal band Accept may as well have called it a day after firing lead singer/team mascot Udo Dirkschneider in 1987.

How badly did the band want Udo gone, you ask?

Seems they were so tired of his shit that they wrote Udo an entire solo album, which he happily accepted as a parting gift, recorded with his new band, and released as the first U.D.O. album, Animal House.

Ever wonder what set of rock & roll twins makes other flammable siblings Liam & Noel and Ray 'n Dave look like kissin' cousins by comparison?

That honor, or dishonor, goes to the Aston twins, Jay and Michael, whose band Gene Loves Jezebel was a minor success in the late '80s, but, through a series of events that only a family psychologist could fully understand, and treat, somehow split into TWO bands, each led by one twin, neither of which any of us can tell apart.

Of course, we all know where we were when we heard the Fat Boys broke up...

Lastly, although we are less than twenty years into this new millennium, we can already award the trophy for Most Memorable Break-Up of the 21st Century to Witchrot, who announced their break-up with the following tweet: